Who Is DAYS’s Rafe Double, Arnold Feniger?
Double Trouble: EJ (then-James Scott) gave Arnold (Galen Gering) his original marching orders to assume Rafe’s life.
With Galen Gering (Rafe) once again taking on a dual role, reprising the character of Rafe look-alike Arnold Feniger, here’s a look back at Arnold’s original reign of terror in Salem.
In 2011, Rafe’s efforts to help his wife, Sami, regain custody of her young children, Johnny and Sydney, landed him in the DiMeras’ crosshairs. EJ was fuming over the possibility of losing his kids, and how much the children adored their stepfather only enraged him further. So with assistance from his father, Stefano, the two plotted a catastrophic car accident that left Rafe badly injured. Then, while Rafe was recuperating in the hospital, EJ and Stefano kidnapped him and imprisoned him in a cell in the basement of the DiMera mansion.
But their grand scheme had yet more tentacles. EJ and Stefano replaced Rafe with a menacing ex-con named Arnold Feniger, who underwent extensive plastic surgery to look exactly like the upstanding cop married to Sami. His mission? To destroy that marriage, which would tip the custody case in EJ’s favor.
At first, Arnold’s Rafe act was convincing enough to pass muster with an unsuspecting Sami. The DiMeras even tortured poor Rafe with a video feed that captured Sami having marital relations with the impostor! But before long, it became clear that Arnold’s Rafe act was not foolproof. Sami began noticing some very un-Rafelike aspects of his demeanor, and Allie had such a strong dislike for this version of her stepdad that Sami opted to send her off to China to stay with her dad, Lucas.
Arnold’s ruse was in great danger of being exposed when Nicole’s mom, Fay, uncovered that “Rafe” was in cahoots with EJ and Stefano, so Arnold murdered the poor woman to ensure that she wouldn’t squeal. Meanwhile, EJ and Stefano demanded that the real Rafe cough up some more biographical details about his life to help Arnold improve his charade. When Rafe refused, the father/son duo administered a drug to Rafe that wiped his memory! They then shipped him off to an institution. He eventually managed to escape, but collapsed; a kindly nun named Sister Rose brought him back to a convent, where she nursed him back to health.
While Rafe’s memory still hadn’t returned, he was compelled by a sense of familiarity to the apartment building he and Sami had used as a safe house in the early days of their relationship. Sami was shocked, to say the least, when she and Rafe came face to face there — and her confusion doubled when Arnold soon walked in! “There are two of you. This is crazy,” gasped Sami. Rafe and Sami managed to overpower the impostor; after Sami shot at Arnold, grazing his shoulder with a bullet, the duo tied him up and locked him in the bathroom.
Almost immediately, Rafe got his memory back. He and Sami then set about proving that Faux Rafe was being bankrolled by the DiMeras, an effort that even led Rafe to briefly impersonate his own impersonator! When Bo and Hope encountered Arnold, Sami and Rafe filled them in on what was afoot. Bo and Hope agreed to assist them, and the foursome injected Arnold with a truth serum. Under the influence, Arnold confessed to murdering Fay. Cornered, he agreed to go into Witness Protection and testify against the DiMeras, but while he was in jail, another inmate killed him — or so everyone thought until he returned to Salem some 13 years later and knocked on EJ’s door….
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