Leland Palmer

:"This article is about the fictional character Leland Palmer, for the Broadway actress, see Leland Palmer (actress)."

Leland Palmer is a character from the television series "Twin Peaks", created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. He also appears in the prequel "".

Leland (played by Ray Wise) is a lawyer and a well-known figure in the town of Twin Peaks. Together with his wife Sarah and his daughter Laura, his family seem to be the perfect family. When Laura is murdered, Leland’s psychological foundations begin to crumble. He suffers from multiple nervous breakdowns and during Laura's funeral he breaks down and falls on top of the casket weeping uncontrollably. He remains unstable for some time. When Jacques Renault is arrested as a suspect for the murder of Laura, Leland loses control and murders Jacques in an act of revenge against the man who he thinks murdered his daughter. Leland is arrested, but charges are dropped after the judge deems that his mental state was impaired. Afterwards, Leland's hair suddenly turns white from stress. Leland's behaviour at times appears normal but he behaves manically happy at times before crashing into grief. The arrival of his niece, Madeleine Ferguson, who looks almost identical to Laura, is of great help to him in learning how to deal with his daughter’s death as he sees her like Laura.

It is eventually revealed that, as a boy, Leland met a strange neighbour who turned out to be a demonic entity named BOB, who would possess him throughout his life. (It is also implied that BOB molested him as a child). As an adult, Leland molests and rapes Laura throughout her teens, all the while controlled by BOB. As time wears on, the strain of his dual personality starts to have a noticeable effect on his appearance; Leland's hair turns completely white.

Leland is eventually exposed as the murderer of both his daughter and his niece, and arrested by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry Truman. He dies in custody following his bizarre interrogation on the night of his arrest. BOB takes control of Leland and forces him to ram his own head into the wall. At the moment of his death, Leland remembers the crimes he committed under BOB's control; in explaining his possession to Cooper, Leland utters a double entendre ("He came inside me") that implies BOB may have raped Leland as a child in the process of taking over his body. After Cooper gives Leland the Buddhist last rites (the only appropriate prayer that the Buddhist Cooper knows), Leland sees a vision of his daughter Laura and dies. Cooper explains to the widowed Sarah in the following episode, it was probably Laura forgiving him and welcoming him into the afterlife.

In the final episode of the series, Cooper encounters a grinning doppelganger of Leland in the Black Lodge, who says “I did not kill anybody.”