Vernon Schillinger - Season 3

Season 3

This season starts off with Correctional Officer (and covert ally to the Aryans) Karl Metzger assaulting Busmalis for allowing Mack to die in a tunnel from which they were going to escape. Beecher gets out of the hospital, and Keller tells Beecher that he is sorry for hurting him, but Beecher only agrees to believe him if he confesses and testifies against Schillinger and Metzger. Metzger attacks Beecher and Beecher responds by slashing his assailant to death with an interesting weapon: his fingernails, which he has filed to razor-sharp points. McManus does not bother to investigate Metzger's death after learning that he was in fact a full-fledged member of the Brotherhood. When Augustus Hill testifies against Malcolm Coyle for murdering an innocent family, Kareem Said asks Schillinger, among other inmates, to help protect Hill. Schillinger agrees because he also is a family man and respects the fact that one member of the family died while serving in Vietnam.

Murphy starts a boxing tournament in Em City and Robson agrees to box for the Aryans. Robson and Schillinger continuously taunt Cyril O'Reily for allowing them to get away with raping him. Before the match between Cyril and Robson, Ryan O'Reily pours chloral hydrate in Robson's water thus allowing his brother to win the fight. The Aryans then leave Cyril alone.

Schillinger's son Andrew subsequently arrives in Oz for his part in the lynching of a black man. Schillinger, upset that Andrew is a heroin addict, tells the Brotherhood to ignore his son until he is drug-free. Ryan O'Reily, Keller, and Beecher devise a plan to turn father and son against each other. Ryan stops selling Andrew heroin and tells him that the only way he can now purchase drugs is through the non-white inmates. Beecher befriends Andrew and helps get him off drugs. Their growing friendship angers Schillinger, who confronts Andrew in effort to renew their filial relationship, only to hear his son reject everything he stands for and start to assault him. Feeling that Andrew has betrayed him and his beliefs, Schillinger arranges for his own son to die of a drug overdose in the hole courtesy of Officer Len Lopresti, a Brotherhood sympathizer, who secretly provides Andrew with a highly potent package of heroin.

Beecher, after counseling from Said, tells Schillinger that Andrew's death was a setup. Schillinger attacks Beecher, who is now protected and defended by both Keller and the Muslims. Schillinger and Beecher both end up in the hospital ward as a result of mutual stab wounds. When Schillinger is discharged from the ward, the racial tension is very high in Em City and he realizes that Adebisi is plotting something against the white inmates. He asks all the other whites, including Beecher, Keller, and a Russian Jew, Nikolai Stanislofsky, to form a bond of solidarity — albeit only a temporary, opportunistic one — to prevent the blacks from taking over the entire prison. As another race riot is brewing, Glynn locks down the prison.