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McManley's RV

McManley's RV is the mobile-home forensics lab of Dr. Donald McManley, the FBI examiner who follows the task force from Marblehead to Dahlonega.
Type Location (vehicle, mobile lab)
Aliases The wagon; the mobile lab; McManley's lab; the mobile crime lab
Region Marblehead, Massachusetts; later Dahlonega, Georgia
Holder Dr. Donald McManley and his interns
First appearance Summer Service 03
Last appearance Appalachia 07

Description

The RV is a large mobile home fitted out as a crime lab and used by McManley as both workplace and lodging. It carries a microscope, a generator and a rotating crew of nervous interns. In Marblehead it has no hot water, and McManley moves into the team's hotel for a night (Summer Service 05). In Georgia he complains that the town has no RV hookups and plans to rent rooms and run a generator on diesel (Appalachia 04). In the rain at Marblehead the RV is described as top-heavy; it goes up on two wheels in the gusts when he drives it off (Summer Service 05).

History

The Summer Service

In Summer Service 03 the RV is first parked outside Amos Shaw's house after the team calls the FBI for a forensic examiner. McManley reports from inside that a full body's worth of blood has been lost, mostly in the bathroom, and bags the marbles Huell left behind (Summer Service 03). He then parks beside the Marblehead post office, next to City Hall, which becomes his base and the team's mailing point. There he puts the team's sample of communion wine under the microscope and finds it swimming with worms like tapeworms or nematodes. He tells Andrew to get ivermectin and says he will call the CDC (Summer Service 03).

In Summer Service 04 the RV, still parked outside the post office as McManley's base of operations, is the delivery point for the armored-truck crate that contains the M28 Davy Crockett. The courier meets Kurt beside it. McManley is reluctant to spare anyone ("just drive to Salem"), but the team talks him into lending his assistant Henry to fetch the ivermectin from Salem. Henry unloads a small Vespa from the back of the RV and rides off in the rain (Summer Service 04).

In Summer Service 05 the siege begins at the hotel. At about 4 a.m. a police car and silent armed church members gather outside. The dog head is handed to an assistant in the RV, and McManley examines it in floral pajamas before going to bed with a shotgun. During the siege Kurt leads the group to the RV unseen. They find the assistant asleep inside with a garbage can and cinder block over the dog head, and McManley drives the RV off. It picks up Huell at the McDonald's, and the team decides to ditch it, as big, recognizable and poor in the wind, behind the abandoned gas station and take back the Biz's modified car. When Henry finally returns on his Vespa with the medicine, Andre says he climbs into "the cramped-ass RV", and Dante corrects him: "Cramped-ass car" (Summer Service 05).

In Summer Service 06 the team tries to raise the lab technicians left behind with the RV on the radio and cannot get a hold of them. Their fate is never resolved (Summer Service 06).

The Things in Appalachia

The RV reappears in Georgia as the base for McManley's forensic work. In Appalachia 03 he radios that he is arriving with the mobile crime lab, delighted by the "face in a bag" and asking about RV hookups. He relays Big Bill's orders that, because of Ruby Ridge and "that thing in Marblehead", the cult-linked case must go strictly by the book (Appalachia 03).

In Appalachia 04 the RV pulls up outside the Smith Hotel. McManley takes the face, the remains bag, shoes and a blood sample, and is appalled by the giant potato sign of the Spud Hut (Appalachia 04).

In Appalachia 06 the team drives to the trailer to deliver the body of the man in the Chewbacca costume. McManley later notes that the bandolier had been removed and mud rubbed into the fur, and heads out in his motor home. Two interns look for somewhere to wash up and ride a moped back to the RV (Appalachia 06).

In Appalachia 07 the RV is parked at the hotel, crowded with interns. The team brings the SHA tracking device and a dirt sample to McManley, who also brings news of the Clinton surveillance affair (see Clinton Surveillance Scandal). Later McManley and two interns pile into the team's car for the drive to the truck site, and the drunk Biz grills the more nervous intern about who was photographing Bill Clinton (Appalachia 07). This is the last time the RV appears in the recorded episodes.

Not the Circle Chasers' RV

Appalachia 07 also features a blacklit RV belonging to the teenage Bigfoot hunters of the Circle Chasers. It is a different vehicle.

Inhabitants

  • Donald McManley
  • Henry, the assistant lent to the team in Marblehead
  • Unnamed interns and lab technicians, including the assistant who sleeps in the RV during the siege in Summer Service 05

Appearances