The novel and TV series also portray his dysfunctional relationship with his sister Margot, whom he subjects to years of emotional and sexual abuse.

Mason takes pleasure in acts of cruelty and sexual violence, including torturing animals and molesting children.

He also performs autoerotic asphyxiation, and enjoys collecting children's tears with sterile swabs and flavoring his martinis with them.

At one point he befriends Idi Amin, with whom he claims to have re-enacted the crucifixion of Jesus by nailing a migrant worker to a cross.

Verger is eventually arrested for several counts of child molestation, but thanks to his family's political connections he is sentenced to community service and court-mandated therapy in lieu of prison time.

During one of their sessions, Lecter invites Mason to demonstrate autoerotic asphyxiation, then gives him a cocktail of psychedelic drugs disguised as an amyl popper and suggests that he peel off his own face with a piece of broken mirror.

Mason survives the ordeal, but is left severely disfigured—with skin grafts covering the lost portions of his face—blind in his right eye, paralyzed from the neck down, and dependent on a ventilator to breathe.

Margot despises her brother, but stays in his employ to persuade him to donate his sperm to her partner, Judy Ingram, so they can conceive a child.

When detective Rinaldo Pazzi spots Lecter in Florence, Italy, he contacts Mason in hopes of collecting the reward money.

Lecter gives Mason a hallucinogenic drug cocktail and convinces him to cut his own face off and feed the pieces to Graham's dogs.

Unbeknownst to her, however, Mason has preserved the fetus Margot conceived with Graham, and implanted it in a giant sow's womb to birth a "Verger baby", which is later found to be stillborn.

[10] Mason then hires other corrupt Italian police detectives to apprehend Lecter and Graham and bring them to his country estate, Muskrat Farm.

[11] He orders his physician Cordell Doemling (Glenn Fleshler) to slowly mutilate Lecter to death and prepare gourmet cuisine from his flesh.

Before the procedure can take place, however, Lecter escapes captivity, kills Doemling, and helps Margot 'milk' the unconscious Mason's prostate with a cattle prod for the sperm she needs to conceive a child.