Rufus Turner

Rufus Turner
Seasons	3, 5-7, 11
Species	Human
Status	Deceased (killed by a Khan worm possessing Bobby Singer)
Title/Alias	Luther Vandross Ruben Studdard
Occupation	Hunter
Affiliation	Winchester Family Bobby Singer Ellen and Jo
Family	Unnamed daughter †
Portrayed by	Steven Williams

“	Even if we find a way to keep the world spinnin', not everyone's gonna be on that bus ride home. Sacrifice, greater good, all that jazz... oldest rule in hunting, Bobby. You can't save everyone.	”
	— Rufus Turner to Bobby Singer in Safe House

Rufus Turner was a semi-retired hunter who helped Bobby Singer when the latter's wife was possessed by a demon. He returned to active hunting after Lilith began to break the 66 Seals. Rufus died when Bobby, possessed by the Khan worm, stabbed him. Bobby and the Winchesters buried him in a Jewish cemetery.

History

Early Life

Rufus helped Bobby Singer when his wife, Karen Singer, was possessed by a demon. Rufus exorcised the demon and helped cover up Karen's death. It was Rufus who introduced Bobby to the world of the supernatural, and they hunted together for many years until a hunt went wrong in Omaha, and a woman important to Rufus died. They became estranged after the incident.

Season 3

"Folks like us... there ain't no happy ending... I'm what you've got to look forward to if you survive. But you won't." - Rufus to Dean Winchester

Rufus meets Dean.

In "Time Is On My Side", Bobby received a call from Rufus saying that he had information on Bela Talbot. Dean Winchester went to his home in Canaan, Vermont talk to him armed with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, as suggested by Bobby. At first, Rufus was very hostile towards Dean and refused to help him. Then Dean flashed the Johnnie Walker Blue, and Rufus smiled and let him in. They shared the bottle, and Rufus gave Dean the files on Bela, which contained many interesting details on her.

Season 4

In "When the Levee Breaks", Rufus called Bobby with news of more Seals being broken. The broken seals he reported were: ten species declared extinct in Key West, a fishing crew of fifteen struck blind in Alaska, and a teacher in New York killed 66 students, all in one day.

Season 5

Rufus in Good God, Y'all

In "Good God, Y'all", Rufus travelled to a town he believed to be under attack from demons, based on omens of a polluted river and a falling star. He called Ellen and Jo Harvelle and Bobby for help, but Bobby had recently been severely injured. When Sam and Dean arrived, Rufus and Jo had been separated from Ellen. Jo and Rufus captured Sam, thinking he was possessed. Later, Ellen and Dean were able to help disrupt War's influence over them.

In "The Devil You Know", Bobby talked on the phone to Rufus about omens that were possible indicators of the presence of Death.

Season 6

Bobby and Rufus.

In "Weekend at Bobby's", Rufus visited Bobby and informed him that he had the police on his tail and needed Bobby's help in disposing of the body of an Okami that he'd found in Billings, Montana. He and Bobby buried the body on Bobby's property, while they discussed Bobby's progress concerning Crowley and the return of Bobby's soul. Rufus revealed that he had some contacts in Scotland, where Crowley, aka Fergus MacLeod, apparently lived when he was human.

Rufus told Bobby that he'd see what he could learn and then left just before Sheriff Jody Mills showed up with FBI Agent Adams, who was looking for Rufus on suspicion of murder. Agent Adams was persistent, and although Sheriff Mills tried to distract him, found the spot where the Okami was buried. Fortunately, there was no longer any evidence of a crime because the Okami was gone. Unfortunately, because Rufus only stabbed it five times instead of the necessary seven times.

Bobby was able to kill the Okami, and Rufus thanked him. He informed him about what his contacts in Scotland had learned about Fergus MacLeod, aka Crowley. Crowley had a son named Gavin MacLeod, whose signet ring is was display in a museum in Andover. Rufus stole the ring for Bobby but got arrested and swallowed the ring just before being taken into custody. As a favor to Bobby, Sheriff Mills called in favors to have Rufus extradited to Sioux Falls and allowed him to "escape custody" so that Rufus could deliver the signet ring to Bobby. Bobby used the ring to summon Gavin's ghost and learned enough about Crowley to leverage negotiation for the return of his soul.

In "Like A Virgin", Bobby made the excuse that he needed to watch the phones for Rufus in order to avoid going on a hunt with Sam, still skittish from his nearly fatal encounter with soul-less Sam.

Rufus tells Bobby he'll never forgive him.

In "...And Then There Were None", Rufus met up with Bobby, Sam, and Dean while they were investigating deaths related to a spike in the activity of supernatural creatures. While investigating the murders, they also encountered Samuel and Gwen Campbell at a cannery. The creature responsible for the deaths, the Khan worm, infected Dean and used him to kill Gwen, and then it infected Samuel. Sam killed the possessed Samuel, and as Rufus and Bobby prepared to cut open his skull to look for the Khan worm, they discussed an unfortunate hunt in Omaha. Bobby attempted an apology for apparently having messed up on the hunt in a way that caused the death of someone that Rufus cared for, but Rufus interrupted him and made it clear that he would never forgive Bobby for what happened.

Sam, Bobby, and Dean at Rufus's grave.

When they began cutting into Samuel's skull, the Khan worm reanimated Samuel's dead body and attacked them. During the struggle, Samuel was electrocuted and the worm left his body. Unsure of where or in whom the worm escaped, the group took turns enduring doses of electric shock to insure that none of them was a host. Slightly fearful, Rufus revealed that he had a pacemaker (and was missing 3 toes) but withstood the shock nevertheless. When he prepared to shock Bobby, he tried to stall. When Rufus then directly challenged the thing inside Bobby, he pulled a knife and stabbed Rufus in the chest, killing him. After the creature was killed, Bobby, Sam, and Dean buried Rufus. As cremation is not undertaken in the Jewish tradition, Rufus was buried, in what was probably a Jewish cemetery (though if it was, the gravestone should not yet have been in place), rather than given a Hunter's Funeral Pyre. Bobby poured some of Rufus' favorite drink-Johnnie Walker Blue Label—on the grave before taking a drink himself.

Season 7

In "Death's Door", after Bobby was shot in the head by the Leviathan Dick Roman and lapsed into a coma, he ran into Rufus in one of his memories. Rufus was then injured by a ghost that he and Bobby had once destroyed. In another memory, after Rufus was discharged from the hospital, Bobby enlisted the help of his late-partner to find a way out of his coma in order to warn Sam and Dean of the leviathan's plans.

Rufus in Bobby's memories.

Together, Bobby and Rufus traversed through some of Bobby's best and worst memories until they ended up back in the Singer house. Rufus aided Bobby in performing a ritual to bind the reaper after his soul. While the reaper explained to Bobby what would happen if he stayed in his body during death, Rufus also tried to talk some sense into his friend about becoming a ghost, warning him that he would inevitably be cut down by a hunter.

Despite urging from both, Bobby decided to face his deepest, darkest memory and parted with Rufus by saying "Nice seeing ya again, old friend." Rufus nodded to him with a saddened expression on his face. Whether this version of Rufus was only a figment of Bobby's imagination or the actual soul of the deceased Rufus Turner remains ambiguous.

Season 11

Back in 2008, Rufus contacted Bobby about a case he thought involves a baku. Bobby argued that it must be a ghost. It turned out that the case involved a Soul Eater. Bobby instructed Rufus to draw a sigil he once used against another Soul Eater but was captured. Rufus was confronted by the soul eater possessing Bobby but managed to defend himself. Once Rufus completed the sigil, the Soul Eater was trapped inside the house and Bobby was saved. The two deemed the case completed and went their separate ways.

In 2016, Sam and Dean became involved in the same case, when the house's owner smudged Rufus' sigil, allowing the soul eater to be set free.

Season 12

In "The Raid", Sam meets a hunter named Pierce Moncrieff who tells Sam he once worked a job with Rufus. Sam comments on this to Mick Davies with his comments suggesting there was a reason Rufus only worked with Pierce once and likely didn't enjoy it.

Appearances

• Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting (non-canon; mentioned only)
• Season 3
  • Time Is On My Side
• Season 4
  • When the Levee Breaks (on the phone)
• Season 5
  • Good God, Y'all
  • The Devil You Know (on the phone)
• Season 6
  • Weekend at Bobby's
  • ...And Then There Were None
  • My Heart Will Go On (mentioned only)
• Season 7
  • Death's Door
• Season 8
  • We Need To Talk About Kevin (mentioned only)
• Season 10
  • Fan Fiction (mentioned only)
• Season 11
  • Safe House (flashback)
• Season 12
  • The Raid (mentioned only)
  • All Along the Watchtower (mentioned only)
• Supernatural: The Unholy Cause (non-canon; mentioned only)

Trivia

• Rufus is a lover of the Johnnie Walker Blue Label, the most expensive version of the whiskey.
• Rufus is shown to have had an earring during his and Bobby's earlier hunting years.
• Rufus Turner is wanted by the FBI and has two known aliases: Luther Vandross and Ruben Studdard.
• Rufus is Jewish. According to Bobby, he did not keep kosher but would try to get out of burying bodies if it was Sabbath. He also mentions that Bobby shouldn't sit Shiva (the Jewish Ritual of mourning held immediately after the death of a friend or loved one) for him just after getting out of the hospital in Bobby's coma dream.
  • Ironically, Bobby does mourn immediately after Rufus' real-life death.
• Rufus has a pacemaker and has lost at least three toes since the beginning of George Bush's presidency.
• Rufus' facial hair, like the length of Sam's hair, is a prominent indicator of time passing; starting with a moustache that eventually gets longer and then sporting a goatee, all end up graying, before reverting to a small moustache in Bobby's memory of the past.
• Rufus is currently the only hunter to have had a confirmed burial, and one of the very few recurring characters to have one. The others would be the vampire Benny and Dean (until he is raised from Hell), while all other accounts of deceased hunters end with cremation/funeral pyres. This is due to cremation not being undertaken in Judaism.
  • Dean saying he wanted to bury Benny instead of cremation in case he wishes to resurrect him one day means that, although it's unlikely it'd be attempted, the boys are probably capable of resurrecting Rufus from his remains. 
• Although the Harvelles are shown to be alive in the alternate timeline of My Heart Will Go On, Rufus remains dead (probably because of how recently he died). He still affects the plot through Bobby's mourning. 
• In the book Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting, Bobby explains that in Omaha, he and Rufus needed a get-away driver and even though Rufus forbade Bobby from doing it, Bobby called in Rufus's daughter and she wound up getting killed.

See Also

• Rufus's cabin