When the Bough Breaks

When the Bough Breaks (released in the Philippines as Slaughter of the Lambs) is a 1994 American thriller film directed by Michael Cohn and starring Ally Walker, Martin Sheen, Ron Perlman and Tara Subkoff. The screenplay concerns a serial killer. Plot Following a gruesome discovery of a bag of severed hands in the sewer system, State Profiler Audrey Macleah (Ally Walker) is called in to help the Houston police department investigate. Macleah immediately ruffles some feathers with her methodology and frankness but is determined to catch the murderer. After examination the hands appear to be the hands of young girls from various ages, each with a number tattooed on their palms. Captain Swaggert (Martin Sheen) sends Macleah to a nearby psychiatric hospital to talk to a doctor who called in a tip about one of his patients after hearing about the discovery. His patient is Jordan Thomas, who has been shuttered through foster homes and institutionalized since he was four years old. Every year on his birthday he has seizures, his wrists start to bleed, and he carves hands into the walls - each with numbers stenciled on the palms. Despite Jordan's initial reluctance to communicate with her, Macleah earns his trust and discovers there is a psychic connection between Jordan and the killer. After combing through Jordan's medical files and the databases, Macleah learns that the hands belong to young girls who have all gone missing over the years on Jordan's birthday, July 16 from nearby parks around the Houston area. After watching a video from a missing girl's file, Macleah hears the song of the ice cream truck and figures out it's the song Jordan hums each time she goes to visit him. The Houston police department track down a lead with a pedophilic ice cream man but he turns out to be a dead end.