Norman White has never had a normal life. At the age of seven, his father Oswald discovered that his wife — Norman's mother — had been having a prolonged affair. His response was to shoot his wife in the back of the head at the dinner table in front of his son, shoot his son in the chest, and then shoot himself in the head. Unfortunately, Norman survived this attempted double-homicide/suicide.
For the next 11 years, Norman would live in state care, receiving constant therapy for the trauma sustained in his early life. He would bounce from foster home to foster shelter to foster home. The only consistent favor in Norman's life was the instability in his emotional state and his desire to lash out at the people around him. By the time Norman was 18, he had spent ten months in Juvenile detention centers, and when he was no longer a problem of the state's burgeoning child welfare system, he became the problem of the state's penal system following a string of robberies, assault with a deadly weapon, and a home invasion within the same week.
Norman's trial would end in a sentencing of innocence by reason of insanity, and he would be committed to a mental institution for the next fifteen years. In care of the state of California's mental corrections facility of Santa Rosa, Norman would find some stability in chemical leveling of his mood and states of awareness. Kept sedate and calm, Norman would even have several breakthroughs in his emotional duress, and gain additional freedoms and privileges as he became closer and closer to being able to interact with others in a supervised environment.
During his institutionalization, reports from Norman that the "walls of his room were breathing" were attributed to schizophrenic hallucinations, and further accounts of "sinking in concrete" were likewise dismissed. Even Norman began to believe these events were a part of his own overactive imagination.
The bomb that rocked New York in 2006 was something the people of Santa Rosa were unintentionally exposed to due to the massive media coverage and television access rights in the institution. While this tragedy disrupted many inmates, Norman took it in stride. This was until the revelation of the Evolved months later. This, to Norman, was justification of absolutely everything he had done in his life. That he was not insane by merit of certain things deemed hallucinations being real. If the doctors were wrong about that, Norman rationalized, they were wrong about everything else.
Norman began withdrawing, speaking less in counseling, growing detached and distant, while obtaining a superiority complex. Experimentation with what Norman felt was proof that he was "special" continued. At first shaping concrete, then molding whorl patterns in the brick walls of his cell. Finally, Norman tired of life behind the white walls of the Santa Rosa Mental Health Facility.
The 5.6 magnitude earthquake that shook California from the epicenter in San Jose to the edges of Sacramento on October 30th of 2007 was not simply from the shifting of tectonic plates. It was Norman White checking out of the Santa Rosa mental hospital.
For three months Norman managed to elude both Company and DHS agents attempting to follow his trail, but the noose was steadily tightening, and by January of 2008, Norman was caught by the Department of Homeland Security attempting to cross the border into Mexico from Texas. He was immediately detained in a DHS facility in Texas and kept sedated in order to prevent use of his ability. Despite this comatose state, Norman was able to generate a series of minor quakes and aftershocks that shook the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex from October 30th through November 1st in 2008 while asleep. It was decided at this time that Norman was a danger to the DHS staff at the facility, and he was upgraded for pending transfer to the Moab Federal Penitentiary in late January.
Phoenix's attack of Moab in 2009 resulted in Norman White being set free from the prison's confines, awakening in a field in western Virginia along with several other Moab escapees. It did not take long in Norman's wandering of the rural Virginia countryside for him to hear word of the "No Man's Land" of Staten Island in New York City. A place where he could be free, and a place where — should he find it in his heart — he could bring everything down around him.
He has become a shepherd for the other Evolved that escaped Moab who will listen to him, and Norman has set his sights on the government after what they did to him.
