Orell Peattie (played by Billy Drago) was a practitioner of dark Appalachian folk magic. His affinity with witchcraft allowed Peattie to put curses on people through use of rituals involving poppets, hair of his victims, cemetery dirt and personal belongings, as well as concoct healing salves and brews. He was also the father of Lynette Peattie, who was mortally wounded in a bus accident while in San Francisco, California in October, 1999. The attending surgeon, Dr. Robert Wieder, made his best efforts to save the girl's life, but knowing that she had only a matter of agonizing days left to live, chose to euthanize her by secretly administering her with a lethal dose of morphine. Enraged, Peattie vowed to take revenge and sought to punish Wieder for "stealing" his daughter away from him. He moved into a small apartment in Marin County and paid his rent by supplying the landlady with his special tinctures for her back aches.
In 2000, after Wieder and his family returne home from an awards ceremony, Peattie used a poppet to kill Wieder's father-in-law, Irving Thalbro, who was found in their home with a slit throat hanging from a noose, the word "THEEF" written on the wall in his blood. Mulder and Scully were called in to investigate when signs of hexcraft were found on the premises. They also discovered that Thalbro had died by suicide in a maddened state, induced by a severe and sudden case of kuru, an eradicated disease caused by cannibalism. Soon, Peattie struck Wieder's wife with an instantaneous and intense outbreak of skin lesions, later identified as diffuse cutaneous leishmaniasis, which had never been recorded outside of Northeastern Africa and South America. Mrs. Wieder was able to survive long enough to make to a hospital, where Peattie confronted Wieder after burning "THEEF" into his wife's brain scans and told him to remember Lynette Peattie, but Wieder had no idea what he was talking about.
Peattie returned to the hospital with Mrs. Wieder was scheduled to have an MRI done. Peattie waited inside a break room and while having some popcorn, he placed a poppet of her inside a microwave, and she was grilled alive inside the MRI machine. Mulder and Scully learned that Lynette Peattie was a Jane Doe handled by Wieder in late 1999. The agents realized that Peattie was using his supernatural powers to seek revenge by attacking Wieder's own family. Wieder and his daughter were sequestered with Scully to a cabin far from the city with the hope that Peattie would not be able to use his power against them. The agents had learned that Peattie used a charm as the source of his power. Finding Lynette's unmarked burial site to have been unearthed, Mulder was able to find the charm - his daughter's corpse - inside Peattie's apartment, following a report of a woman the building suddenly contracting a rare illness, having been afflicted after finding the mummified body, but the skull was missing. Peattie had indeed followed Wieder and Scully.
Peattie made another poppet, this one of Scully, and used nails on it to blind her while he entered the cabin and took her gun. He then used a poppet for Wieder to inflict terrible chest pain while his daughter screamed for mercy for her father. Mulder arrived shortly thereafter and found the poppet, removing the nails, and returning Scully's sight. Depriving Peattie of his power, Scully regained her eyesight and shot Peattie in the back, saving Wieder and his daughter. Peattie was grievously wounded, but survived. Peattie is sent back to West Virginia to face trial for his attempt on Wieder's life and for suspicion of the murders of his family, but no one was able to find a reasonable explanation for the paranormal circumstances of the deaths. (TXF: "Theef")