Jeffrey peeking from inside Dorothy's closet.
Jeffrey Beaumont is the protagonist in David Lynch's seminal 1986 film Blue Velvet. He is a friendly, snoopy, well-to-do college student who has returned to his hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina after his father becomes ill from a mystery illness. After visiting his father, he comes across a severed human ear amongst a grass field. Jeffrey decides to get involved with the case and with the assistance of high school girl Sandy, the two put together clues from Sandy's father, a police officer who is investigating the ear. Sandy tells Jeffrey that there's a name that is frequently popping up in her father's phone conversations with other police officers, lounge singer "Dorothy Vallens", who lives in an apartment complex near Sandy. Jeffrey, increasingly curious, devises a plan to sneak into Dorothy's apartment as a bug terminator to find a key to break into her apartment. Sandy and Jeffrey watch Dorothy Dorothy perform at the Slow Club, and then head to her apartment. Sandy waits in the car while Jeffrey searches her apartment, however unbeknown to Jeffrey, Dorothy returns...and Jeffrey hides in her closet. Dorothy finds him, and at knife-point, forces him to strip. Dorothy then makes sexual advances toward a shocked, unconsenting Jeffrey. However, the two are interrupted by a knock at the door. Dorothy forces Jeffrey to run and hide in the closet, threatening to kill him if he makes any noise. Through the closet, he watches Dorothy as she is brutalized and raped by psychopath Frank Booth.
After investigating futher, Jeffrey finds that Frank, leader of Lumberton's underworld of crime and prostitution, has kidnapped Dorothy's husband and son. While he holds them captive, Dorothy will do anything she wants for Frank otherwise he will kill both her husband and son. Frank cut the ear off as a warning to Dorothy, and dropped in a grass field, where Jeffrey found it. Beaumont tells his girlfriend's father, the local police detective, what has been going on. The police detective instructs Jeffrey not to involve himself any further, but he later defies that order and sets out rescue Dorothy's son after Booth beats Vallens nearly to death, strips her naked, and leaves her in front of Beaumont's house. Jeffrey rushes to Vallens' apartment in hope of rescuing her son, and is met with the horiffic scene of Dorothy's husband, bound to a chair and shot in the head, and the Yellow Man, whom Frank has crudely lobotomized. Booth flees to the apartment after the police raid his own home, and overhears Jeffrey calling for help on the police radio. Realizing that Frank is coming for him, Jeffrey intentionally gives the police false information as to his whereabouts, so as to throw Frank off his trail. Frank enters the apartment, kills the Yellow Man, and then seeks out Jeffrey, who has enough time to steal the Yellow Man's gun; when Frank eventually finds Jeffrey, Jeffrey fatally shoots him in the head - killing him.