- Shy, overweight women are being pursued online by a suitor who courts them with Italian poetry. The women are being found dead, their corpses stripped of flesh.
- Scully and Mulder go to Cleveland to assist the local police in the investigation of a bizarre death. They've found the remains of a woman in her car but the body is in an advanced state of deterioration, even though she's only been missing for a short while. By the time Scully gets to the autopsy, there is no flesh left on the skeleton. Mulder sees similarities in this death and a series of deaths in another state where all of the victims had responded to a "Lonely Hearts" personal ad in their local newspaper. They now think the killer has moved on to Internet chat rooms to lure his victims.—garykmcd
- The corpse of a woman, or what's left of it, is discovered in a car in Cleveland, Ohio. Mulder traces the questionable homicide to previous cases in which the victims, all female, subscribed to a newspaper column. The killer has now found his way on to the Internet.—EJS
- A couple sit talking in a parked car in a deserted area of Cleveland at night. The man, smooth-talking Virgil Incanto (Timothy Carhart), flatters Lauren, his insecure and rather plump date, until, during a kiss, he suffocates her with a gelatinous substance he regurgitates. The next morning, a policeman finds Lauren's body, which is covered in the substance and stripped of its skin and much of its flesh.
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are called in to investigate, as the description of the woman's remains suggests those of other victims of a "lonely hearts" killer still at large. Scully attempts to perform an autopsy on the body, but it has liquefied; only a skeleton remains. Scully later discerns that the substance coating the body was a digestive enzyme, and that the remains are lacking in body fat.
Incanto prowls an online chatroom, arranging to meet with a plumpish woman named Ellen Kaminsky (Catherine Paolone). Incanto is interrupted by his landlord, who wants him to critique her poetry. She also is attracted to him--but she is slender. Incanto ignores her and resumes chatting online. Meanwhile, Mulder learns that Lauren met a man in a chatroom, and researches Incanto's Internet accounts. He and Scully learn that Incanto had started an account using a credit card taken from a previous victim.
Incanto waits in vain for Kaminsky at a restaurant. He leaves, selects an overweight streetwalker in Kaminsky's stead, and kills her, but not before she deeply scrapes his hand with her fingernails in the struggle. Hearing people approach, Incanto is forced to flee, leaving the prostitute's body nearly intact. At the autopsy, Scully finds that the body's airways are choked with the same substance that dissolved Lauren's body. Scully also finds that the skin under the victim's nails contains no oils or fatty acids, leading Mulder to believe, in Scully's words, that the killer is a "fat-sucking vampire."
Poring over Incanto's e-mails, Mulder finds he has charmed his prey with passages of what proves to be Italian medieval poetry. Mulder compiles a list of the seemingly few people who would be likely to have familiarity with such works. The agents, along with Cleveland detective Alan Cross (James Handy), agree to interview everyone on Mulder's list. Incanto, who is a translator of medieval Italian literature, is one of the names. He receives an e-mail from Kaminsky, who apologizes for standing him up and asks to arrange another meeting. He opens his door to Cross's knock; Cross notices his bandaged hand.
Returning from dinner with Kaminsky, in the car outside his apartment, Incanto seductively invites her in, but then brusquely rescinds the invitation when, looking up at his apartment's window, he sees someone moving around inside. The landlord has come with her poetry, letting herself in with her passkey; she finds Cross's body in the bathtub. Incanto kills her. Later that night, her young daughter, who is blind, comes to the door to ask if Incanto has seen her mother. He says no, but the blind girl smells her mother's perfume and calls the police. When they arrive, Incanto is gone, but his computer files list women with whom he's been in contact. Kaminsky is one of them, and she is unreachable.
Incanto has gone to Kaminsky's apartment, and is invited in. She is pleased to see him, and slips off to her room to e-mail the good news to a friend. However, she receives an e-mail from the FBI containing a facial composite, and recognizes it as Incanto, who enters her room, sees the composite of himself on Kaminsky's computer screen, and attacks her. Guns drawn, Mulder and Scully enter Kaminksy's apartment and find her injured but alive. Through an open window, Mulder sees a man running in the street and gives chase, but it turns out not to be Incanto. Back at the apartment Scully is suddenly attacked by Incanto. However, as they struggle, Kaminsky appears in the room with Scully's gun and fires on Incanto, stopping him from attacking her with his gelatinous excretion.
Undergoing interrogation by the agents, a visibly weakened Incanto, with his skin severely dry and flaky (starved of the life-sustaining fat his victims provided), admits to all the lonely-hearts killings. But if he took from his victims what he needed, he argues, he gave them what they wanted: "I morti non solo più soli. The dead are no longer lonely."
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