"Groovy Guy" Russell ("グルーヴィ・ガイ"・ラッセル "Gurūvi Gai" Rasseru), often shortened to Russell (ラッセル Rasseru), was a middle-aged American man who worked for the Florida-based Girolamo Famiglia and the crime syndicate that was tracking Jane.

Russell was a Caucasian man with a skinny build, pale skin, and dark shaggy hair with a thick, pointed chin beard. He was quite distinguishable since he dressed like a cowboy: he wore the trademark hat, boots with spurs, a bandolier belt, a brown cowboy vest over a tan shirt, and blue jeans. He also wore aviator shades and carried a Smith & Wesson Model 19 revolver for a weapon.

Russell had an American cowboy accent and spoke confidently. He was prone to anger when people disobeyed him, and he had an obsession with having sexual intercourse with "expensive women."

Arriving in Roanapur from Florida, Russell greeted the injured Elvis in a hospital. Elvis demanded that Jane be brought back to him, and the cowboy confidently replied that he would bring Jane back and have Elvis return to Florida in no time to see the Caribbean sunset once again. That night, Russell went to the Yellow Flag to meet the various mercenaries whom he hired, showing the bounty hunters a picture of Jane as well as telling them that she was staying at the Ramsap Inn. He elaborated that the pay was $1,000 per person to capture her, but they despised his bossy attitude, with Shenhua and Quentin the Tiger insulting his cowboy demeanor and demanding to see Lobos. After the bounty hunters got to know one another, they left the bar and told Russell to stay behind.

After the mercenaries initially failed to capture Jane outside the Ramsap Inn, Russell arrived on the scene and berated them for not continuing the pursuit. When Shenhua said that he needed to pay them $30,000 now, the cowboy angrily rejected the bargain, causing her to throw one of her two knives into Russell's car door. The Taiwanese assassin reminded him that he was in Roanapur and not Florida, claiming that he was in over his head. As the bounty hunters left to chase Jane, Shenhua advised Russell to call Lobos since the latter man would agree with their pay request.

While the bounty hunters attacked the Lagoon Company dry dock where Jane took refuge, Russell arrived and was angrily surprised to see Claude burning the dock building. Going to Claude, the cowboy berated him for burning the building since that was not part of the mission, angrily taking Claude's lighter from him. Just after the building collapsed, Dutch and Benny arrived with the Black Lagoon so that Jane and the others could escape on the sea. As the torpedo boat turned around to speed away from the port, a few bounty hunters as well as Russell were able to jump onto the boat as it sped off. On deck, he ordered Claude to fight Jane's protectors outside while he descended below deck.

In the engine room, he began to damage the PT boat's engines in a fit of rage since he could not find Jane. Finding him, Eda mocked him and greeted him with her pistol, starting a shootout. As the bounty hunters outside were forced off the boat or killed, Russell's pistol was shot out of his hand by Eda, who then held him at gunpoint. He stood with his hands up and worried about how he would explain his failure to his boss, but Eda told him that Lobos would take care of Elvis. As he processed her notion that Lobos would kill Elvis, Russell suddenly thought that he previously met her in the United States' District of Columbia while traveling with Don Girolamo. Eda calmly responded that they had never met and she was just a nun from the Rip-Off Church, adding that she was born in Alabama. As he recollected seeing her in a business dress talking to U.S. Senator Jack Bonham at the Fontainebleau in Washington, D.C., Eda admitted that her real hometown was in Langley, Virginia. Upon hearing this, Russell realized that she was affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency, causing her to shoot and instantly kill him.

In the spinoff manga Dismemberment Galore! The Gore Gore Girl, Russell had a cameo appearance as an apparition in Eda's hallucination inside the Rip-Off Church chapel. In disbelief at seeing him since she remembered killing him, Eda began to shoot Russell immediately after Sawyer the Cleaner thrust her chainsaw into the cowboy's back. The following morning in the chapel, his cowboy hat laid next to the sleeping Sawyer.

In the first volume of the spinoff manga Eda Initial Stage, Russell had a cameo appearance inside Club Social in Miami, Florida while Eda and her partner Amber were there.

While in Washington, D.C., Don Girolamo acquired a job from Senator Jack Bonham to retrieve the latter's sexual blackmail tape from Leon Miller, a criminal who planned on giving the tape to Bonham's rival in the Senate. Girolamo decided to let Russell take on the job, so the cowboy broke into Miller's storage of blackmail material in a building near 14th Street. Inside, he was bewildered by the sheer number of blackmail materials inside. Russell saw a binder with "Index" labeled on it, allowing him to quickly find the item of interest. As he finally found Bonham's tape, he was suddenly confronted by a guard and had to dodge his attacks. He was pushed to the ground as Miller and his girlfriend arrived on the scene, prompting Russell to immediately flee the room and the building. The cowboy ran across 14th Street to avoid Miller, who was killed seconds later by a speeding semi-truck in the busy traffic.

Later that day, he used a payphone to directly called Bonham's office. Although the Floridian secured the tape, the senator was furious with the cowboy and blamed him for Miller's death revealing the blackmail collection to the police and therefore possibly exposing his own tape. Russell assured him that he had it, not the police or media, and promised to deliver it to his intermediary. However, on the way to get the tape from its hiding place, the cowboy was abducted by two bodyguards of Bonham's rival senator. Being tied to a chair, the cowboy remained calm as he was interrogated and threatened by the rival senator, who claimed they could get along peacefully if he handed over the tape. In response, Russell bluffed and stated that the tape would be given to the media so that the blackmailers could not use it. Though skeptical, the senator ordered his bodyguard Cyrus to accompany Russell to get the tape and return it to him in exchange for the cowboy going free.

The next morning, sitting in the back of a car, Russell attempted to trick Cyrus into lowering his guard by feigning sickness and pain, but the bodyguard ignored him. When the cowboy crouched forward, Cyrus grabbed his head to force him back up, but Russell intentionally did so to let his hat fall off of his head. Grabbing the hat as he rose his upper body, he shoved it into Cyrus's face and then elbowed it, dispersing a smoke powder which disoriented him. Russell then immediately put the zip-tie around his hands in front of the driver's neck to choke him, forcing the driver to crash. He exited the car promptly and fled the scene, escaping their grasp. After retrieving the blackmail tape, Russell went to the Fontainebleau to meet Bonham in person because of his circumstances and since he heard about Bonham's meeting at the restaurant from the senator's secretary. Once inside, Russell briefly spotted Eda as she and her CIA colleagues finished their meeting with Bonham, being surprised by her appearance and navy-blue dress.

Finishing his goodbyes to the CIA agents, Bonham spotted Russell and was angry that he showed up in person, ruining the initial plan of discreetness. The cowboy explained his situation and admitted that he knew the blackmail tape's content was sexual in nature, shocking the senator. Nonetheless, he tossed the duffel bag containing the tape to the senator, advising him not to look down upon professionals whom he hired. Later that day, Russell was elsewhere in D.C. when Cyrus found him and forced him to walk to the base of Key Bridge at gunpoint. Putting his gun away, Cyrus professed that he was fired by the rival senator for failing to complete the task of acquiring the tape. To the skeptical Russell's interest, Cyrus showed that he stole the blackmail tape of his ex-boss, willing to share the profits if he could connect him to Bonham to sell it. As Russell admitted his hesitancy about the deal due to ending business on a sour note with Bonham, the rear bumper from Amber's car became detached and fell from the bridge, flying right at Cyrus's head and knocking him out. Seizing the opportunity, Russell took the rival senator's tape from the unconscious bodyguard and gave it to Bonham for more money, pleasing both the senator and Don Girolamo.