Gerald Anthony Grice

Gerald Anthony Grice (? - 1975) was an unemployed man who lived in New York City. In the summer of 1975, Grice allegedly kidnapped Blair Roche, a six year old girl whom Grice believed to be the daughter in a wealthy family. Grice intended to collect a heavy ransom from the family, but in actuality Grice was mistaken: Roche's family was not wealthy and her father was merely a bus driver.

Rorschach, promising the Roche family he would return Blair alive, interrogated several informants and traced Grice to his seedy Brooklyn home, a former dressmaker's shop called Modern Modes. In the back yard, Rorschach observed two German Shepherds (Fred and Barney) struggling over a large bone. Though Grice was not home at the time, Rorschach broke in and began his search of the house, finding a scrap of cloth from the young girl's dress in a wood-burning stove and several butchering tools such as knives, hooks, a hacksaw and a large cleaver. Rorschach also noticed that the large cutting board in the kitchen had been recently used and quickly surmised that the bone the dogs had been fighting over was a child's femur. Rorschach then realized that Grice had butchered the Roche girl, burned her clothes and fed her remains to his dogs, inducing a psychological breakdown in Rorschach.

Rorschach killed the two dogs with Grice's cleaver and waited for their owner to return home. Hurling the dogs' corpses at Grice, Rorschach then handcuffed the man to a pipe and doused the room with kerosene. After handing Grice a hacksaw and stating that it would be futile for Grice to attempt to cut through the handcuffs (implying that he would have to cut off his hand), Rorschach set fire to the room and exited the house. He watched outside for over an hour in the unlikely event that Grice might free himself in time; Grice did not survive.

His dealings with Grice represent Walter Kovacs' final descent into the identity of Rorschach and the extreme methods he would adopt in his vigilantism. Kovacs related this tales to his psychiatrist Malcolm Long, after being arrested by the police and incarcerated at Sing Sing.