Luda May runs a local butcher shop in Texas, selling meat from the people her son Hoyt captures and her adoptive son Thomas kills and cuts up, and is the first member of Leatherface's family that the teenaged protagonists meet in the first film. Unlike in the original film, in which Leatherface's family was somewhat abusive to him, Luda May is fiercely protective of him. Part of her hatred towards the teenagers is due to the abuse that her deformed, mute, mentally retarded son suffered as a child at the hands of bullies.