Manipulated Living
Jim Cunningham
Played by Patrick Swayze
A local motivational speaker whose Fear-and-Love doctrine is taught at Donnie's school. Donnie burns his house down on Frank's instruction; the firefighters find a child-pornography 'dungeon' inside.
Cunningham's arrest is the hinge of the plot. Kitty Farmer, his most devoted follower, has to stay in Middlesex to testify for him - so Rose Darko takes Sparkle Motion to Los Angeles instead, and boards the flight home whose engine becomes the Artifact.
He is a textbook Manipulated Living: his exaggerated public virtue and hidden crime are the "irrational, bizarre" behaviour Sparrow describes, and his exposure is one more push toward the return of the Artifact. In the closing montage he sits on his bed in the Primary Universe, weeping - one of those who remember.
What happens to this character.