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Created by Cynthia Saunders, the implicitly paranormal NBC crime drama Profile starred Ally Walker as Dr. Samantha "Sam" Waters, a forensic psychologist gifted (if that is the word) with the ability to visualize the events surrounding a murder through the eyes of the victim--and the killer. Sam was often called in to help the Feds, but retired after her husband was murdered by one of the persons she'd been trailing, a diabolically brilliant, chameleonlike serial killer who called himself Jack of All Trades (originally billed as simply "?", but finally identified as Dennis Christopher). Living in peaceful seclusion with her daughter Chloe (played first by Caitlin Wachs, then by Evan Rachel Wood) and her best friend Angel Brown (Erica Gimpel), Ally nonetheless reluctantly returned to work at the behest of an old friend, FBI agent Bailey Malone (Robert Davi), now working out of the Atlanta-based Violent Criminal Task Force (VCTF) For the next four seasons, Sam applied her psychic talents on behalf of the VCTF to track down and nail some of the most vicious (and fiendishly inventive) murderers in America, often at the risk of her own life. Her support team included Detective John Grant (Julian McMahon), attorney-turned-lawman Nathan Brubaker (Michael Whaley), forensic pathologist Grace Alvarez (Romer Maffia), the obligatory computer hacker George Fraley (Peter Frechette) and Detective Marcus Payton (Sheik Mahoumad-Bay), a born doubter who during his brief stay on the series played "Mulder" to Sam's "Scully." Occasionally Sam was assisted by explosives expert Nick "Coop" Cooper (A Martinez),with whom she had a brief romance, and who ended up dead at the hands of one of Sam's most persistent enemies. Meanwhile, the still-at-large Jack of All Trades continued tormenting Sam with cryptic messages and not-so-veiled threats, assisted by unhinged felon named Sharon Lescher (Traci Lords), who obligingly called herself "Jill of All Trades" after Jack had thoroughly won her over. Though Jill was eventually killed, Jack continued to elude arrest, ultimately kidnapping Sam but not killing her; rather, he tried to brainwash her into crossing over into the Dark Side. With the resolution of this crisis, Ally Walker left Profiler and Jamie Luner took over as star of series , playing new profiler Rachel Burke, a onetime FBI instructor with plenty of nerve and energy--not to mention an ego as big as all outdoors! Debuting September 21, 1996, the weekly, hour-long Profiler ended with a cliffhanger on May 6, 2000, with a "leftover" episode airing on July 1 of that same year.