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Chilton taunts Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.

Frederick Chilton Ph.D. is a fictional character appearing in Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. He is the director of the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and later Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he treats his most infamous patient, Hannibal Lecter. In Manhunter, Chilton is played by Benjamin Hendrickson. In both The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon, he is played by Anthony Heald.

His role in the novel Red Dragon is a minor one. The book's villain, Francis Dolarhyde, finds out from a tabloid article written by Freddy Lounds that Will Graham is seeking advice from Lecter, who replies by sending him a coded message in the personal ads section of Lounds' paper, The Tattler. Before Lecter's reply goes to press, however, a cleaning crew finds Dolarhyde's letter, written on toilet paper, hidden within Lecter's personal toilet paper spool. Chilton springs into action, calling the FBI to inform Graham and Jack Crawford.

Part of the note, which instructed Lecter to reply via The Tattler, has been excised. The letter was written to be easily ingested, should the need arise, and apparently Lecter did just that. However, an analysis of the ink used allows their forensic scientists to see top of certain letters from the missing section, and Crawford correctly guesses that it is The Tattler. They intercept Lecter's reply, but are unable to decipher it in time. So, they let it run in order to maintain and exploit the contact between Dolarhyde and Lecter. A codebreaker later figures out that the coded message is Graham's home address, which, in the book and the second film, Dolarhyde uses to track Graham down.

In The Silence of the Lambs, Chilton is once again called upon to allow an FBI agent to interview Lecter about an at-large serial killer, "Buffalo Bill." This time it is Clarice Starling, at whom he makes a clumsy pass, which is quickly rejected. Starling piques Lecter's interest at first by admitting her disdain for his hated keeper, and her visits with Lecter become much more frequent. Chilton grows jealous and resentful of Lecter's willingness to cooperate and share information with her, but not with him.

He places recording devices in Lecter's cell to listen in on his conversations with Starling, and stumbles onto a goldmine: Starling, under Crawford's orders, made an offer to Lecter, that he would receive a transfer to a better prison facility and a week-long annual vacation if information he provided led to the arrest of Buffalo Bill. Chilton investigates this claim, and quickly finds that this bargain is false, and that Senator Ruth Martin, the mother of Buffalo Bill's captive, had not agreed to such a transfer. Chilton sets it up anyway, and quickly hogs the spotlight as the architect.

Lecter agrees and is transferred, but gives false information to Senator Martin and Paul Krendler from the Justice Department; he tells them the killer's name is "Billy Rubin," a reference to bilirubin, a pigment found in feces — and the exact shade of Chilton's hair. This effectively shuts out the FBI. However, he reserves the best information for Starling, and using that, she tracks Gumb down to Belvedere, Ohio. Lecter himself escapes custody, however, and Chilton becomes involved in the manhunt to recapture him. At the end of the book, Lecter sends a letter to Chilton, indicating that he intends to get revenge on Chilton, and that when he is done, he will need to be fed through a tube, and that feeding instructions should be "tattooed on his forehead." In the film, he calls Starling on the phone, and, while watching Chilton debark a plane, tells her that he is "having an old friend for dinner."

Lecter appears to have gotten his revenge, whatever that may be, as Chilton does not appear in Hannibal, and the hospital has been shut down. The novel of Hannibal mentions that Chilton disappeared while on vacation seven years prior.

His role is expanded in the film Red Dragon, and his greed and ambitions are incorporated into this new, younger interpretation of the character.

It seems that Frederick Chilton is not a real psychologist at all, as Hannibal asks Clarice if she has seen his credentials which she admits to not seeing. Also, in Red Dragon, Hannibal says he got some of Chilton's mail from the Archives by accident and tells him he has been rejected again.