Steven Sing was a supporting character in the 2004 horror film Saw. He was a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department who was partnered with fellow detective David Tapp. Together, they were investigating a string of gruesome torture games and murders commited by the infamous Jigsaw Killer. Though Sing dies in Saw, he appears via flashbacks in Saw III and Saw V.
History[]
Investigation of Jigsaw[]
In 1995, Detectives Tapp and Sing began their investigation into the Jigsaw Killer after they discovered the body of a drug addict called Cecil Adams. Adams had fallen into a cage filled with razor wire and had suffered several deep cuts, ultimately dying from blood loss. Tapp found a mark cut into Adams' skin that resembled a jigsaw puzzle piece, thus earning the perpetrator the monniker of "Jigsaw".
Eight years following Cecil Adams' murder, the police would discover another of Jigsaw's victims, Seth Baxter, who had been subjected to extreme torture before being cut in half with a large bladed pendulum. It turned out that the man used to be the boyfriend of Angelina Acomb, the sister of one of Sing's colleagues, Detective Mark Hoffman. Seth had murdered her during a domestic dispute in 1997. Even though Seth received a life sentence in 1998, he was released from prison in May 2003 after five years due to a procedural error.
In March 2004, Tapp and Sing discovered another of Jigsaw's twisted games: a large cage filled with multiple lengths of razor wire, forming a maze of sorts. The victim - Paul Leahy - had attempted to crawl his way through the maze and leave via an exit door that was due to lock within two hours. Leahy died well before then, having suffered multiple cuts and succumbing to blood loss. Tapp and Sing discovered an audiotape at the crime scene as well as a peephole, indicating that Jigsaw had been close by to watch his victim's struggle.
A short time after discovering Leahy's body, Tapp would be called to the scene of another Jigsaw murder. The victim was Mark Wilson, whose body had been injected with a slow-acting poison, smeared with a flammable gel and locked inside a darkened room with a single candle being his only source of light. An audiotape found at the scene revealed that an antidote to the poison was contained within a locked safe and that the combination to the safe was written on the walls along with hundreds of other number combinations. The floor had been covered in shards of broken glass, making Wilson's task all the more difficult. He had died after accidentally igniting the flammable gel on his body with the candle flame. A penlight was discovered at the crime scene and was taken to the department's forensics lab. The fingerprints on the penlight matched those of one Dr. Lawrence Gordon, thus the police at last had a suspect for the Jigsaw killings.
Suspecting Lawrence Gordon[]
Following the discovery of Mark Wilson's body, a drug addict by the name of Amanda Young came to the police station, having recently escaped from one of Jigsaw's death traps. After interrogating Amanda and learning about Dr. Gordon's fingerprints on the penlight found at the Mark Wilson scene, Tapp and Sing visited the good doctor at Angel of Mercy Hospital. They asked him about his whereabouts on the previous night between 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock. When Gordon asked Tapp why he wanted to know about this, the latter showed him the penlight with his fingerprints. After that, Gordon was taken to the police station for further interrogation. On the advice of his lawyer, Brett, he told the officers that he had met up with one of his medical trainees, Carla, with whom he had an affair.
Although Gordon's alibi held up, Tapp and Sing still weren't entirely convinced of the doctor's innocence. They kept him at the station a while longer and had him listen to Amanda Young repeat her testimony in order to see how he reacted. Gordon was visibly disturbed by Amanda's description of her ordeal, particularly the details of how she had killed fellow prisoner Donnie Greco in order to obtain the key to unlock the device that had been put over her head. Tapp later drove the doctor home, but still wasn't convinced that he was innocent.
Soon after Dr. Gordon's interrogation, Tapp was examining a videotape found at the scene of Amanda's game. Through careful observation, Tapp spotted a graffito on a wall behind Jigsaw's puppet. This graffito was associated with K2K, a small gang from 118th street. Besides that, Tapp heard a fire alarm in the background and ordered Sing to check the recent fire reports for the area. With Sing's assistance, he ultimately found out about a fire in a rear house close to an abandoned mannequin factory at 213 Stygian Street. Although they did not expect to get a warrant, the detectives left the police station and went to the factory.
Death[]
After arriving at the factory, Tapp and Sing entered the building by breaking through the front door. Searching upstairs, they found what appeared to be Jigsaw's lair; the tables in the room held a number of dioramas upon them, each one a visualization of one of Jigsaw's games, including one that had yet to be put into action. Also found within the room was the ventriloquist dummy that Jigsaw used when communicating with his victims and a pig mask that he had worn during their kidnappings. Moments later, they suddenly caught a sound coming from under a large red cloth. Upon investigating the noise, they discovered a man named Jeff Ridenhour strapped to a mechanical chair. However, as they tried to free him, they heard a nearby elevator. Eager to finally arrest the killer, Sing initially refused to follow Tapp's order, who told him to hide until they got a better look at Jigsaw, but ultimately gave in. The detectives quickly put the cloths back on Jeff and the puppet and went into hiding.
Jigsaw entered the room wearing a black cloak, his face hidden from view. He then took the cloth off of Jeff, stating that he had become a subject for his next gruesome project. At that moment, Tapp and Sing broke from cover and aimed their guns at Jigsaw, but the killer then activated the mechanical chair that Jeff was strapped into by stepping on a button on the floor. Two drills lowered down to either side of Jeff's head and began drawing closer to his temples. As Tapp held Jigsaw at gunpoint, Sing tried to find a way to stop the killer's contraption. Jigsaw told him that the key to the chair was inside a nearby box, but when Sing opened the box, there was a keyring with dozens of keys attached to it and there wasn't enough time to try them all. Sing resorted to shooting the drills, causing them to malfunction and stop.
Tapp was distracted by the shots and Jigsaw took advantage of the moment, drawing a hidden blade and slashing the detective's neck. The cut was shallow enough that Tapp kept himself from bleeding out by holding his hand over the wound. As Tapp staggered around clutching his throat, Sing ran after Jigsaw. He pursued the killer through a narrow corridor and shot him in the back, causing him to fall. As Sing approached Jigsaw, however, he stepped on a tripwire that triggered several shotguns that had been set up above the spot where he was standing, killing him in a gory spectacle. Jigsaw, who had been wearing body armour under his cloak, then got up and made his escape.