In the 1960’s, Sonny was a private investigator in Louisiana who specialized in finding missing children. After Jarod was kidnapped, Margaret and Charles commissioned Mr. Herbert to find him. Sonny was not successful in his search for Jarod.

After Jarod escaped from The Centre, Sonny Herbert suffered one of the “convenient accidents” that seemed to plague anyone even remotely involved with Jarod and his family. Sonny was severely burned when he supposedly fell asleep smoking a cigarette. This “accident” was refuted by Sonny’s long-time (retired) secretary, who informed the authorities that Sonny was an insomniac and couldn’t never have fallen into a deep enough sleep to have resulted in his tragic burning. The authorities, however, dismissed the secretary’s worries stating that there was no record of insomnia in Sonny’s health files.

Immediately following the “accident”, Sonny’s Louisiana office was invaded by a group of men whom the property manager described as “vending machines with heads”; he especially noted a weird-looking bald man who carted around an oxygen tank behind him. The manager said then men had told him they looking for Sonny because he owed them money. They were in such a hurry to look through Sonny’s office, however, that they neglected to check through the records in the basement.

In 1996, Jarod — following a photographic clue faxed to him from The Centre by Angelo — found Sonny’s office, but discovered that the records in the basement didn’t include information on Jarod himself. Jarod later located the ex-secretary, and she told him Sonny was still in hospital recovering from his “accident.” Jarod went to visit Sonny in the hospital, but found that the man — severely burned and living in an oxygen tent — was unable to communicate. The medication he was on for the pain he suffered because of his burns made him drift in and out of consciousness; and when he was conscious, he wasn’t lucid. It’s unknown at this time if Mr. Herbert has fully recovered from his injury, or if Jarod has ever made a return trip to visit him.