Criminal Minds

In South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a small crowd stands in front of an open storage unit, bidding to try to win its contents. The bidding is up to $250, and Stu and his friend Dwayne agreed not to bid over that amount, but Stu can't help himself. An older man keeps raising the bid, and Dwayne is not happy when Stu's hand goes up again to raise the bid to $450. "I've got a feeling about this one," insists Stu. They win the bid and leave to pay at the office.



Later that night the two young men are checking out the contents of the unit, shining flashlights over old toys, furniture, and record albums until they catch sight of a battered old trunk. They cut the padlock off with a pair of bolt cutters, excited about what might be inside. The trunk is piled with bondage magazines, papers and manila envelopes filled with diagrams, photos and a journal. The photos show tortured women in various bound poses. The journals describe detailed abduction and torture scenarios. Dwayne, realizing what they have stumbled across, suggests they call the police.



In the BAU bullpen, Rossi is receiving faxed copies of some of the journals from the storage unit. He tells Hotchner that the case agent in the Philadelphia Field Office sent them to him because she "knows" him through his books. Reid walks over and peers at the writing over Hotchner's shoulder. He notices that the verb tense is future - the scenarios are probably fantasies. Rossi tells them that the agent in Philadelphia doesn't think so, and he'd like to go up to take a look at the rest of the material before he makes a judgment. Hotchner tells him to take Reid. Reid is very excited about the "road trip," and hurriedly goes to his desk to get his copy of The Foundation Trilogy on tape read by Peter Coyote for the ride.



Special Agent Jill Morris of the Philadelphia Field Office is awestruck when Rossi walks into her office. She tells the BAU agents about the materials they picked up at the storage unit, but that she was particularly struck by the "prose" of the writer - it sounds like a high order sexual offender to her. Rossi doesn't want them to get ahead of themselves. The name the storage unit was rented in was fake - Louis Ivey - and it was paid for in cash until 6 months ago. With no payments for 6 months, the owner of the storage yard is allowed to auction the contents. Rossi is surprised: all of the evidence he's seen so far tells him that this person is extremely meticulous and well-planned. Why would he default on his lease on the storage unit? Agent Morris opens the door to the conference room and shows them 8 file boxes full of materials her agents have culled from the storage unit. Rossi asks for coffee.



Rossi and Reid pour over the evidence for hours, spreading diagrams of victims, weapons, chains and knots all over the tables. Reid reads through pages and pages of block-lettered notes, examining each of the pages in detail under a bright lamp. The two examine the pages carefully, sometimes comparing notes, but often working solo, trying to understand exactly what they have in front of them. Many hours later, very late at night, Rossi finds Agent Morris still in her office. She asks if he believes they have found something significant and Rossi tells her he isn't sure. She is completely taken aback. Although the materials were certainly put together by someone disturbed, Rossi is not convinced that this person ever acted upon his impulses. He and Reid are going to head back to Quantico where they have real cases with real bodies. Agent Morris doesn't want him to leave - she feels that there will be bodies. As Rossi turns to leave she tells him that there was something else in the boxes. She reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out an evidence envelope containing human hair. She's read Rossi's books, and in one of them, Eyes of a Predator he speaks about how an unsub will collect these kinds of integumentary items before he kills. Rossi says he'll call the team.



"I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils." Euripides



When the team is assembled around the tables in the Philadelphia conference room, Agent Morris informs them that the other contents of the storage unit are still out there. They seem to be items from the owner's childhood, and although they found some fingerprints, they found no matches to anyone in AFIS. Hotchner orders Morgan and Prentiss to go through the storage unit and see what they come up with. He suggests that he, Reid and Rossi continue to sift through the written materials to see if they can identify a signature and connect that with any open cases. Reid believes that isolating any one aspect will be difficult as the author of these journals seemed to want to try everything. Hotchner suggests Reid look for patterns in the handwriting while he and Rossi look at the images.



At the storage unit, Prentiss wants to put a wager on their findings: which ever one of them finds the best insight into the unsub gets lunch on the other agent. She finds a box from early childhood, around age 6, that shows the boy had a lot of interests - sports, art - and that, if his crayon drawings are autobiographical, he is a Caucasian with blond hair. Morgan believes she is right when he finds a copy of Van Halen's 1984 album. As Prentiss describes the rest of the drawings that she finds, the agents imagine the family home of the unsub. At first, the home was happy with two loving parents. Then the mother disappeared, either through death or abandonment, and the father began to struggle. The young boy withdrew into himself. She wonders what "informed" the boy's fantasies, and when they began. Perhaps his father kept pornography that the boy found.



Back at the Field Office, Hotchner picks up a copy of the earliest porn magazine that they found - a 1982 Hustler - vintage, but tame compared with the more recent additions to his collection. They believe that the early exposure was a trigger that brought out certain desires. Rossi remembers Bundy's theory that exposure to pornography contributed to his development as a killer.



Morgan comes across some old text books in the storage unit. They are trade school manuals which include engineering, mathematics and a CAD manual. He concludes that the unsub is in a "fix-it" field such as construction or home improvement. Morgan then finds a few dresses – dresses that had been larger and smaller, but were altered. "Cross-dresser," admits Prentiss. "Looks like I'm buying lunch."



By going back over the notes, Reid finds that the unsub is most excited by the prospect of electric shock as a method of torture. His handwriting becomes so heavy when he writes about it that he sometimes tears through the paper. His descriptions of electroshock are also the most detailed. Rossi commends him on his findings as this will make his victims easier to track - they will have many electrical burns.



JJ shows the team a picture of Dana Foster, a real estate agent from Blue Bell who was found dead 5 years ago. She'd gone to meet a prospective buyer in Bucks County. Her nude body was found in the cellar - she'd been strangled and raped, and the body showed signs of electrical burns. Agent Morris seems excited over the prospect of an identified victim of this killer, even calling the killer "perfect." The victim's clothes were not found at the scene. Morgan tells the agents that the unsub takes the victims' clothes, and alters them to fit his own frame. Rossi asks about the victim's hair, but nothing was reported about cut or missing hair. Hotchner asks JJ to widen the victim search while he and Rossi go to the crime scene.



Shawn Overhold, the current owner of the home in Bucks County where Dana Foster was found dead, is surprised to find two FBI agents on his doorstep. He is aware of what happened in the cellar there, but he keeps the cellar locked up and has never used it - it floods when it rains and all the electrical systems are messed up. He unlocks the padlock on the underground cellar and lets Hotchner and Rossi walk down the steps while he remains above. Rossi theorizes that the killer walked through the house with Dana Foster as if he were a potential buyer, and then asked to see the cellar. By the look of the contusion on the back of her head, he hit her. The walls are thick so the neighbors wouldn't hear her scream. Hotchner looks at the pictures in the case file and notices rope burns on the victim's wrists - the killer probably suspended her from the thick rafters as was shown in his drawings, then applied electrical current. Looking around, the two wonder what the killer used to deliver the jolts - the contact wounds do not conform to cattle prods or Tasers. Rossi discovers an electrical outlet that has been tampered with and figures the unsub knew about home repair, so he used his skills to splice into the house's electrical system.



When JJ peeks into Jill Morris's office to tell her that Hotchner and Rossi have returned, she notices the trophies and award plaques that decorate every surface. Morris belittles it by calling it "just stuff on the walls." JJ jokes that, if they aren't important to Agent Morris, maybe she can loan a few to JJ. Agent Morris draws JJ's attention to a white board she's set up in her office with possible nicknames for the killer they are investigating and asks for her opinion. She's come up with AC/DC Killer, ETK – Electrocute, Torture, Kill, High Voltage Slayer, Fusebox Butcher and Shock Therapist. JJ is troubled that Agent Morris is spending time thinking about this, and tells her that the BAU tries not to mythologize the criminals they investigate. Morris remarks that she doesn't think the nicknames are very good, anyway. Prentiss sticks her head in the office in time to tell JJ that they have determined that their unsub is indeed a serial killer.



Garcia has discovered reports of three female bodies found near freeways in Maryland, New Jersey, and New York with the same types of burn wounds as would match the signature. The bodies were discovered between 2002 and spring of 2003, after the killing of the real estate agent. The killer learned to dump his victims' bodies out of state in order to prevent detection.



Reid and Morgan study the victim board with Agent Morris. They have added the three victims discovered by Garcia to Dana Foster's information, and have linked the three to open missing persons cases. The unsub's "type" seems to be Caucasian women in their early thirties who are career women. The time between each of his kills is getting progressively shorter - down from 10 months, to 7 months to 3 months. The last known victim was found almost 5 years ago. Morgan tells Morris that this unsub would not have stopped; it is most likely that they just haven't found the bodies yet. Reid adds that the unsub wrote about creating a home-made incinerator, so there may not be bodies to find. Extrapolating the math, Reid believes the unsub may have killed 19 more women. Morris's response to this information is unusual, telling Morgan and Reid to keep her informed.



Hotchner, Rossi and Prentiss are concentrating on giving a profile of the criminal to the Philadelphia agents. Hotchner suggests that they should re-interview friends and family of the victims first, and ask them about a white male in his 30s or 40s who works as an electrician. This job will give him access to women's homes and workplaces. Prentiss tells the group that this man sees professional women as unattainable, so he tries to reduce them to base sexual creatures within his control. Hotchner explains that this type of rapist is a sexual sadist which means he becomes aroused by the suffering of his victims - he is not looking to kill them as his goal, but to make them suffer. The clothing that he keeps allows him to relive the torture by wearing the victims' clothes, pleasuring himself to reinforce this congruity between suffering and pleasure. Rossi warns the agents that this unsub has no boundaries - he will continue to evolve his planning and practices as he continues to kill. JJ interrupts the briefing and calls Hotchner and Rossi into another room. Turning on a television, she shows them a press conference that Agent Jill Morris is holding at that very moment. They stare in disbelief as Morris informs the press that there is a serial killer currently active in the Philadelphia area. She tells the press that she will find the unsub and bring him to justice.



In his home, someone else is watching the news footage. He sits in front of the television, legs propped up on the table in front of him. He clicks off the television, and all that can be seen is his distorted image in the dark screen.



Striding into the lunch room at the Field Office, Hotchner confronts Agent Morris about her behavior. When he tells her she should have informed him before holding a press conference she equivocates, first calling it an "announcement" instead of a press conference, and then telling him that, with all of the officers doing the extra canvassing, word would have leaked out eventually anyway. As they speak, Rossi is hurrying towards the fax machine just outside the lunch room. He stands waiting for a fax to print and listens to the argument going on just a few feet away. Hotchner reminds Morris that she is outranked by every member of his BAU team and cannot make unilateral decisions. She will ruin this case if she focuses on trying to make a name for herself. She responds by saying she is trying to protect her city from a serial killer as prolific as Charles Cullen. Hotchner throws out other names to her, names she admits she is unfamiliar with. He tells her they were Cullen's victims - the people who are forgotten every time an agent puts a story before a case. "The Bureau doesn't need any more agents like that," he adds sternly. In the hallway, Rossi has been held immobile by every word that Hotchner said.



Reid is sharing his own misgivings about Agent Morris with Prentiss and Morgan at a local diner, telling them that, while she seems like a capable agent, her "excitement level" at the prospect of finding more bodies worries him. Morgan tells them about JJ's discovery of the list of nicknames for the killer in Morris's office. Prentiss accuses the two of sexism, saying that, if Morris were a man they would say she had "balls." The three agree to focus on the map laid out in front of Reid. Since the unsub has gone out of his way to dump his victims' bodies out of state, the only location Reid can attach a geological profile to is the home where Dana Foster's body was found. Reid believes the unsub will begin killing closer to home soon. They are each painfully aware that, the only way to get enough evidence to catch the killer is if he kills again.



Rossi has case notes strewn all over the bed in his motel room when he hears a knock at the door. Agent Morris has come to apologize for her behavior and asks Rossi to join her for a drink. In the bar she explains that she had forgotten how female ambition appears to some people. When she was in the FBI academy in 1997 she scored a 99 on her Defensive Tactics test, and afterwards couldn't get a date. Rossi begins telling her about her life, profiling her. He knows she grew up with her father who couldn't quite take care of the family and drank quite a bit. He also remembers presenting a seminar at the academy in 1997 and Agent Morris remembers it well - she sat in the third row and had a bit of a crush on him. She calls Rossi "a star" because of the inroads he made into publishing and consulting. Rossi asks her if her hair was lighter and a bit longer then. Morris is flattered that he remembers, but he quickly assures her that he doesn't remember her - he just knows she used a sample of her own hair in an evidence bag to lure the entire BAU team to Philadelphia at the beginning of this case. He calls her on manufacturing evidence to get the BAU involved, but she justifies it as being "for the greater good." "I was right, wasn't I?" she asks. Rossi warns her that he sees a lot of himself in her - he hurt quite a few people getting to his position and he doesn't want to see her do the same thing. She is unrepentant, and Rossi stalks off to get some sleep, telling her that her press conference will "bury" the team tomorrow.



Rossi's predictions come true the following morning at the FBI Field Office: the team members and other agents are swamped with people who have come forward to discuss possible leads on every missing persons case involving a woman within the past 20 years. Reid, JJ and Prentiss sit through interview after interview with concerned parents, lovers, and friends of missing women. One couple has brought along a picture of their daughter wearing a distinctive blue dress. Now, in another place, a man is wearing this dress and listening to a recording of a woman begging for help. He smooths his hands over his body as he listens, sometimes repeating what the woman says. He paces around the room, passing a box spring that has been stripped of all of its soft padding and now stands against a beam, a metal thing of wires and springs. The recording continues, the woman's voice screaming amid the sounds of torture, and the man touches the exposed frame of the mattress, and touches himself.



The Philadelphia Police Department emergency operators are also dealing with a flood of calls. A man is on the phone, telling the operator that he might have seen something related to the killings. He tells her that his car broke down on I-76 and he saw a man digging a hole in a field nearby, for a body. He describes the body as "a bleeder stripped of its clothes." He tells her he saw this at mile marker 115 on the eastbound side and refuses to give his name. Agent Morris brings the caller to the attention of the BAU team, and Reid recognizes the term "bleeder" from the journals he's been reading. The killer refers to women as "bleeders," a misogynistic term that associates women with the menstrual cycle - something he sees as a weakness.



Prentiss and Morgan crouch down to examine the body that the medical examiner has exposed in a shallow grave in a field near the highway. Because of the cold weather, the body is well preserved, and Morgan immediately notices the electrical burns on the victim. The teeth will give the ME the best chance of identification of the victim, and Morgan asks her to do that as quickly as possible. The medical examiner's team lifts the body out of the hole and places it on plastic sheeting nearby, only to reveal the outstretched hand of another body lying deeper in the hole.



Agent Morris doesn't understand why the killer would call and give them two of his victims' bodies, but Prentiss quite clearly informs her it had everything to do with her press conference. The unsub wants to show her exactly who she's dealing with - he is a narcissist. Morris is happy with this occurrence, believing that the killer will give them more evidence. Prentiss reminds her he is more likely to kill more women. Rossi wonders if divulging his secrets has been part of the unsub's plan all along. Defaulting on the storage unit doesn't fit the profile of the man they're looking for - he didn't pay his rent so that this evidence would be given to the police. Prentiss glances at the timeline the team has drawn on a whiteboard nearby noting the first kills in 2003 and continuing to the present. The unsub wants everyone to know about his story, and wants them to start at the very beginning. "He's got us chronicling every step," notes Rossi. The unsub is writing the final chapter right now.



Katrina Townsley, a reporter for The Chronicle, is talking to Gil on her cell phone, cancelling a date for the evening, as she drives down an alley in the city. A white panel truck is following her too closely, and hits her car in the rear. She stops and hangs up, and then gets out of her car to inspect the damage to the rear of her vehicle. The driver of the panel truck, a tall, well-built blond man, is very apologetic, explaining that his brakes have been acting up lately. He offers to get his insurance information and begins heading to the passenger side of his truck when he asks her for her information as well. She agrees, turns her back to the man and opens the passenger door of her car, leaning inside to open the glove compartment. The man quickly rushes up behind her and hits her over the head with a pipe, and then drags her unconscious body to the rear of his truck and puts her inside.



In her office at Quantico, surrounded by monitor screens and equipment, Garcia is on the phone with Morgan. She describes the thoughts she had when she was shot, and how she was able to make it through the intense pain knowing that the pain would eventually end. The women who are abducted and tortured by this killer do not have that comfort - they saw no possible end to the pain. Her computer alerts her that the dental records of the two victims found in the grave have been matched to two women - Mimi Adams and Sara Coswell - they were in the Philadelphia missing persons files. The women were reported missing on the same day. Rossi recognizes the behavior - the killer is "doing doubles." Abducting and torturing one woman at a time was no longer enough for him. Morgan alludes to the case of Gerard Schaefer, who took his cue from Ted Bundy - two women were twice as hard, but twice as much fun. Agent Morris heads to her office to take a call from a reporter at The Chronicle. As she makes her way to the door, Morgan calls after her, "Planning another press conference?" She barely breaks stride.



The reporter calling Agent Morris is Katrina Townsley. She tells Morris to check her email. Morris opens her email and finds a note Townsley claims to have received from the killer, offering to tell his story. The note is handwritten and looks very much like the pages that were found in the storage unit. Morris notices that Townsley sounds upset or tired, but the reporter insists that she is fine. Morris agrees to come and meet her. The killer takes the cell phone away from Katrina Townsley's face and clicks it off.



Rossi, Hotchner, Morgan and Reid are discussing the case in the conference room when JJ comes in with another picture of a missing woman. She was hoping to be able to give the woman's husband some news, but the team tells her the bodies were already identified. Reid notices that the woman's hair color matches the hair samples Agent Morris found in the storage unit, so JJ might want to do a DNA analysis. Rossi steps in and reluctantly tells the team that Morris fabricated that evidence. Hotchner angrily demands to know when Rossi was going to tell them. Reid, JJ and Morgan exchange glances as Rossi explains that he sees himself in Agent Morris. He knows other agents think he crossed a line when he became a best-selling author - that he glorified the killers until people everywhere recognized their names but forgot the names of the victims. Prentiss cuts in with some information about a woman missing from her car - the car was found idling at an intersection with damage to the back end. The woman is the right age, physical type and profession to be a target for their killer. When Prentiss identifies her as Katrina Townsley from The Chronicle, Rossi heads to Agent Morris's office. Reid has followed him, and they both see the letter written by the unsub on Morris's monitor. Reid knows this is not a copy of one of the letters he's already seen, and wonders why the unsub would send a note to Agent Morris. "She's his final chapter," replies Rossi.



Agent Morris is waiting impatiently in a parking garage and reaches for her cell phone. Before she can dial, the killer hits her across the face, picks her up and drags her body to his panel truck nearby. He binds he hands behind her back and leaves her in the back of the truck. When she opens her eyes she sees a bound and gagged Katrina Townsley. The killer drives off.



At the Field Office, Morgan tells Hotchner that Agent Morris's cell phone is stationary, and Reid and Rossi have left to check it out. Garcia calls to tell Morgan she's traced the IP address used to send the email to an internet cafe outside Germantown. At the parking garage Reid finds a few drops of blood and drag marks. Rossi is blaming himself - he warned her to use the team, and to check her ego. Reid tries to tell him that he couldn't have known Morris would go off by herself, but Rossi did know. It's what he would have done.



The killer has stripped Katrina Townsley down to her underwear, and has bound her to the wire frame of the box spring. Agent Morris is bound and gagged nearby, watching. He hits the metal ends of two cables together and the sizzle of electricity fills the room as sparks fly. Katrina is terrified. He shocks her again and again and she cries. The killer tells her to "go louder." He holds the cable against her body longer each time.



Hotchner interviews the clerk at the internet cafe who is having trouble remembering someone who came in 4 hours ago. Hotchner is patient but intense as he describes the man as being white in his 30s or 40s, solidly built, physically imposing with a blue collar job. The clerk remembers seeing a man with blond hair leave in a white van.



Katrina now hangs limply from the box spring, unconscious. The killer puts down his tools and squats in front of Agent Morris. He tells her to beg him not to hurt her. Still gagged, she responds angrily. He grabs her face and says, "You will."



Outside the internet cafe, Reid has his map out and is marking off the points where Agent Morris was taken, and the cafe. Linking those two points with the storage unit location, he draws a triangle that covers a four mile radius. Morgan calls Garcia and asks her to bring up the city-wide list of employees for electricians, power companies, and electrical engineers. Garcia needs to narrow their search - there are thousands of men on the list. Receiving Reid's map, she is able to narrow the list to dozens. Hotchner appears at Morgan's shoulder and tells Garcia to look for someone who owns a white van. She's got him.



The killer has taken Katrina's unresisting body from the box springs and laid her out on the floor, binding Agent Morris in her place. He begins unbuttoning her blouse and tells her that he wants to take his time with her. He pulls down her gag and she whimpers in fear. Agents and police break down the door to the house and swarm inside. Morris hears the noises and tells the killer that they are coming. He strokes her hair and tells her that it will never be over for them before calmly turning towards the door. The agents break in, guns drawn and force him to the floor. Hotchner checks Katrina's pulse and shouts for a medic as Rossi unties Agent Morris and holds her in his arms. She clings to him, muttering that she's sorry.



JJ, Prentiss and Hotchner watch Morgan's interrogation of the killer, Jeremy Andrews, through the glass. He came from a broken home, went to trade school - he matches their profile perfectly. He's already admitted to killing 17 of the women from the missing persons list, and they haven't even gotten to the 2006 files. He hasn't told them anything about finding the remains, he just points at the files.



At the hospital Rossi is trying to convince Agent Morris to stay there for a few days as she packs her bag. She denies that she is a victim, and doesn't want to hear Rossi's warnings about the effects of the trauma she has experienced. He is concerned because she didn't even ask about the condition of the other victim. She walks out of the hospital room and Rossi follows her, telling her that Katrina Townsley didn't make it. Standing at the hospital entrance, Agent Morris looks to her right and sees an agent from the bureau waiting to give her a ride. She then looks to her left and sees a crowd of television and print reporters. Smiling slightly, she hitches her bag onto her shoulder and turns to her left, towards the reporters. Rossi, following her, stands and watches her, and then passes by. The agents' eyes meet for a long moment before Rossi gets into his black SUV, and Morris turns back to answer questions.



"For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world, and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won." Lucille Maud Montgomery.

[recap written by Finnegan77]