Dana's History
Childhood
Dana was born a Potential Slayer, though she was never identified by the Watchers Council. When she was 10 years old, her family was murdered in her home by the serial killer Walter Kindel, who kidnapped her and kept her chained in the basement of a distillery.
For months, Kindel drugged and tortured Dana. His instruments included a mallet, hammer, pliers, and chisel, as well as a box with syringes and drugs. Dana remembered a moment in which Kindel approached her with a syringe, saying: "Let's try the blue one this time."
Dana eventually escaped. She was found naked and bleeding, nearly catatonic, and taken to a psychiatric hospital; her ordeal at Kindel's hands left her traumatized beyond treatment.
Slayer
After 15 years at the hospital, her condition changed when Willow performed the spell that activated the powers of all living Potential Slayers. Dana became frenzied and violent; not even Thorazine antipsychotic medication was enough to subdue her. All Slayers had a connection to the lives of the Slayers before them, and these memories came to them in dreams, but Dana's unstable mental state caused her to experience these visions while awake. She acted reviving moments from deceased Slayers for brief periods of time, even speaking in their native tongues, and made drawings of various girls killing demons.
The doctor attending her case, Rabinaw, taped his sessions with Dana and kept his recordings a secret, as he planned to write a book on her. Eventually, Dana escaped thanks to her superhuman strength after a nurse gave her the wrong drug; she murdered a male nurse in the process and painting her face with his blood. Disoriented, Dana returned to the distillery where she had been tortured, though on the way she murdered several men.
Spike, who initially believed Dana was possessed by a demon because she spoke in tongues, tracked the Slayer. However, he was captured by Dana, who had recognized him from her dreams because he killed Xin Rong and Nikki Wood, though in her state of mind she had come to believe Spike and Walter Kindel were one and the same. Dana used the same drugs Kindel had used on her to subdue Spike and cut off his hands with a saw. Spike, desperate, explains that he, while he had done many horrible things, had never done anything to her; while Dana realizes this, she doesn't seem to care and tries to decapitate Spike, but Angel stops her and explains that the man who tortured her was killed while attempting to rob a liquor store. Still upset, Dana attacks Angel and is ultimately tranquilized by Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.
Dana's unconscious body was taken by Wolfram & Hart Special Operations Team, though they were interrupted by Andrew Wells and a team of Slayers from the Slayer Organization, who had been sent by Buffy Summers to retrieve Dana under any means necessary. Understanding that the Scooby Gang no longer trusted them, Angel agreed to hand over Dana to Andrew.
Afterward, Angel and a hospitalized Spike discussed Dana. Spike believed she was too far gone for the Scoobies to help, she was a monster just like the two of them. Angel remarked that she was an innocent victim but Spike remarked that even they were innocent victims at one point.
