Criminal Minds

It's late at night in Detroit, Michigan, and a man exits his car and moves around the streets among prostitutes and the homeless while holding pictures and making notes. A homeless man receives some money from a motel owner warning him "this stays quiet." As he is counting the money, a car horn honks from across the street. He walks across the road and gets inside the car, where he faces a gun pointed at him.

The man who had been taking notes drives through the night to the Canadian border in Port Huron, Michigan. He is stopped by border guards and is asked for identification and questioned by customs agents before being waved through. He then stops on the road and waits as he is approached and told to move. He drives full speed and crashes into the guard post. He is ordered out of the wreckage and taken into custody. As he is being cuffed, he informs them, "You're going to want to call the FBI. I've killed 10 people."

In the Quantico conference room, JJ explains the man's name is William Hightower and he claims that he has killed 10 people over the past month and dumped their bodies over the border in Canada. Hightower says he will only talk to the FBI. Reid wonders if there is even confirmation that the people are missing. JJ explains they mostly appear to be transients and that it's difficult to find any information on them. They discuss what they know about the possible unsub, revealing he had been a soldier in the U.S. Army until two months ago when he lost his leg in a roadside ambush in Iraq and was given a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation for Valor. JJ wonders why he would crash the guard post when he had gotten away with 10 murders. They suggest it could have been an attempted suicide and maybe he wanted to take others with him. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have asked for their help. Wondering if the case is for real, Hotchner replies, "It's too many bodies to take chances."

Flannery O'Connor said, "If there were no Hell, we would be like the animals. No Hell, no dignity."

On the jet enroute to the scene, the BAU pores over the details of the case and discovers that Hightower had documented them all in detail. They notice that, although the unsub doesn't appear to have a type, there is a link to the Cass Corridor where they were all taken, which has a high concentration of the traditional transients: homeless people and prostitutes along with drug trafficking. Prentiss theorizing it may be more about opportunity than victimology.

At the RCMP headquarters in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Hotchner, Reid, JJ and Rossi meet with Officer Jeff Bedwell, who was part of a fellowship the BAU gave to train police officers in profiling. As JJ and Garcia check records for multiple border crossings on the days of the murders, the rest of the team discuss if they think Hightower is the unsub. Bedwell says he fits the profile in the sense that with his military background he is organized, smart, mobile, and physical.

Meanwhile, Morgan and Prentiss patrol the cast corridor in Detroit, where they notice that the homeless people have set up camps, which is unusual behavior. They ask around to see if anyone has seen the missing victims or Hightower and learn he has been seen around the area frequently.

Back in Windsor, Ontario, Hotchner interrogates Hightower. Pressing for the location of a dumpsite, he reveals that Hightower's behavior was more like a protector towards the homeless people, taking photographs and checking off names. He doesn't think Hightower killed those people, and states Hightower waited until everyone was out of the guard post before he crashed it. Hightower reveals his sister, Leigh, was on the streets and that she was missing. He wanted to attract attention to this and other cases of disappearing people and make sure that they were investigated.

Garcia relays back information to the team about people who have multiple border crossings and the list in the hundreds. Port Huron is the busiest crossing in North America with many commercial trucks going through and stop-and-searches would cause too many delays, which would give the unsub virtually free passage.

Hotchner and Rossi convince Bedwell to release Hightower into their custody to help them search the streets. Garcia comes back with reports that on the nights of the abductions the Detroit police reported break-ins at medical facilities and the items stolen included such things as syringes, anesthesia, sterilizing equipment, and O-negative blood. With this new information, they are ready to prepare the profile.

They believe the man is a sexual sadist with a medical background who is performing experiments on his victims. The scene flashes to a pig pen when the unsub dumps remains out of a sack into the melee of pigs. The team hits the street to look for new potential victims that have gone missing.

Looking at the victimology, they wonder why the unsub alternates in patterns of male and female, and why the men are taken at all seeing as prostitutes are much easier to lure. The timing of the dates of the male abductions coincides with when they would have cashed their welfare checks. Questioning people on the streets, they learn they cash them at a motel and those people would often walk away with drug dealers if they were looking for drugs.

Another girl is abducted as the BAU start searches that match the dealer's car at the border crossing, but the unsub has taken her across by boat instead. They find the car dumped at the side of the water and, through the VIN, trace the car back to Mason Turner - who fits the profile.

Arriving at the farm, the BAU searches the grounds. They find the barn where all the medical experiments appear to have taken place. In the house, they discover a quadriplegic hooked up to a breathing apparatus who warns them to "get out of my house." Puzzled at the apparent harmlessness of Mason Turner lying immobile on the bed, Reid is confused and comments, "He's our unsub?"

[recap written by scooterstarr]