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Supervisory Special Agent Jason Gideon returns to the Behavioral Analysis Unit after an extended medical leave, and BAU team leader Aaron Hotchner must secretly evaluate Gideon's performance. Gideon's first case upon his return involves tracking down an unsub (unknown subject) in Seattle before he kills his latest kidnap victim.
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Jason Gideon's FBI profile team is called to an Arizona College campus where students and teachers fall victim to arson. However the pyromaniac profile doesn't quite apply: the culprit didn't make sure (s)he could enjoy the crimes by observing the victims perishing. Dr. Spencer Reid finds a better way to fit the facts with a rarer serial killer logic: a 'religious' compulsion, in this case both triggered and given form by a boundless obsession with the number three- if this theory holds true a third, possibly triple, arson is at hand...
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The team is confronted with a type of serial killer the FBI never caught before: a sniper, or by the official euphemism Long Distance Serial Killer, who hits from an invisible position with single shots unrelated innocents, even playing children, in public places in Des Plaines, Illinois up to three at a time. His accuracy with a difficult military weapon, methodical preparation and apparent knowledge of law enforcement practicalities -such as shift changes affecting presence at given times- indicate a (former?) policeman. However when they arrest a suspect during a reconstruction, he is shot dead, proving the theory he's now in another profession, indeed in the hospital....
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The FBI profilers compare two cases in which a whole family, parents and four children, was kept prisoner in their own home while presumed on holiday and killed one by one. The killer must be a control-freak who plans everything painstakingly into the smallest detail, as his whole life, and enjoyed both the planning and lording the last days of their lives, possibly after suffering abuse as a child himself. Now the team applies the profile to possible suspects.
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The FBI team concentrates on an unusual case: psychiatric patient Dr. Theodore "Ted" Bryar, who ironically was accompanying his female therapist to a congress in Dallas as demonstration how efficiently psychosis can be relieved, is kidnapping a whole train in Texas, which team member Elle Greenaway coincidentally rides on her way from a prison interview. Ted has complex delusions, notably an imaginary microchip he wants removed from his arm, refuses to talk to anyone below the highest authorities (God?) and uses his gun. The team also investigates the hostages, in order to understand the dynamics inside, which the apparently failed therapist cannot be expected to handle. Dr. Spencer Reid is determined to go in for once and perform a manual magic trick to make Ted believe the chip is extracted...
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Two jogging high school students are murdered in the woods of McAllister, a Virginia village. The team doubts the apparent marks of a satanic cult and the abbreviation L.O.D. where the boy Adam is found, the girl Cherish Hanson is missing. Local reverend Paul Burke has a prison record for embezzlement, Henry Dent for violence. The sheriffs bright boy Cory Bridges tells a Mike Zizzo fits the profile: a charismatic adult who leads devoted teenagers, called the Lords of Destruction. The team realizes it's all to easy and acts according to another profile, especially after Jason Gideon learned from a girls all school kids except the L.O.D. knew about a decomposing corps but none reported it.
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The team hears eleven year-old Billie Copeland is abducted from the playground where her mother coached, after a man was seen around with a leash asking help to search his dog Candy. First the teams suspects her only six months divorced, spoiling cancer-surviving father William, who turns up nearly 24 hours later with his cell phone turned off; he was discretely in oncology, for terminal lymph cancer, and singlehandedly attacks a local Internet-filed sex offender, but that man never attacked children. A girls body is dragged from the river, but unrelated. Then a neighbor reports ideal suspect Donald Curtis, same age, car, even a recently deceased Labrador named Candy and extensive porn, but no trace of Billie...
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Just when Gideon asks his retired, notoriously intense ex-mentor Max Ryan, now a criminology author presenting his next book on the Keystone killer who got away after the last of seven killings of blond females -strangling Amy Jennings-, for a guest lecture, Max gets a note from the killer, quoting Steinbeck but spaced so that it's riddled with references to his former victims and both Amy's drivers license and that of an eighth victim, however now older and more violent, a script deviation which worries the team. Gideon observes Max, technically just a consultant now, is too personally engaged. A new note quoting Francis Bacon announces another victim two days later. The team follows a reference in the note to Scott Harbin, a recently paroled former suspect Ryan emphatically excludes, who fits the obsessive profile, and finds a live victim but conclude he's not the Keystone Killer. Ryan suggests the drastically changed MO must have an external reason, plausibly physical incapacitation- assuming a car accident in Philadelphia when the murders stopped leads to now rehabilitated criminology degree-holder Walter Kern, whose spine was broken in an accident near a victim's home and was professionally connected with Scott Harbin; his wife and home prove most interesting...
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Aaron 'Hotch' gets a visit from his brother Sean Hotchner, who intends to abandon the plan to study law, like their late dad and Aaron. Five students aged 19 are found horribly murdered in a vacant house in Terra Mesa, New Mexico, unbound, skinned alive, one impaled alive: traditional Indian torture methods. The team quickly suspects it must be the collective work of a 'pack'. First they consider the local reservation policeman Benjamin Blackwood's son John, a teacher noted for Indian activism, who proves his tracker skills on the murder site and concludes it was not real Indians as no tribe practiced all these methods; he accepts to act as consultant. As the killers were probably not Indian but wanted it to appear so, next suspects are the heavily armed ADU, founded by local businessman Roy Minton, mainly recruiting from construction, to fight the Indian land claims. A fingerprint belongs to a sixth student, Ingrid Greisen; her parents say they didn't even know she was missing as she lived totally apart. After father Peter Greisen follows the team's advice to call for Ingrid's release on TV, the kidnappers phone: two ex-cons, who surrender and show the van she's in, after a promise nothing is told to dad, who would have paid them to kidnap his daughter without hurting her; they know nothing about the murders. Ingrid stopped following courses over a year ago- Hotch finds Peter hired a de-programmer and concludes Ingrid had to be kidnapped because she was in a cult sect. The hunt for the cult is on after Ingrid tells what she learned inside about the self-proclaimed 'Apaches' lead by 'Grandfather'...
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In New York a hooded serial killer blindfolds and shoots, then stabs victims which seem to have nothing in common, not even age or gender. The profiling team concludes that the cab driver could only be killed after thorough preparation. His latest attack on a priest who was accused but cleared in court of child abuse, after which he lets a female witness escape in a church, suggests the setting is essential to his ritual. It turns out all victims were acquitted or got the charges dropped- the killer is a vigilante who stabs his guilty victims in a 'poetically just' organ, probably continuing on the theme of a first crime against a perpetrator whose victim he once was. Gideon thinks it may be a cop, but can't scare off the NYPD from collaborating, and indeed the next victim is a double cop-killer. All victims have been on trial in one single court-house. Crime newspaper reporter Lance Wagner gets incredibly precise scoops every time. After shooting in panic an undercover cop in the park, his hooded killer Will Sykes turns himself in, but isn't the killer. All victims trials were recorded by the same stenographic clerk, Marvin Doyle...
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When LAPD detective Owen Kim gives Dr. Spencer Reid and Gideon a ride to the airport after they gave his colleagues a lecture an profiling, they accept to join him when he's told about a murder, and decide to stay when they hear there has been a recent series of victims from the film industry, mainly acting. It soon appears the killer singles out persons he considers a danger to his idol, rising Hollywood star Lila Archer, such as a hostile producer, another actress which got 'her' part or looks too much like her...
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In Allende del Sol, a Mexican factory and tourist town, the papers write about a serial killer, the government wants that theory squashed by the profilers after the twelfth rape-murder in two years, on 62-year old Lupe, whose son Miguel Trejo was arrested as suspect. Gideon knows from a seminar the local police captain, Victor Navarro, who claims Mexican cultural emphasis on family and machismo won't permit Gideon's profiling method to work there. The Trejo murder site shows Gideon that Lupe discovered Miguel is a closet homosexual, unspeakable in the macho town. To save Miguel from killing in prison, his sister Rosa tells his younger boy-friend Roberto Gonzalez was outside the house; he noticed a social worker, female or cross-dressing. Atypically, the next victim Isabella Santiago is stabbed the following day. The team believes it's a rapist -rarely reported, let alone prosecuted- who became impotent, probably after being ridiculed by Milagros Villanueva a month before the first murder. There is a fitting suspect, and a link with a series of rapes...
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The team flies to Tampa where a disappearance is believed to be the work of businessman Mark Gregory, who was never convicted but presumably tortured and drowned at least four women. His house proves better equipped for disguises then most theaters. As he is found to have left another body in a Georgia hotel where he checked in under his own name, the team believes this is his last, most aggressive phase, no longer giving priority to covering his tracks. They revise his profile after studying his family history, which his indulgent father always pushed away.
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In Baltimore, Maryland, a torturer executes his victim John Summers after having found the Saudi women and two children he protected. When Gideon reads about Summers' suicide according to the press, he learns from his CIA-contact another counter-terrorism agent must have staged this top Middle East informant's death, and puts his profiling team on this strictly unofficial investigation for the murderous mole. The wounds show more then one torturer. Summers was working with Aaliyah Nadir, who turned informant after physical abuse by her husband Hassan, a Saudi diplomat who secretly finances terrorist organizations, and after a staged 'fatal' car accident lived with young son Faris and daughter Dalia in the US. Now Hassan is looking for them. CIA executive Bruno Hawks welcomes the BAU team at Langley, promising full cooperation, but the traitor probably works there too. The team has sixteen CIA suspects to examine while counseling the high-tech search for the now missing family. Then CIA agent Olivia Hopkins' neck is broken in the office...
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The team is splitting up for a holiday. Although they are on different locations, only Derek Morgan and Elle Greenaway stay in the same Jamaican hotel where a friend gave him a good rate. Suddenly they all get abrupt proof of the activity of a killer who calls Hotch -at his family home- telling him not the mind the first victims but save the girl. The diverse, personal clues prove he knows each team member well, as it turns out hacked from Garcia's computer files, and all fit in one grand scheme. Several clues converge to a certain Frank Ginley who got many convictions, but at his Langley home they find his corps, the start of a new elaborate series of clues for what he calls the team's quest, and it's obviously unusually personal, not sexual. There is a cliffhanger...
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Jacksonville student Laura Clemensen is kidnapped, raped and tortured for days before fatal manual strangulation; just as with the previous victim, also a good girl student without problems, a DVD is sent to the family, her father Frank has a fatal heart-attack, the body is dumped in a degrading position, wrapped only in duct-tape. The team concludes there are two sadistic killers, master and slave. The DVDs are sent to the mothers since one asked God to forgive the killers, as rejection of guilt. There's another abduction, Tiffany Spera. Tracing car parts allows to find Joey Davin, but he rather draws and gun and gets himself shot then be arrested with a strike three record...
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Four times an LA perfectionist bank-robber made the clients-hostages strip before locking them in, so none would do anything, and violates one, but quickly slips into more violent assault against uniformed men. The team realizes he started out as a clever thief, but the opportunity made the sadist awake, who forces odd couples to play sex in front of the others and becomes more violent. The race is on, fearing he'll become murderous...
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In Ozona, Texas, 2500 population, young boys Robbie Davis and Nicholas Faye were bludgeoned to death in the woods, next Sara, dumped there after posthumous abuse. The team believes it's a smart, methodical local trusted by the kids, who are meanwhile advised the buddy-system. An eight-year old tells Jason, who noticed he's burdened by a secret, his older brother Matthew is missing- since two rascals dared him to pull the bell at the local 'ghost house' of old hunter Finnegan, whose wife disappeared 50 years ago. He's out, Robbie's bag lies there, but his corpse is found, buried in the woods before the first murder. Next suspect is school counselor James Charles, abandoned by his wife, who has victim Nicholas Faye's baseball team cap when he fails to flee arrest; his own 12 year-old son Jeffrey Charles is missing, after a search Jason quickly guesses the horrible truth... Meanwhile Hotch tries to get reluctant Elle Greenaway, FBI-cleared but a mental mess, to take shrink therapy...
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The team is sent to St. Louis to catch two serial killers who appear to be competing against each other. They are polar opposites; one is called the Mill Creek Killer and kills middle-class women using blunt trauma and the other calls himself Hollow Man and shoots prostitutes. Meanwhile, a new team member, Emily Prentiss, reports for duty.
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When Dr. Spencer Reid is approached in Washington, D.C. by high-school boy Nathan Harris, who attends his lectures out of fascination, he realizes only after the kid leaves he might be a serial killer, which seems to check out after having the details he mentioned verified, the victims being prostitutes marked in the flesh by a sick mind who is tortured and wants to get caught. However there seems to be another killer at work...
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A month ago 16 year-old Sandra Davis's on-off white boyfriend Ken Newcomb is shot from a car before here eyes, she next strangled to death, presumably by her date, in a park at Groten, an affluent suburb (42,000, 8% black) of New York City. It's the third of three racist killings in Westchester County, following Keisha Andrews (15) and Vickie Williams (17), black girls disappeared simultaneously from their homes in the county, corpses dropped in nearby woodland, neither raped but the date rape drug GSB found near them. Swastikas are painted on faces and cars, racism is becoming a hot political issue, the white mayor put back Lt. detective Ware in charge. Sandra was threatened by letter in advance, 'we' forbid her to keep seeing ken or tell anyone, in adolescent girl phraseology. The local police dismissed its initial suspicion of the letter-writer, black Tania Mathers (17), rumored to be dumped by Ken for Sandra, jealous after the high-school talent school. The team profiles a sexually motivated black serial killer who enjoys some type of souvenir and masquerades as racist while picking on singing black girls. Next black Naomi Dade, 16, is reported missing. The black profile causes a scared citizen to shoot 'snooping suspect' Ware. Next missing singing girl is Ally Hadley (15, black). A witness allows the team to identify the man who approached all girls... Meanwhile Spencer Reid's post-traumatic Raphael abduction-stress causes him to wrestle with substance abuse...
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A spate of fatal police killings have been occurring in Phoenix, Arizona. All officers are shot in the the neck in the line of duty. Much to the chagrin of the Phoenix Police Department rank and file, the BAU is called in to assist in the investigation. Whereas the police department initially believes the perpetrators to be gang members, the BAU believes it is one unsub due to victimology and MO - the shootings are methodical and the dead officers' badges have been taken. Besides the victims being Phoenix police officers, the unsub does not seem to be targeting specific individuals within the Phoenix Police Department. Information leads the investigation into the underground world of fight clubs. However, the investigators are searching out someone atypical to the public mentality of a fight clubber.
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Ten year old Cate Hale is abducted from her rural Alabama home while her sleeping mother and stepfather are killed, their throats slashed. Although the BAU realize that time is of the essence since most abducted children do not survive past the first 24 hours, Cate is later released, physically unharmed. The BAU believe her release was due to the fact that she has epilepsy, which the unsub did not know of prior to her abduction. Cate recounts that her abductors were a family: a mother, father and son around her age. From Cate's stories of the abduction and later evidence found, the BAU piece together that the abduction and murders have a ritualistic nature to them. During the investigation, a second young girl in the area is abducted, her parents also killed in a similar manner. It isn't until Garcia does a search of past similar cases - abducted young girls with their parents killed - that the BAU begins to understand the full nature of this case and the rituals involved, in addition to who the mother abductor potentially could be.
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Prentiss learns from an old friend, John Cooley, that their mutual friend, Matthew Benton, just died from a heart attack. Prentiss had not seen either man in several years, both for different reasons. John also mentions that Matthew thought he was going to be killed just like "T. Valentine". In searching, Garcia does find someone matching that name in the area who recently died from dehydration. There are similarities between the two deaths but no medical rationale for tying the two together as murders. A third person in the area then dies in a similar way but again no medical indication of an unnatural death or rationale tying the death to the first two. However, Prentiss and Rossi, in particular within the team, are certain the three deaths are related and that they are indeed murders. They have to tread lightly and carefully since the families of the deceased refuse to speak to the FBI - especially Matthew's family who know, and do not like, Prentiss - and since there is no official case as the police have not sanctioned one. The investigation gets more complicated for the team when they find who they believe is the murderer.
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A serial arsonist is active in Royal, Indiana. The arsonist went from setting fires in unoccupied buildings to largely populated ones. In the last two fires - in a community center and a movie theater - the death count reaches 31 people. The BAU realize that they have to tread lightly as they suspect the unsub to be a local, and with Royal being a small town, anyone they question will be the target of a public witch hunt. And with the high death count in such a small town, determining if there is a specific victimology is made more difficult. The arsonist strikes again when the BAU least expects. Because the latest fire is different than the previous ones, they believe the last fire is the one that holds the key to understanding the motivation and finding the perpetrator. This case is especially difficult for Garcia, who is asked to do things outside of her normal duties.
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Young male college students - the type the BAU classify as the alpha male - on spring break vacation in South Padre Island are being raped by another man and suffocated to death specifically at the Hudson Street Hotel. The men are found naked in a fetal position in a place where they are sure to be found quickly the in their hotel room, but also in such a way that housecleaning would have cleaned up any evidence before finding the body. The victims thus far are not gay indicating that any physical act was not consensual. When the next victim is found at another hotel, the BAU believe this act a red herring and that unsub a guest or probably an employee at the Hudson Street Hotel. They also believe based on sexual orientation of the victims that there are two unsubs, a submissive female who lures the victims, and a dominant male who does the rape and killing. When the BAU have the two people they believe are the perpetrators of the murders, the two do not quite match the profile they had envisioned. Reid digs a little deeper to find the true motive and perpetrators of the murders, the outcome of the case which is not totally satisfactory for Reid's sensibilities.
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Kyle Murphy is third in the string of boys abducted from their homes in Camden County, the first two ultimately found dead in the woods. For Captain Bill Lancaster, the chief police investigator working on the string of abductions, Kyle's disappearance adds poignancy to the case as he is friends with the Murphys, Kyle who called him "Uncle". As the FBI begin to investigate, they notice that there are slight differences between Kyle's abduction and the other two. When the FBI finds the person who they believe is the unsub, they are still uncertain if he had anything to do with Kyle's disappearance.
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Michelle Watson, a Buffalo, New York based Realtor, is found murdered inside a house at which she was showing. A week later, the Buffalo Police Department receive an audio-less and edited video recording from the murderer's viewpoint of the lead-up to the killing, including shots of within the murderer's home, as well as the actual murder itself. From the video, it looks as if it was taken by a hidden camera located somewhere on the upper half of the murderer's body. From the actions on the video, the BAU can also tell that the murderer suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Reviewing past cases in the Buffalo area within the past ten years and another video visible in the background of the video sent makes them suspect that this murder was done by a serial killer. Two other key pieces of information on the video are the date, the "29th", circled by the murderer on Michelle's day planner, and the murderer scrawling the words "HELP ME". The BAU have a race for time as the 29th of the month is approaching, the date they believe the next murder will occur.
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Shannon Makely is the second Caucasian woman to be killed by vehicular homicide in Bend, Oregon in two weeks. The BAU know that it is the same person that killed both women and also that it is homicide since the driver backed over the victims after the initial impact. Both women were also killed along secluded stretches of road. With other information at hand, the BAU believe that the two victims were targeted rather than random killings. When a third vehicular homicide in Bend occurs, the BAU are initially confused as that murder occurred in what could have been a busy public parking lot, and the victim is male. However, other clues comes into light, which the BAU disseminates to the public. In watching these reports from the BAU, Gil Bonner believes he has information which could help the investigation, information he has been keeping secret for over a year. Meanwhile, Garcia is awaiting some information which could profoundly affect her personal life.
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Within eighteen hours of their common time together, twelve people who visited Quiet Hills Park in Annapolis, Maryland have died from anthrax poisoning, with at least thirteen more in emergency rooms headed in the same direction. It is a highly sophisticated strain of anthrax, meaning that it was developed by someone with a science background. The military is called in as the BAU believes that such scientific work is the specialty of the military, the resulting pathogen as use as a potential WMD. Although the strain of the pathogen is not being used by the military, the military scientists are the most likely candidates to be able to develop such a strain. The attack site, a family oriented public park, is contrary to such work, and thus the BAU believes the site is personal to the unsub. Because of the panic it could cause, there is a media blackout on the story, which negatively affects some on the team, some for personal and some for professional reasons. The team is hit even harder when deep into their investigation, one of their own may have been exposed to the pathogen with just hours to live.
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Iraq War veteran Sgt. William Hightower goes to extreme measures to get authorities to investigate the disappearance of several people in Detroit, Michigan, one of those people being his sister Lee. The reason why the Detroit Police Department did not originally investigate is because those missing are exclusively people who live on the streets, specifically those that call the streets of the Cass Corridor home. Despite Hightower's action potentially landing him in jail, he gets his wish in that the BAU are brought in to investigate. The BAU's investigation brings them into Canada. Although they are there on the invitation of the RCMP, the BAU face the obvious problem of jurisdiction. When they get to the site and person they believe the unsub, they are initially dumbfounded due to the unsub's physical state. But he may know more than at first glance, which they will have to get out of him before the latest missing person, a young woman named Kelly, is found dead. This case is especially difficult for Hotch, who may need to unwind with a drink when he gets home. However, others things are waiting for him when he arrives.
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The BAU, working on less than four hours sleep after finishing the case of the abducted homeless people taken across to Canada, are called into their next case. A trauma surgeon by the name of Dr. Barton received a note from someone signing it "LC." stating that his fifteen year old son Jeffrey will be killed. If LC. is not allowed to carry out this mission, he will instead kill one other person every day until Jeffrey is dead. Two surrogates for Jeffrey, both Hispanic men, are already dead. Dr. Barton has no idea who LC. is or why he or his son would be targeted. Rossi, J.J. and Morgan keep watch over Jeffrey, who sneaked out of the house to go to school, while Reid and Prentiss go over Dr. Barton's medical files with him. Prentiss, figuring they need an extra pair of eyes to go over the several hundred files, decides to try and find Hotch, who has not been answering his cell phone. Arriving at Hotch's apartment, Prentiss finds that he is not there, but that there are signs of foul play. When Prentiss finds him, he is not in good condition. But she does discover the meaning of LC. and understands who the unsub's real target is. Ultimately, the entire team is notified that Hotch is in the hospital with multiple non-life threatening stab wounds. Although the person who dropped him off at the hospital was unseen, the team knows that it was George Foyet aka the Reaper. Hotch is worried that the stabbings inflicted by the Reaper were just a warning for a more cruel and perhaps deadly attack to come.
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Hotch is back at work after 34 days of recuperation from being stabbed by George Foyet aka the Boston Reaper. With Foyet on the loose and Haley and Jack in hidden protective custody, the rest of the team wonder about Hotch's mental state and if he really is ready to return to work, especially as he seems more agitated than ever. Their next case takes them to Louisville, Kentucky where 40-year old long time resident Darrin Call kills three and critically injuries two in a pharmacy rampage. The BAU learn that he has been off his anti-psychotic medication for a month, meaning that he is probably in a delusional state rather than being a murderer per se. And he only started attacking those people who touched him first. As Call's doctor ultimately becomes one of Call's victims and his medical file goes missing from the doctor's office, the BAU have to discover what his psychosis is and to find him before someone touches him again which will probably lead to more deaths. Garcia learns that there are no records for Call prior to age 6, thus the BAU suspect that he is looking for his true identity and the trauma associated with what happened to him in his missing childhood years.
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The BAU are called to Commack, Long Island where Ben Vanderwaal, the third and latest victim of a serial killer, has just been found dead. Each victim was bound, then shot through the head and heart. The two male victims were also mutilated postmortem, but each with a different body part missing, whereas the sole female victim thus far was extremely emaciated prior to death. Rossi requests to stay behind at the office rather than go to Commack since this is his small home town, a part of his past that he does not want to revisit. His request is denied by Hotch since Reid is still not cleared to travel from his injury sustained in the "LC." case. Once they arrive in Commack, the BAU find Heather Vanderwaal, Ben's wife, who was beaten at the scene of her husband's murder but not killed herself. Information from her, and other information from Garcia and Reid, form a connection between the three victims. Each was involved in some aspect of child abuse, Vanderwaal's not yet a matter of public record. Further information from Heather and the nature of the gunshot wounds indicate that the murders were contracted hits. With help from an old local friend of Rossi's, the BAU get the code name of the probable hit man. The case takes a turn when the BAU believe they've discovered who contracted the hits. The case turns from one of trying to find the contractor to discovering who is left on the contract hit list and when they are scheduled to be killed. They discover that the last two names on the list are on there each for a different reason. At the end of the case, Rossi reveals to Hotch why he didn't want to go to Commack for this case. Meanwhile, Hotch misses his family more than ever as Jack celebrates his fourth birthday without his father.
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In a gentrified neighborhood in southeast Washington D.C. vandalism has increased recently. Two upper middle class couples - one white, one black - are found beaten to death in a home invasion. Nothing was taken from the home. The BAU's initial assessment is that there are at least three male unsubs, and that the beatings are related to the vandalism. A second set of victims are later found dead - a young white working class couple who were killed in a parking lot outside a blue collar restaurant. The BAU know that the unsubs, who have a pack mentality, are motivated purely by nihilism and the need to exert power. In monitoring on-line chatter, Garcia finds another more broad threat of vandalism. Although the BAU do not believe this act of vandalism was initiated by the unsubs, they know the unsubs will react in their typical violent fashion. Their reaction does yield useful information for the BAU to narrow in on the unsubs. During the process of this case, Garcia has some words of professional and personal advice for Morgan.
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Kristie Taylor is the third and latest victim of a sexual sadistic serial killer in New Mexico. All the victims have been troubled teen-aged blond females, who have been missing for years and that suddenly turn up dead. They have been asphyxiated with ligature marks consistent with being chained. The other connection that the three have is that they all looked healthier just prior to death than when they went missing, and have all shown signs of just having given birth, killed minutes after delivery. The BAU's initial analysis is that whatever his purpose for the babies is the key to finding the unsub. They suspect that the babies are being sold or being placed in the adoption system, as blond haired, blue eyed babies are those in highest demand. But their profile of the unsub changes when they find one of the babies. They also determine what specifically the unsub is looking for in the babies he keeps. On this case, Hotch is especially hard on Morgan, seemingly having to do with a private meeting between Hotch and Section Chief Strauss.
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Morgan is stepping tentatively into his new role as Chief of the BAU, a role he has agreed to take temporarily in Hotch's forced removal from that position by Section Chief Strauss. Morgan has decided to relinquish the position and hand it back to Hotch after George Foyet, aka the Boston Reaper, is caught, Foyet who is still foremost on Hotch's mind. Rossi is concerned about this change of the guard if only because he sees Morgan as a natural leader who may not want to give up the authority after a taste of it. Regardless, J.J. and Garcia take some measures to make Morgan feel more welcome in the position. The first case the team work on under Morgan's leadership is in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where three people in two separate incidents have been murdered, the only connection between the two incidents being that the victims' eyes were removed. The victimologies and the M.O. of the killings were totally different. It isn't until there are more victims that the BAU begin to understand the importance of how the eyeballs are removed from the bodies, and piece together a connection to the first victim, whose eyes were removed in a different way. Meanwhile, against Garcia's advice, Morgan begins a personal relationship with Tamara Barnes, the family member of a victim from a recent case. Morgan does not tell Garcia about this fact of his personal life.
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Tara Ferris is the third and latest female victim killed in two weeks in the Los Angeles, California area where the victims are beaten by blunt force trauma to head, not sexually assaulted, but drained of their blood. By the puncture wounds on the neck and the saliva found near the puncture wounds, the killer is mimicking a vampire. The BAU discover that a connection between all the victims is their worship of a goth/vampire singer named Paul Davies, whose stage name is Dante. A message scrawled on Tara's arm also points to a connection to Dante. Although a suspect since a victim's car is found at his home, Dante asserts that his public persona is solely an act and that he has disdain for people who worship his music. After interviewing him, the BAU learn that he doesn't quite fit the profile of the killer. The BAU also discover that part of their profile of the unsub is incorrect when they receive lab results of the saliva.
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In Hampton, Virginia, the Downey family is murdered and buried in their backyard while the family patriarch, army Captain Joseph Downey, is deployed in Iraq. A similar mass murder of a military family while the father was on military deployment occurred a year earlier. Prints lifted at the murder scenes indicate that it is the same unsub. The unsub appears to be copying the murders committed by Karl Arnold aka The Fox. The BAU worked on the case of The Fox four years earlier. The unsub has tried to contact The Fox in prison. Hotch and Prentiss interview The Fox to try and understand his motivation so as to understand the unsub. Based on some information received from The Fox and by the way the bodies are laid out in their grave, the BAU have a clearer profile of the unsub, who is not a copycat of The Fox and who is not the person who tried to contact The Fox. The Fox has some parting words for Hotch about who tried to contact him.
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Strauss is interviewing each member of the BAU individually in the aftermath of what she refers to as a "bloodbath". In the interviews, she is leading the questions toward the fact that this incident, which hopefully will never happen again, was instigated, caused and/or directed by Hotch. There is an inference that whatever has happened involved George Foyet aka the Boston Reaper, and perhaps Haley and Jack, who were in protective custody because of the implied threat on their lives by Foyet. This most recent round of worries for the BAU concerning Foyet are because they found out that Foyet was in contact with Karl Arnold aka The Fox, and not the murderer of the military families. In flashbacks, the recent cat and mouse game between Foyet and the BAU leading to the bloodbath is played out and the role that Haley and Jack play in Foyet's game is revealed.
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The BAU must profile a criminal's past in order to catch him after he escapes from custody and begins a killing spree.
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Agent Goldman with the White Collar Division brings a case to the BAU. A con man who he has been following for five years is suspected to have killed Carla Marshall in Miami, Florida. Carla had been in contact with Goldman about the con man, hence the supposed connection to him as her murderer. If the con man is indeed the unsub, Carla is the first known person he would have killed of those he conned. His past cons generally involved using his charm and good looks to gain the trust of women. As the BAU review Goldman's files on the unsub, they find a change in his general lifestyle pattern from his early cons to the most recent. In reviewing the victim's background as well as the unsub's home life, the BAU believe they have a way to track him down. They have to work fast as they also believe that his mental state is devolving where he is becoming increasingly violent and murderous the closer anyone gets to discovering his fraudulent behavior.
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A serial killer who targets random victims in highly visible places to create a sense of public fear is the subject of a BAU investigation.
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The BAU's latest case brings a face familiar to J.J. into their office. The familiar face is that of Sarah Hillridge, whose son Charlie was abducted eight years ago when he was eight. Sarah, who believes Charlie is still alive, comes to see J.J. anytime the BAU work on a child abduction case, the latest abducted child being eight year old Aimee Lynch. However J.J. cannot deny that Aimee's abduction bears a striking similarity to Charlie's: the abductions took place in northeast Virginia, the parents were distracted from their own child upon hearing another mother yelling for her own missing child, and the children were abducted in an extremely public location. Upon further investigation, Garcia discovers twelve children in total, all abducted within Virginia in the last ten years, all around the same age, none of the bodies ever found. The BAU come up with a profile of unsubs who could easily keep a lot of children without seeming unusual, and what agencies would have contact with such families.
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The Highway Serial Killer Database exists so that information can be collated for serial murders that would not otherwise be connected due to different police jurisdictions. In reviewing the database, the BAU determine that a serial killer has killed five women thus far, the bodies found hundreds of miles apart. However Reid determines that there is a geographical focus on Edgewood, New Mexico. Each woman was strangled, the bodies laid in a fetal position found in public location such as a ditch, and there is no sexual assault. The BAU determine that the unsub is trucker. The case takes a turn when a woman named Nancy Campbell is abducted in front of her teen-aged daughter, Courtenay, at a highway rest stop in Edgewood. Nancy does not fit the victimology, but her abduction clarifies to the BAU what the unsub is looking for in the abducted women and ultimately the reason for the abductions and eventual murders.
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In the Mexican border town of Terlingua, Texas, three decapitated heads are found outside the sheriff's office. One of those heads was a recent death, while the other two were killed some time ago, although the decapitations themselves conducted recently. The BAU's initial thoughts are that it has to do with the border drug trade, or that because the more decomposed heads displayed now, the drug trade issue is a red herring for unlawful immigration from Mexico. Indeed the three deaths are of John or Jane Doe's, fueling the BAU's speculation that they are unlawful immigrants from Mexico. Believing the murders drug related, the deputy sheriffs in Terlingua arrest Omar Morales, head of one of the local drug cartels. Recently arrived Sheriff Ruiz on the other hand is certain Morales is not guilty of these murders, and that the deaths have to do with her knowledge of known unlawful immigrants missing, the heads a sign for her to stop what has only been her limited investigation thus far. Based on physical evidence of the heads and an interview with Morales, the BAU come up with a profile. But it isn't until J.J. divulges some information she overheard that the BAU connect the profile to the unsub.
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In Tallahassee, Florida, a man calls 911 to report his impending suicide. At the location where he is found dead, the authorities find a wall plastered with photos and associated news clippings of women that have been killed throughout the country over the past ten years. He has left a journal recounting the murders of these women. Images of those women, complete with first name and year of death, are tattooed on his body. The only person with a photo that does not have an associated tattoo is Rebecca Daniels, who has been missing for three weeks. The BAU believe she may still be alive because of the tattoo issue. The team look for clues in the nature of the tattoos and in the journal to understand how Rebecca may still be alive when her probable prime captor has just killed himself.
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The BAU head to the small fishing town of Franklin, Alaska - population 1,500 - where there have been three murders in the span of a week. These three murders are the first ever in the town. On the surface, there is no similarity in either victimology or modus operandi, although each successive murder is becoming more confident in its approach. The case is made all the more difficult because everyone in town knows everyone's business, meaning that everyone is connected in some manner and if there is even the suspicion of someone being the killer, vigilante-ism could come into play. The key suspect is Joshua Beardsley, who was born and raised in Franklin, moved away to go the school and returned to town two weeks ago to help his recently widowed mother operate the town's only hotel/tavern. But when another person is murdered, the BAU not only believe they have a better profile and an understanding of why the victims were targeted, but that Joshua is the key to tracking the unsub. This case has a profound effect on Garcia, who sees more than she wants.
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Three young women have gone missing from Boise, Idaho in the last six months, each abducted from their home without signs of forced entry. Through Garcia, the BAU learn that the unsub is tracking these women through social networking sites, and that the unsub, using those sites to tell the victims' friends that "they are on vacation". The BAU assume the unsub has already murdered his victims. The BAU find out how the unsub manages to get into the houses when they find evidence in the houses. They also quickly learn that the unsub is using the Internet for more than just tracking his victims. When Reid figures out the similar physical characteristics of the victims, the team are able to put together a profile. As the BAU get closer to figuring out who the unsub is and his next potential victim, he becomes more brazen by taunting the BAU who he knows is watching him. It becomes a war between computer expert Garcia against the unsub computer expert.
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In two separate incidents, an unsub has raped and/or killed in Los Angeles, California. The first victims, two females, were raped, tortured then killed in the downtown area. Three days later in the suburbs, a woman, in her home, was raped repeatedly in front of her husband, the latter who was ultimately killed. The wife was purposefully kept alive. These incidents have taken place in the area of the city where the rolling blackouts have occurred that evening, the blackouts to combat the excessive power use due to the heatwave. Garcia determines that the unsub has been at work for at least twenty-six years - raping and murdering during blackouts - the individual incidents never having been connected since he has never killed in the same city consecutively until now. In speaking to the detectives in charge, the BAU make a connection to one of the first killings as the reason the unsub has returned to Los Angeles. From there, the BAU think they know who the next target will be. They have to rush to reach the target before the unsub does.
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Morgan and Det. Matt Spicer are unable to reach Spicer's daughter, Ellie Spicer, before she is kidnapped by the unsub, who has been raping and killing during blackouts for twenty-six years. In the kidnapping process, Morgan and Spicer's sister, Kristin, are beaten, and Spicer himself killed. Spicer's parents were the unsub's first victims twenty-six years ago. Ellie, who quickly understands her role in the unsub's twisted fantasy, ends up being more resilient than the unsub first believed. Meanwhile, the BAU, with information from Kristin, believe they understand why the unsub kidnapped Ellie and has probably kept her alive. The BAU also believe they have a means to at least contact the unsub. In doing so, an uncomfortable J.J. is requested to do some work outside of her responsibility. Reid, in the meantime, finds an earlier murder which he believes is also connected to the unsub, this information which could lead to figuring out his identity. J.J. uses this information in her monologue to the unsub. And capturing the unsub becomes a personal vendetta for Morgan.
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JJ has been offered a major job promotion as liaison for the Department of Defense, which she not only turned down twice but about which didn't even tell Hotch, who only finds out when Strauss tells him and asks JJ to reconsider. Ultimately, the decision may not rest with JJ. Meanwhile, the team heads to Atlantic Beach, Maryland where nineteen year old Kate Joyce has been missing for three days. She had been in Atlantic Beach on vacation for a week before her disappearance. She was last seen in a bar with two young men, longtime friends, the subservient James Barrett and the dominant Sydney Pearson, who admitted they both had consensual sex with her that evening, but who also stated they dropped her off at her hotel after the fact that evening. The team believe the two, who are in custody, had something to do with her disappearance in part as they have a long criminal past despite being only twenty. As the team question the two individually with time running out on how long they can hold them without charge, JJ deals with Kate's over protective parents, Jeff and Patty Joyce, who refuse to leave the police station until either Kate is found or justice on the two is served.
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The team is still adjusting to the loss of JJ from the unit, she who was transferred to the Department of Defense against her own wishes. The BAU's next case takes them to Bristol, Virginia, where young blond women are abducted from highly public locations. They are tortured and sodomized before being murdered by electrocution, their bodies dumped in a common location. They were forced to telephone a loved one to tell them of their impending death. This case is reminiscent of a sixteen year old cold case that Rossi worked on, the unsub of the cold case nicknamed the Butcher, who killed over a ten year period in the Bristol area. The primary difference between this new case and that of the Butcher is that the Butcher's victims were forced to say in their telephone calls that they enjoyed it. The BAU believe these new killings are the work of copycats, as they know there are two unsubs. Two of the major reasons they believe so is that the Butcher's profile had him as a narcissist who would not work with another, and had him as a then middle aged man who could now not physically abduct the young women due to his advanced age. But Rossi's gut feeling tells him that the Butcher is involved in these new killings. Rossi has to figure out how to reconcile the two sets of profiles.
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The BAU travel to Akron, Ohio, where two sets of married couples have been murdered in the span of a week. The husbands, who had Viagra in their system but who were not prescribed the drug, were shot while the wives were stabbed. The couples were forced to have sex with the husband wearing a condom, before they were killed. In reviewing the crime scenes, Morgan and Prentiss determine that the unsub is not a sexual sadist as he was trying to set a romantic mood for the kills, and is compensating for a probable recent bout of impotence. In interviewing the victims' families, the team also determine that the husband is the key to the unsub's targets as stereotypical alpha male types. When the unsub hits a broader target, the team are only then able to figure out how the unsub is able to gain access to the victims without a struggle, and from where he has devolved. Meanwhile, Hotch is surprised by an applicant for the communications liaison job. Despite the applicant not being an obvious choice, Hotch gives the applicant a trial on this case with some surprising and not so surprising results.
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Two families consisting of a mother, father and two children are murdered in two consecutive days in the Iowa/Nebraska border area. The children are strangled, the mothers killed by blunt force trauma and the fathers stabbed multiple times. The father in the second set of murders was also eviscerated crudely postmortem, meaning that it was done not as torture but rather out of curiosity. The autopsies show that the mothers suffered the most pain in their deaths, making the BAU believe that the mothers are the key to the unsub's rage. In reviewing the crime scenes, the BAU come to the realization that the unsub was known to the victims and that he is a minor. As the BAU determine more about the unsub, including that he is a ward with a criminal record, the unsub is dealing with his next target, the Riverton family, its mother, Nancy Riverton who does her best to temper the inner rage of the unsub. Evidence at one of the earlier crime scenes leads the BAU to come to understand where the unsub is heading which if they get there in time may save both Nancy Riverton and the unsub's ultimate target. Meanwhile, Morgan receives an unexpected visitor from Los Angeles. While working on the case in Iowa and Nebraska, Morgan has to figure out what to do with his guest, both in the short term and the long term.
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The BAU travel to Detroit, Michigan, where the fire department has noticed a three year trend of the three days leading up to Halloween where a victim each day has been burned alive in an abandoned building located somewhere in the Rivertown district of town. The unsub used gasoline as an accelerant. The victims are seemingly unconnected. The BAU believe the first victim may provide some clues as to why the unsub is committing these violent murders. Using the visual memory technique, Rossi, in interviewing Kierston Torrell, the wife of the latest victim, discovers some clues as to the unsub's identity. Cross checking those that volunteer for a community organization called Detroit's Finest, which has been monitoring arsons in relation to the historic pre-Halloween fire rituals, with those that work with fire of sort sort comes up with the unsub's identity and the fact that his victims were not chosen at random. They also determine that he has an ultimate target whose identity they have to find out solely from photographs they have of her.
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In separate incidents, three exotic dancers have been found dead in corn fields in Johnson County, Indiana. The women were abducted following their shift at work on a Friday night, and killed sometime at the end of the weekend on Sunday. The latest victim, Meredith Joy, had the DNA of two people under her fingernails, meaning that there are at least two unsubs. In reviewing the site where Meredith's body was found, Morgan and Rossi determine that there are probably three unsubs who are locals since they seem to know the area well. Another dancer, Stephanie Wilson, has just been determined missing, leaving the BAU less than two days to find the unsubs before she will be killed. As the BAU come up with profiles for the unsubs, Garcia finds an interesting connection of the case to the sheriff's office, Sheriff Salters with who the BAU have had a problematic relationship. Meanwhile, after the unsubs see reports of the murders on the television news, the true nature of their relationship is revealed.
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Twenty-something Kelly Landis, who has been missing for three days, is found dead in a back alley in Georgetown. Although the D.C. police don't connect her death to any other murders, they call in the BAU because of what was done to her: her lips were cut off. The unsub wants press on the murder as he sent a photograph of Kelly to one of the Georgetown area newspapers. The BAU believe the unsub to be local and that the police have already interviewed him. Based on finding a homeless man living at the crime scene, they determine that the unsub is the man who reported Kelly's murder and who at the time was masquerading as a homeless man. Text found at the crime scene which matches text found on a piece of paper stuffed down Kelly's throat, the three day time frame and the way Kelly was made up when she was found suggest that the unsub is working in some 1950's movie or stage play three act scenario. Another young woman, Penny Hanley, is also determined to be missing and based on their information, the BAU and D.C. police have only one more day to find the unsub before Penny will be killed. Meanwhile, Garcia inadvertently exposes a little of her personal life to the team, a part which she wanted kept to herself. Despite Garcia's wishes, Hotch uses this part of her life to try and flush out the unsub.
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The dead body of ten year old Daniel Lanham is found buried in Harwood State Park in Pennsylvania. Missing since November when he and his father, Joseph Lanham, were camping, Daniel was kept alive over the winter before being killed in March. Experienced hiker and camper Joseph was and is a suspect, most notably now since he purportedly stopped looking for Daniel around the time he was killed. Reviewing the crime scene, the BAU find another dead body of a boy around Daniel's age, who also was killed months after his abduction. Reid suspects that the serial killer would have murdered more boys over several years over the entire course of the Appalachian Trail, and that he lately has confined himself to a smaller portion of the trail due either to his age or a physical disability which is making him less mobile. The unsub is working like an animal in the woods, hibernating with the boys over the winter before disposing of them. Meanwhile, adolescent brother and sister Robert and Ana Brooks, camping with their parents, are abducted in the same area. The BAU have to work fast since Ana was probably abducted out of circumstance of being with Robert rather than a want of the unsub. Ana's abduction means the unsub may have to improvise off his plan in dealing with an unwanted captive, and hopefully slip up in doing so. Joseph, knowing the area well, wants to assist in the investigation.
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The BAU searches inside a gated New Mexico community for a killer targeting women, and Hotchner looks to an FBI cadet with a unique past for help with the investigation.
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Hotch is off on leave, leaving Rossi in charge. Hotch has provided an electronic OK for Ashley Seaver to complete her remedial training at the BAU, she who wants to atone for the mistake she made in the strangled women case in New Mexico. With support from Prentiss who would act as Seaver's agent supervisor, Rossi provides his reluctant OK. Meanwhile, the parole board has asked the BAU to do a risk assessment on Don Sanderson, who has served his minimum twenty-five years of a life sentence for killing his wife and daughter. A former medical resident, Sanderson has always professed his innocence, telling a story of two men and a woman who he saw commit the murders. Rossi delegates the task of the risk assessment to Morgan, who sees in Sanderson a man who has lived solely for the sake of his now grown son, Joshua, and being able to tell him what he knows to be the truth. Morgan provides his approval for Sanderson's parole. Two days after his release, Sanderson is charged with the murder of Tom Wittman, who Sanderson admits to killing, but in self-defense. Garcia can't find any connection between Sanderson and Wittman prior to this altercation. To clear Morgan's good name, the BAU need to delve into the original murders of Sanderson's wife and daughter to find why Sanderson purposefully went to see Wittman.
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As the BAU travels to Miami to investigate a series of bizarre, ritualistic murders, Reid suffers a series of blinding headaches and hallucinations that leave him concerned for his health.
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The BAU hits the road to track down a pair of young lovers on an interstate murder spree. Also, Prentiss hears frightening news from her former boss at Interpol.
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The BAU travels to Los Angeles to investigate unusual murders throughout the city. Also, more of Prentiss' mysterious past comes to light.
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The BAU is called to upstate New York to investigate mysterious disappearances. Also, Prentiss gets some disturbing news about one of her former Interpol colleagues.
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Reid makes a connection with an autistic child that could assist the BAU in finding the boy's missing parents. Also, Prentiss enlists two former Interpol colleagues in hunting an old nemesis.
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After a series of suspicious murders occur, Prentiss suspects her old Interpol nemesis, making her fear for the safety of her BAU team as he closes in on her.
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Prentiss is ready to confront her nemesis, Ian Doyle, once and for all. Meanwhile, the BAU calls upon JJ to help them find Prentiss and capture Doyle before it's too late.
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The BAU are still mourning Prentiss' death, but celebrate Seaver's graduation. As all on the team, including Seaver, realize that she is not a replacement for Prentiss, Hotch is on the search for another profiler as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, they travel to Portland, Oregon, where two murders have happened. The victimology is different, with the similarities between the deaths being the victim first being bludgeoned then stabbed multiple times. The nature of the stab wounds and the petty theft involved with the murders make the team believe they are dealing with a gang. But when they view the site of one of the murders, Hotch believes that they are dealing with only one unsub - a schizophrenic - which is confirmed by other evidence at other sites. With subsequent similar murders, the team learns more about the unsub, which includes religious exorcisms. This case is especially difficult on Reid, who sees some similarities of the unsub in himself.
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Hotch is assigned as the team's grief assessor in Prentiss' death. A common theme among some on the team is who is acting as his grief assessor. Meanwhile, the team travels to Tampa, Florida, where a woman that morning entered a gun shop and shot four dead. When they arrive at the gun shop, the team realize that she brought her own ammunition into the shop and used one of the shop's own guns as the weapon. That shooting and two subsequent events show the BAU that she has some issue with authority. As they track her movement through Tampa, they also realize that she is not on the run but has a specific target that she needs to get to on this specific day. They have to figure out who that target is and the significance of the date in her life.
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The team heads to San Diego, California where three murders have occurred in five days. The unrelated victims were each brunette, female, college students (in different institutions) majoring in education or some aspect of child care, and were murdered in their off campus home. Each murder, caused by multiple stab wounds, was successively more violent. Because of the unpredictable nature of the victims' schedules, the team realize that the victims were targeted and stalked. They also come to understand that the victims are surrogates for who will be the unsub's ultimate target. During the investigation, more murders occur with slightly different M.O.'s where the child care issue becomes more a central theme and a key piece for the team to find the murderer before he kills again and before he gets to his final target. Meanwhile, Strauss reviews Hotch's grief assessments of the team. The scrutiny unnerves all on the team, but Strauss admits the reason for the scrutiny to Hotch.
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The BAU is called to a North Carolina mountain town after a woman is found badly injured and another is missing, and they discover that these two are not the only victims.
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The teams heads to Jacksonville, Florida after a pumping crew discovers a mass grave off shore. From the several skeletal remains, Reid is able to determine that there is no biological commonality to the victims, they crossing several age categories, ethnicities, and pre-death health conditions. He is also able to determine that the unsub is killing on average once a year and that he has a professional fisherman background from the knife skills used on the bodies. The team decides to go public and ask for those with missing loved ones to provide some background as to the circumstance of the missing person and some DNA to match to any of the found bodies. When they are able to identify some of the bodies, they do start to find some common aspects specifically to the stories of why they went missing. Identifying the latest target may lead them to the unsub. This case is especially difficult for Morgan, whose missing cousin Cindy may be one of the victims.
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Garcia and Kevin recall the first time they met -- in the office, of course. Garcia, however, is fretting over a work-related voice mail that might be "life altering." Indeed, the rest of the team notes that Hotch hasn't called a meeting this early in the morning in years. Turns out that the FBI is facing budget issues and encouraging employees to consider other options. "All I ask is that if you are contacted by another division, you let me know," Hotch says. He then gets a cell-phone call: a possible serial killer is loose.CUT to the scene of a car crash where the driver has died and two bodies have been found in the trunk. Both victims -- and male and female in their 20s -- are wearing shorts and tank tops. Fingerprints reveal that the two victims have been missing for months. "Why kill them now?" Derek wonders. Good question. He then notices that there is mud in the female victim's hair as well as on the tires. "Let's find out where it has rained in the last 48 hours," Derek says. Meanwhile, Hotch is visited by Andi Swan, head of the Domestic Trafficking Task Force. She explains that she has been tracking a group suspected of luring disaffected college kids and submitting them to beatings and other abuse by high-paying customers. Apparently, a few of her agents are undercover.CUT to the car-crash scene, where Rossi and Derek examine the wrecked car. Garcia calls. She is suddenly upset by being surrounded by death and "sickos." Could she be considering leaving the BAU? Back at headquarters, Swan and Hotch theorize that the customers of the human trafficking ring might be becoming more and more depraved, demanding services beyond sex. Swan then gets a call: A young undercover agent has missed her has two check ins. Something is wrong. Hotch and Swan head to the missing agent's home -- and find missing-person flyers of the victims with cryptic notes written on them. "She was onto something," Swan notes.Later, Garcia narrows down the gas stations that the original wrecked car might have visited to one (based on the gas remaining in the tank and the coffee found in the car). Derek visits that station and examines the security tapes. They spot the car and notice that the driver used a pay phone. Garcia tracks calls from said phone to yet another nearby pay phone. "These guys covered their tracks," Derek notes. On the other hand, it indicates that the base of operations might be in the vicinity. CUT to headquarters, where Rossi tells the teams to look for a "secluded spot in rural Virginia." "That shouldn't be hard to find," he cracks. Nobody laughs.Hotch wonders who the leader of the group might be. We then CUT to an undisclosed underground facility, where it's revealed that a young woman is running the group. Back at HQ, the team discovers that many of the missing persons suspected of being taken by the group had frequented nightclubs owned, at least in part, by the same person. That same person also owns a factory "in the middle of nowhere" in Virginia. That factory is close to the gas station that Derek visited. Bingo. At the same time, the group leader poses as a captive and talks to undercover agent Renee. It soon becomes clear that Renee is "some kind of cop." The leader suddenly realizes that the government is onto her.The leader takes Renee to the rest of the group, introducing her as a "special guest." "You're sick," Renee mutters. "You're gonna lose." In the meantime, the BAU team SPEEDS to the factory. A firefight erupts and the leader's main henchman goes down in a heap. Derek spies scantily clad coeds locked in cages when he is suddenly attacked. Rossi saves him, pointing a gun at the muscular attacker. Hotch and Swan then enter ... and find Renee badly cut, but alive. Later, the team loads Renee into an ambulance. "She'll live," Swan says. Just then, an SUV comes TEARING through the crime scene. It's driven by the leader, who pretends to be one of the escaped victims."I just don't want to be strapped down again," she says. Rossi immediately suspects something -- and with good reason. The leader pulls a gun and is about to shoot Rossi when -- BAM! -- Derek SHOOTS and kills the young woman. Case closed. But not the episode. Back at the BAU offices, Kevin suggests living off the grid with Garcia. "I'm serious," he says. "Think about it." Hotch then suggests that the team go home and come in late the next morning. Rossi returns to his office to find J.J. waiting. "I'm coming back," J.J. says.
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The BAU team is at a crossroads as they are questioned by a Senate Committee for their retaliatory actions in the wake of Prentiss' loss, but an unexpected familiar face could help them win their case and keep the team together.
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The BAU team searches rural Oklahoma when women are being found murdered after being robbed of one of their five senses. Also, JJ and Prentiss get the cold shoulder from Reid as he deals with their deception about Prentiss' presumed death.
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The BAU team investigates a mass murder at an Internet security company in Charlottesville, Va., but clues reveal it is not a typical serial killer at work. Also, Prentiss must complete recertification training under Morgan's watchful eye.
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Survivors of a Boise high school massacre return to remember the event 10 years later, but the BAU team is called in when a new killer with a similar style targets the survivors. Also, Hotch is worried that his son, Jack, may be a victim of school bullying.
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The BAU team investigates the abductions of young children with troubled mothers in St. Louis. Also, Rossi reconnects with his first wife who has shocking news for him.
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The BAU search California's Angeles National Forest after a number of bodies mysteriously turn up in the mountain lakes there. Also, Rossi struggles with an agonizing decision regarding his ex-wife.
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When a series of tornadoes hits Kansas, the BAU is called in to investigate bodies of young boys that turn up in the aftermath of the storms. Also, work pressures cause tension on JJ's home front.
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The BAU is called to Somerville Academy, a military boys' school, when five students are found dead from hanging while on an unsupervised survival outing in the woods. The school's administration believes it to be a mass suicide as there is a supposed simple suicide note at the scene, with the words "we're sorry". These deaths follow a suicide hanging of another underclassman, Bailey Shelton, two weeks earlier. The one student tying to two sets of deaths together is Josh Redding, who is the missing sixth member of the survival outing, and in whose room Bailey was found hanging. As Somerville, which has worked on tradition and thus has bucked any modern technological conveniences, has ties to highers-up in the organization, Strauss accompanies the team to ensure both that the investigation goes smoothly and that there is as little media attention as possible. They initially believe that Josh reneged on the suicide pact, but then come to the conclusion that he killed the five other boys. The team faces obstacles in discovering information because of the lack of an electronic trail as well as an official unofficial code of silence both among the administration, led by the thirty year head of the academy, Colonel Ron Massey, and within the ranks of the students to protect the good name of the school at all cost. Slowly, the BAU discover that hierarchy of power, both among the administration and the students, may have led to the deaths. They have to find Josh before others who may be out to get him find him first. Meanwhile, an uncharacteristic action by Strauss while out in the field threatens the integrity of the investigation.
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The BAU is called to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where two men are violently bludgeoned to death within minutes of each other one evening near a hospital. The way the dead bodies are positioned shows that the unsub is remorseful about his act. They know that the unsub needs to be a physically strong man to be able to exact such killings on other physically strong men. Subsequent victims are found to be beaten solely by the unsub's hands, and that the unsub is no longer showing that remorse, which to the team indicates that he will probably strike again for his new pleasure of blood lust. The nature of the beatings also shows someone who is knowledgeable about fighting, such as a boxer. Hence the team digs into the world of the Philadelphia boxing scene trying to find some connection to the location of the dead body sites near the hospital. Meanwhile, Hotch contemplates going on his first date since Meredith's death.
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The BAU is called to the San Francisco Bay area when a young couple named David Atley and Nicole Puli are found shot to death, with evidence pointing to the unsub being the Zodiac Killer, who has not been heard from since 1974. The local police detective leading the investigation believes it to be the work of the real Zodiac Killer, but Hotch, Rossi and Reid believe that it is not, especially since there has been no evolution in the nature of these latest killings since those by the real Zodiac Killer. The team nonetheless follow leads back to the original investigation, including tracking those who were involved in that investigation as well as anyone who either wrote about it or tracked the investigation. They are hindered in the investigation by an anxious and sometime media hungry public who want to cash in on the Zodiac Killer's notoriety. They are also helped and hindered when they learn the unsub has a genius IQ, he who may understand the BAU's tactics. As the BAU goes through their investigation, the unsub takes his childhood best friend on an unwanted trip down memory lane, which could be his and that best friend's downfall. Meanwhile, Reid, on meeting a fellow prodigy at a violent crimes seminar, questions whether he has achieved enough in life - which includes choosing to be an FBI agent - as he hits the milestone age of thirty.
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The BAU is called to Houston, Texas when a past masked serial rapist coined the Piano Man - so named because of the piano wire he used to bind his victims - starts to re-offend, with his targets being his past victims. His crimes have since evolved where one of the victims, Vanessa Campbell, is abducted from her home - something the unsub had never done before - which they believe is meant to show his victims that they are safe nowhere from his clutches. He used drugs mimicking a date rape drug to knock the victims unconscious before committing his rapes. With news of the new offenses hitting the media, many of the Piano Man's past victims resurface, telling that they were indeed victimized recently by him again. Most of the women tell similar stories of the second rape - being hyper-vigilant about never leaving their drinking glass unattended, and now having a 1980's pop piano ballad being a trigger to horrific memories of that rape - while one, Diana Mitchell, tells a completely different story. During their interview of the women, Prentiss and JJ discover the delivery method of the drug into their system. As the team follows who they believe to be the unsub, one of the women who decided not to contact the authorities tracks a different person who she believes is the person who raped her, and decides to enact her own vigilante justice. Could she or the BAU be wrong? Meanwhile, Hotch, after reviewing the notes from Prentiss' mandatory in-house therapy sessions, makes one request of her with regard to her re-entry into the unit.
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Early on a Sunday morning, a just woken up and extremely hung over Garcia is lamenting the fact of the huge argument she and Kevin had the previous night. Not one to face confrontation head on, she is not looking forward to her first post-fight talk with Kevin, which will happen sooner than later as she can hear that he will soon be finished his shower. That talk will be complicated by the person knocking on her front door. Meanwhile, the team is called to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Danny Savino, a casino floor manager, was found dead in his office by a severe beating. He had turned the surveillance video in his office off, so there is no video of the unsub. The reason the BAU is called is that Savino has deep ties to the mob, and that eight $1 bills were found scattered around an "eight" playing card on his body, which indicates some sort of ritual to the killing. On looking into Savino's background, the BAU learns that he acted as a loan shark to casino patrons on the side, meaning that one of the several thousand people who have gambled in the casino are potential suspects. As more and more victims emerge, the team recognizes that the killings are related to some system the unsub feels is required in his gambling addiction, which narrows the search geographically to a high stakes poker game at a high end exclusive casino. It isn't until Rossi discovers the one victim that doesn't fit the rest that they discover who the unsub is and where he is headed.
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The BAU is called to the Los Angeles area as three men were found dead in a lifeguard station closed for the season. Two were wrapped in plastic. All died a from a single gunshot wound to the head and were castrated postmortem. All three were not local, and had differing physical characteristics, differing socioeconomic backgrounds and differing sexual orientations. Other aspects of the deaths indicate that the unsub knew his victims. As subsequent victims emerge, the team learns that all were going through some sort of personal loss, which is why they were targeted since the unsub too probably experienced that same loss. The victims' missing vehicles, a female victim whose method of death was dissimilar to the males, toxicology reports and pin-pointing the common loss between all bring the team closer to finding the unsub, and who his ultimate targets are. Meanwhile, Rossi vows to complete this investigation by week's end so that Hotch can go on his first date since Meredith's death.
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The BAU is called to San Bernardino, California where two home invasions have occurred within four days of each other, the two taking place within one block of each other. In both cases, the homes belonged to Caucasian families, in both cases the father had a gun and weapons training, and in both cases all family members were killed, all by gunshot. At each scene was also one deceased member from among the intruders, both black males. While one of those black deceased was known to be involved in gang activity, the other was seemingly a hard working model citizen, who was working two jobs to put himself through school. As well, both deceased black males had massive doses of oxycodone in their system. These murders are being used as political fodder within the current San Bernardino mayoral race, with Caucasian candidate Clark Preston using inflammatory wording to describe the ensuing race wars from these home invasions between the whites and "the browns". The BAU have to figure out if ...
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The BAU is called to Atlanta, Georgia to investigate the deaths of two prostitutes. Each victim was stabbed multiple times - indicating anger and strength - with the dead bodies placed carefully in different parks in the outskirts of town. The differences in the kill and the body placement indicate that there are possibly two unsubs, one dominant and one submissive who exist in a co-dependent relationship. In addition, $250 was found on each victim, meaning that theft was not a motive, and the victims were not sexually violated, meaning that sex was either not a motivation or that the angry killer is impotent. Similar bruising on the victims' thighs and a subsequent victim who is somewhat outside the victimology of the initial two dead lead the team to understand with who they are dealing as the unsubs. Meanwhile, Hotch is hoping that his participation the upcoming FBI Triathlon will mark a milestone not associated with the race itself. And Prentiss, Garcia and JJ plan on a girls' night out, which is difficult to arrange for a forgetful one.
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The BAU is called to Seattle, Washington, where two couples have been murdered execution style in their respective homes. There is no sign of forced entry in either case, there was no sexual assault, and the gunshot wounds were muffled by the use of a pillow. By the time the team reaches Seattle, a third couple has been murdered with the same MO. Each couple were upstanding citizens and community minded. The team learns that a common link between all three is that each belonged to the emergency foster parent list. The team surmises that the female unsub has access to that foster parent list, and has either lost a child herself or is infertile and wants a child. They also surmise that she is killing in lieu of a child not being in the home at the time of entry into the home. But when the team learns that the same child was recently in each home, they know that the unsub is the birth mother. When they find out her identity, they learn that her mission is not one solely of getting back the child but also the baby's father. Meanwhile, Garcia notices that Kevin and Morgan are having a clandestine conversation, which worries her because the two never talk to each other, nor will they disclose the nature of their conversation. Garcia believes the worse, which to most others would be the best.
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A Latino boy, somewhere in his early to mid teens, is found wandering in the middle of the desert outside of Crawford, Arizona. He had obviously escaped from some sort of extended captivity, as he has ankle chain scars, is extremely emaciated from lack of nourishment, light and mobility, and he has cuts on the bottom of his feet from running through the nearby cactus field. Getting any information from him or examining him proves to be difficult as he has an extreme case of conditioned emotional response, which is resulting in him hiding in the dark, not speaking and not wanting any human contact. An emotional Morgan uses information from his own troubled background to try and get through to the boy. There is some sense of urgency to the case as Billy Henderson, an overly cautious boy from a stable family, has just gone missing from his home in nearby Flagstaff and is presumed the unsub's latest victim. Meanwhile, the emaciated boy's story played on the local news brings up a thirty ...
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Seventeen days after she goes missing, thirty-eight year old Emma Baker, a Medford, Oregon math teacher, is found dead two hundred miles away in Salem in St. Baldwin's Psychiatric Hospital, an abandoned institution where the criminally insane were housed. She was bound to a hospital bed, dressed in Renaissance type clothing, and her face was powdered white. The autopsy reveals that she died of nicotine poisoning, the substance which was absorbed through her skin from her dress being soaked in a nicotine-based liquid. The autopsy also shows that her legs were submerged in water for a long period of time prior to death. At the site, Emily finds a list of women's names, including "Emma", next to what numbers which Reid determines have some Satanic connection. When a second victim is discovered - one of the names on the list - the body site leads the team to believing there is a connection between the Renaissance costuming and a nearby theater company performing Shakespeare. They have to ...
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Moments after serial killer Rod Garrett is executed by firing squad at Gunter State Prison, another person kills in Enid, Oklahoma where the prison is located. The victimology and M.O. are the same as in Garrett's killings - female, young, blonde, pretty, and killed with a single stab through the heart using an ice pick. By the time the BAU arrive on the scene hours later, the unsub has killed a second victim - same victimology, same M.O. Garrett is survived by his wife, Helen Garrett, who stood by her husband's side through his incarceration, since he stood by her side when she went through a life threatening illness years prior. When the unsub kills a third victim, the team notices slight differences between Garrett's killings and the latest killings, as well as there being a regulated time schedule to the recent murders. Those differences, information from Helen about herself and about fans of her husband's, and the geography of the latest killings provide clues as to the unsub's identity and his motivations for following in Garrett's footsteps. Meanwhile, Prentiss awaits news about an offer she placed on a house, which she seems nervous about getting.
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As a favor owed, Rossi presents a lecture to a university undergraduate class, the lecture at which the entire team participates to support their respected colleague. Their presentation, which provides the basics of profiling, uses one of their cases as its centerpiece. The case, which so far spans twenty years since 1992, is of perhaps the most prolific serial killer they have ever tracked, he who killed up and down the west coast of the United States. The presentation makes the team not only reminisce about the case itself, but how the current team members first met each other and worked on this case. Through the process of preparing for, delivering and following-up on the lecture, Rossi is a little preoccupied on this specific day - his birthday - for the annual ritual he needs to attend to in relation to the case itself.
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It's a lazy Saturday morning, a day off for the BAU. Beth has come over to Hotch's house to spend the day with him and Jack. JJ is playing with Henry while Will goes off to work. Morgan is going through Prentiss' just purchased house with her, the purchase pending the inspection which she seems to want to go badly as she seems to have buyer's remorse. Reid is Garcia's unofficial date to a sci-fi convention since she and Kevin split over his planned marriage proposal. And Rossi is heading home to bed after an all night cigar aficionado event... or so he says to Garcia and Reid, who he runs into. Their collective quiet is shattered when they are called to a botched bank robbery attempt, at which Will and his partner are one of the first on the scene. The reason the team is called in is that this robbery is the latest in a string committed by a group calling themselves the Face Cards, since the three robbers wear a mask of a playing card king, queen and jack respectively. At each of the seven robberies thus far, they have been unidentifiable, and they have killed one person by a gunshot to the abdomen, which the police up to this point considered secondary to the robberies themselves. The three are holed up inside the bank with several hostages, they've killed their trademark one person, they have no way out and the "jack" has a serious gunshot wound inflicted by Will upon his arrival. There is a stated hierarchy within the group, with the "king" the leader. Using recognition software, Garcia is able to identify the two males as brothers Chris and Oliver Stratton, low level criminals. Even after she takes her mask off and plays to the the surveillance cameras, the "queen of diamonds" is unidentifiable. The career status of the brothers and the actions of the queen make the team come to the conclusion that she is really the leader and the one with a hidden agenda beyond her vanity and sadistic streak (as she is the one who has done all the killing thus far). They also learn that she is working with someone on the outside. They have to discover her identity, her motivation, and her outside accomplice before she kills more hostages.
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The team is still attending to the latest bank robbery committed by the Face Cards. Following an explosion inside the bank orchestrated by the queen of diamonds, the team, after assessing the human casualties, find that the two surviving robbers - the "king" Chris Stratton, and the still unidentifiable queen of diamonds - have managed to escape, this method which they surmise was the queen's plan all along, with her association with the Stratton brothers and the robberies only a front for her grander plans. They also discover that Will, who was inside the bank at the time of the explosion and who was shot by Chris prior to the explosion, is probably still alive and the sole remaining hostage of Chris and the queen. After viewing the surveillance footage of inside the bank prior to the explosion, the team find out that their earlier assessment of the queen having an accomplice on the outside was only half correct, as the accomplice was one of the supposed hostages inside the bank. The team now have to figure out what the next violent move of the queen and her accomplice will be, which a worried JJ knows will now involve Will and most-likely Henry. At the conclusion of the case, many within the team, based partly on the events of the case, make life altering decisions.
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The vacancy on the team due to Prentiss' departure is filled by agent and university linguistics professor Alex Blake, whose arrival affects Garcia and Strauss the most but for different reasons. The first case with this entire new team takes them to Abilene, Texas where Don Dell, a life sentence prisoner, escaped when, during his transfer to a hospital, an accident occurred. The driver and EMT died in the accident, and Don killed the guard, in the process sewing his mouth shut, which is a signature of a past killer never caught coined the Silencer. The last of the Silencer's three murders, all of middle aged brunette working class women and all which were committed in the middle of the night, occurred in 2004, when Don was incarcerated. During his entire incarceration, he never spoke a word. The team is pretty sure he is the Silencer and not a copycat. They have to figure out why silence is a key to his life, and decipher the cryptic messages he is leaving behind in the hopes of being able to determine his whereabouts before he kills again.
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The team is called to southwest California when two murders occur within three hours of each other in San Diego and Los Angeles. Each victim was chained to the back of a vehicle and dragged. The first was dragged post mortem, while the second was still alive when initially dragged, which shows either two unsubs or a quick escalation in the evolution of the single unsub's psyche. The victimology is different, the first a middle class wife and mother, the second an ex-con drug addict. These differences are brought together when a third murder occurs. Garcia determines that a common factor is a connection to the violent death of two specific children, and people associated with those children being brought together through an online support group. They quickly identify the two unsubs and their intended fourth target. However, the nature of that fourth intended victim has an impact on how this final encounter will play out.
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The team travels to Kansas City, Kansas where three members of the upper middle class Yamada family - its parents and teen-aged daughter - are found murdered and dumped at the side of the road, with its adolescent son, Scott Yamada, still missing. The deaths are meant to look like a murder/suicide committed by the father. The bodies were reported by a drifter who disappeared shortly thereafter. Another upper middle class Kansas City area family - the Acklins - who have a similar family make-up, have also just gone missing. There are no direct ties between the two families. Although father Mike Acklin was in the middle of a lawsuit, their family life seems as perfect as the Yamadas,... at least on the surface. The team discovers that both families went to great lengths to present themselves as being perfect to the public eye while being truly dysfunctional. Uncovering other similarities between the families and finding the drifter may lead to the team discovering motive, if the Acklins were abducted (or if Mike walked them all away because of the lawsuit) and if so how, and thus a hopefully still alive Scott and the entire Acklin family. Meanwhile, Hotch receives some news from Beth which may affect their relationship.
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The team is called to work on a case on the Mexico border, where two otherwise previously healthy men were found with their right leg amputated. One man did not survive the "operation" while the second, college student Tony Anders, only remembers bits and pieces in what he previously thought was a nightmare. The nature of both amputations show the team that the unsub has some knowledge of anatomy, but it is unclear if the unsub is/was a medical doctor. But when a third victim stumbles into a hospital, the team has a slightly clearer picture of the unsub's motives: he is trying to do live leg transplants, which is medically impossible, leading the team to believe the unsub has a God complex. They have to figure out how he is choosing his victims, and the reason he is trying to perfect this operation before they can find him himself. A secret relationship of Reid's provides a little assistance on the case, at the risk of the team discovering this relationship Reid wants kept secret and which he does not fully comprehend himself.
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In four separate incidents, four men have gone missing in La Grande, Oregon, having never made it to their intended destination while driving. The latest missing man, Terry Rodgers, doesn't quite fit the victimology of the first three, who are all middle class healthy family men and long time La Grande residents, whereas Rodgers is single, recently arrived in La Grande, living off the grid, and slightly out of shape, although he was trying to improve his health. His was the only vehicle found, off road, tire tracks from another vehicle found adjacent, and vomit presumed to be his next to his vehicle. Analysis of that vomit shows that it was Rodgers' and he had elevated levels of melatonin in his system - in other words, he was drugged. When a body of one of the men is found drowned, the team comes up with a profile of the unsub. But when another person goes missing who doesn't fit the victimology, that person who is eventually found, the team adds an extra dimension to their unsub profile. It isn't until the other three vehicles are found that the team believes they can narrow down their search and hopefully three still alive men.
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The BAU travels to Miami, Florida to investigate the beating and suffocation death of a young prostitute. Why the team is involved is because that murder follows similar type murders of puppies in the area, meaning that the unsub is evolving in his killings to humans and will most likely strike again. After the team's arrival, other similar murders occur, although each subsequent murder of prostitutes evolves in minor ways. Because of the locations of the bodies, the team believes they are dealing with a young person unsub, and because of the evolution of each subsequent murder, they also believe the unsub has an accomplice, an older person who acts as the mentor. What they also believe is that the young unsub will eventually feel like he can strike out on his own which means that there may be a stand off between the two, which in and of itself will not stop the killings. They have to figure out the true relationship between the two unsubs before any more dead bodies are found.
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The BAU travels to Santa Monica, California where three bodies, burned beyond recognition, in three separate incidents, have been found at the famous pier. After the autopsies, it is learned that the victims were stabbed to death, with the burning being a cover. When a fourth victim is discovered with a slightly different mode of death, they determine that the victims were all homeless who were trying to make a living on the street. In the process of the investigation, Rossi unexpectedly runs into an old colleague among the homeless. For Rossi, finding the unsub thus becomes as much part of his regular job as it is as a means of repaying his old colleague, who refuses Rossi's help to clean up his life.
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In the Washington DC area, a school bus transporting twenty-four high school students home after school is commandeered. The GPS on the bus is disabled, meaning that the bus disappears without a trace along with all its passengers, which not only includes the students, but also the driver, Roy Webster, and the bus monitor, Carol Roberts. Cell phone calls to the students are unanswered. The bus and the cell phones are eventually found, but the twenty-six are nowhere to be found. Initially the BAU believes the abduction has something to do with a previous altercation between Webster and the students, which resulted in the need for the bus monitor. However as the BAU gathers evidence on the case, Rossi notices that much of that evidence is remarkably similar to a video game called Gods of Combat, pointing to the suspicion that the unsubs are extreme gamers who are turning their love of the game into reality. So the team delves into the psyche of gamers and the codes by which they live in the hope of finding the bus passengers still alive.
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The BAU heads to Seattle, Washington, where two people have been stabbed to death in their respective apartments, each crime scene which had the blood scrolled message "hear your evil see your evil". The team discovers that both victims attended a presentation by motivational speaker Barry Flynn, and the second victim, Cynthia Strobl, was one of the privileged few in the audience who was singled out by Flynn for a one-on-one session following the public presentation. They also learn that Flynn himself has gone into hiding for the day, a ritual he has on show days, and not even his manager knows where he is. Flynn becomes a suspect, until evidence shows that he too has been targeted by someone, probably the unsub. They have be figure out the connection between the unsub and Flynn to hopefully find a still alive Flynn. Meanwhile, Garcia tries to figure out why Morgan refuses to go to a swanky British Embassy gathering which to honor his father's old partner.
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The BAU investigates a series of what look to be ritualistic murders in Arizona. In separate incidents, two men have been found dead, their bodies stuffed in a coffin-like box, their hair dyed black, and several of their joints dislocated. Each died from hanging, although the autopsies show that they were each hung several times. Connie Foster, the girlfriend of one of young adult male victims, is also missing and is assumed abducted by the unsub, who they believe is holding her and trying to find the perfect match for her in whatever context, hence the reason for the two deaths, as those victims weren't the right match. When a third male victim is discovered, they believe their religious ritual theory is strengthened since that third victim had, in addition, holes in his hands, like he had been crucified. But when a father and son go missing, Reid comes up with an alternate theory that the unsub may be putting on a specific kind of show, those he is holding captive his puppets in that show. Meanwhile, Reid and his telephone girlfriend decide to meet, about which he is apprehensive. His apprehension is balanced by concern over her fear that she is being stalked.
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The BAU travels to the southeastern US where two similar murders of two very different victims - beyond both being involved with extreme religions - have happened 100 miles apart in the matter of days. Both victims were killed by being chiseled over the head, were in a submissive position, had urban wildlife hair residue in their system, and had wood residue in their back teeth (signifying that they were biting on a stick). And at each crime scene, there was an infestation of maggots inconsistent both with the location and the amount of decomposition, meaning that the unsub brought the maggots to the kill sites. When a third victim is discovered upon the BAU's arrival, they further learn from witnesses that the unsub is calling his victims by a name other than their own, and that he is being quite open about his activities. The BAU notices that many of the murders are reminiscent of the serial killings of Russell Smith, who killed eight prostitutes in the area over a twenty year period, but who died twenty-five years ago. The BAU has to figure out the unsub's connection to Smith and tie in the significance of the maggots to find the unsub before he kills again. Meanwhile, the team learns some disturbing news about some of their past cases.
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Reid's girlfriend, Maeve, who he's never even met, has been kidnapped by her stalker. Reid is certain of this fact since the kidnapper used the code words that he and Maeve had set up. He asks his colleagues for help in finding her, they who cannot do so officially, but do so in their personal time. Reid himself is in an odd situation since he can be of most help because of the thousands of hours they had talked and really gotten to know each other, but in his emotional state of being in love with Maeve, he cannot focus. As such, he requires the assistance of one of his colleagues to filter through the information covered in their conversations with him. They quickly discover Maeve's full identity, and from such discover information about her which Reid did not know and perhaps did not want to know. They also quickly discover the identity of the kidnapper, whose profile was not their initial thought. They have to understand the true nature of the kidnapper's motivations to find a hopefully still alive Maeve. Reid may factor into that motivation.
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Two weeks after the fact, Reid is still reeling over the murder of his girlfriend, Dr. Maeve Donovan, by her stalker. His friends try to reach out to him, but he remains in seclusion, not talking to anyone. They have to figure out a way to bring him back to a state where he at least reaches out for help in dealing with his grief. As such, he doesn't accompany the team on their next case, that of two murders in San Francisco, California, where the two seemingly unrelated victims were found in public places, wrapped in clear plastic and their bodies drained of almost all their blood while they were still alive. Early in their investigation, they find two more victims who have one more similarity: their eyelids were removed. The combination of the eyelids and the body placement of all four victims leads the team to figure out what the unsub is doing with the blood. They still have to figure out why the blood is so important to the unsub to discover who he is before he kills again.
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The BAU travels to Austin, Texas where three separate murders have taken place, the victims being two young women, and one young man. Each was last seen at a large but different social gathering. All three victims were savagely beaten, however the two women were stripped naked, while the first victim, the male, was re-clothed after being beaten while naked. Upon further investigation, they learn the male victim was a closeted homosexual, leading the team to believe that the unsub is a repressed homosexual who murdered the female victims after not being able to perform sexually with them, and murdered the male victim after feeling guilt after having had sex with him. When a fourth victim, another male, is discovered, another emerging piece of evidence is the exact same style men's watch placed on the last two victims, both watches deliberately set at a different time than what is actual. The team has to uncover the meaning of the watch and the time to which the watches were set to discover the identity of the unsub and who his ultimate targets are. Written by
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The BAU heads to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where the Replicator, the unsub who has carried out a series of crimes replicating cases recently solved by the BAU, has murdered his latest victim. The reason why this Philadelphia murder attracts their attention is that unlike the previous three murders by the Replicator, this one took place in a city other than that of the original crimes. Garcia discovers that the flowers sent by the Replicator to JJ were purchased through a credit card whose owner lives in Philadelphia. And Strauss gets involved as she feels this case underminds the work of the team. By the time they arrive in Philadelphia, what they find that is also unique is that a second murder has taken place in Philadelphia using the same MO, which the Replicator has not yet done. Tracking down the Replicator is made all the more difficult by an uncooperative Detective Rizzo, the lead police investigator who does not like the BAU's involvement. The Philadelphia victims all being nurses and the geographical location leads the team to closed case they worked on fifteen years ago. They believe they are close to catching the Replicator until... Meanwhile, Blake and Strauss try to deal with their past antagonistic relationship in different ways. Written by
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The BAU is disturbed by their finding that the Replicator has had such intimate access to all the team members. However, Strauss gives a directive for them to put that case aside since there are no new leads which may give them some perspective over time of who the Replicator is, and focus their attentions on their regular cases. That next case takes them to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where women have been stabbed to death, but more disturbing have had their tongues pulled out pre-mortem. They know that the tongue removal is the key to understanding the motivation of the unsub. The disparate set of women victims is seemingly chosen at random until the team discovers one common bond: that they all have a very strong on-line presence, their deaths telegraphed by stories in their own on-line blogs, messages or texts. To catch the unsub, they may have to dig a little deeper into the world of on-line chatter and who else may be sharing stories about violent deaths. Meanwhile, Kevin catches Garcia with a man who he learns she has dated, so far only casually, which makes him feel uneasy. Kevin and Garcia have to come to a decision if they can truly be friends while not being lovers. Written by
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Two men are savagely killed in the working class neighborhood of South Chicago, Illinois, Morgan's old stomping grounds, with a third victim by the time the team arrives in the area. There are no signs of sexual assault, although all victims had their pants and underwear pulled down to their ankles. There is the same written message at each crime scene, "Look Up to the Sky", which Morgan recognizes as the mantra of Carl Buford, Morgan's childhood mentor who molested young boys including him when he was a child. The team believes the unsub is one of Buford's former victims who is killing men acting as surrogates for Buford. Morgan may be the key through his personal knowledge to the team finding out who the unsub is, which may include confronting Buford himself, as well as the salvation for many of Buford's other victims, many of who, like Morgan, suppressed their victimization. Written by
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The team is called to Bronson Springs, Colorado (formerly designated "City of Tomorrow" as a great community in which to live), because of the discovery there of the decapitated body of retired police deputy Charlie Figg. That in and of itself would not normally require the services of the BAU, but the fact that Charlie's dead body was found just hours after the discovery of another human head in the just-unearthed 25-year-old official Bronson Springs time capsule makes it a BAU case. That head belonged to then 23-year-old Wade Burke, who was never listed as deceased since no body was ever found and no foul play was suspected. The team quickly learns that Burke and Figg were both decapitated with the same saw, and thus probably by the same unsub. When a third decapitated victim is discovered shortly after their arrival, they determine that all the victims were hypocrites in that their private lives were contrary to their squeaky-clean public image. The team realizes that the unsub, through these murders, is also commenting on Bronson Springs' "City of Tomorrow" honor as being undeserved. But as they dig deeper, they find a further connection to a purported 25-year-old sexual assault assumed to have been committed by Burke. But no charges were ever filed against Burke, and the case file is missing. The unknown assault victim may be the key to finding the unsub. Written by
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The team travels to Rapid City, South Dakota after Reid, who is suffering from insomnia, stumbles across a case. Two thirtysomething men in separate incidents were found dismembered in the area, one in Rapid City, another in a nearby native reserve. The men were also poisoned with a natural herb. Both men were also not local, they being associated with the seasonal logging industry. When a third man, Chad Dumont, goes missing, he who is also not local but a military man on furlough, the team refocuses on the non-local aspect. Ritualistic markings on the bodies also leads to the team looking into the native angle as well as the naturopathic angle. After doing further interviews, they determine that the unsub is a woman who is luring the men away using the ruse of sex. The team has to piece together all these clues to find the unsub and her motivation. Meanwhile, Rossi tries to help Reid understand the cause of and deal with his insomnia. Written by
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The BAU returns to a six year old active case of nannies and their charge, one pair per year, being abducted in parks up and down the California coast. The children are found alive and unharmed within 24 hours, but the nannies are eventually found dead, with the exception of one, Tara Rios, who, in 2010, managed to escape but was so traumatized by her ordeal that she remembers nothing and now refuses to assist with the case anymore. The victims were physically assaulted, burned with hot implements, and drowned in scalding water. The unsub has always made sure that the bodies were found in a Los Angeles park on May 13, that date this year being a few weeks away, the reason for the team's current work. The team is late as the unsub has struck earlier than usual this year, abducting a nanny named Gina Mendes and her charge, two year old Phoebe Payton. This abduction ends up being different than the other five in that Phoebe is not returned within 24 hours, which is all the more dangerous for her since she suffers from asthma and requires medication to control it. The team feels that Tara is still their best hope in finding the unsub, which may place them in a tenuous situation as she is still not mentally prepared to relive the ordeal, as supported by her therapist. This case ends up being a difficult one for J.J. as the mother of a young child. Written by
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Before the BAU heads off on their next case, Blake receives a surprise visit from her husband, Dr. James Blake, who was supposed to be on a his latest stint overseas with Doctors Without Borders, that stint which was supposed to be ten months in length. She eventually learns why he has made this visit home early, that reason which makes her contemplate her future with the BAU. That next case takes the team to Detroit, Michigan, where two sets of couples, in separate incidents, were found dead in the trunks of their respective vehicles. Each victim had multiple superficial stab wounds in their abdominal area, and one final fatal stab being the last wound inflicted. They also learn that the unsub kept each couple for a week before they were murdered. They also eventually surmise that the couples were abducted in some fashion using their cars, as the unsub was able to dismantle the GPS history to hide his/her tracks. Hotch goes to extreme lengths to uncover those vehicle travel histories. The case takes a turn when a subsequent murder by the unsub has only one victim, the wife of the couple, leading the team to believe that the unsub has found a surrogate for the male. They determine that that surrogate is a man named Phillip Connor. They have to find a victimology connection between the murdered couples and Phillip to discover the unsub's true motive and identity. Written by
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Hotch receives a telephone call from his estranged New York based brother Sean, who he has not heard from in four years and coincidentally while Hotch and Jack are in New York visiting Beth. Now working as a bartender in a club, Sean wants Hotch's help in a death that occurred in the club, where the woman in question quickly bled out through her eyes, mouth and nose just before her death. Hotch convinces the team that this death is the basis for a case when Sean tells him that his own girlfriend also recently died the same way. The team quickly learns that these two deaths are not the only ones, most to hit drug users in clubs. But what confounds the team is that a few victims, such as Sean's girlfriend, were non-drug users. The drug found in each of the victim's systems was Ecstasy. They later learn that the form of the drug that killed the victims was a more lethal variety that has not yet been known to have hit the US. They have to find the source of the drug and how it was administered to such a diverse group of people to find the unsub. They believe the focus of the case is the Edinburgh, the club where Sean works. As such, Sean and his colleagues are considered suspects. Through it all, Hotch examines his relationship to Sean and how their lives have diverged when they were children, when Hotch was considered the troubled child and Sean the good one. Written by
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Immediately following the Ecstacy case in New York City, the Replicator has hacked into Garcia's computer system, on which he posts photographs of each of the team members in New York and his "Zugswang" calling card. Although he has taunted most of the team members individually in the past, he seems to focus his attention on one team member while in New York. That focus, another calling card left by the Replicator in what he believes is from a past case, and that he seems to have easy access to almost anywhere the team has access, leads to the team believing he works within the bureau. Looking at what the Replicator has done up to this point in time, they also believe the motive for his actions has something to do with what was the feud between Blake and Strauss. Even if the team does determine the identity of the Replicator, they have to tread carefully as the Replicator has thus far been able to manipulate the team into what he has wanted them to do, and his final end move may take place before they can find him. Written by
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Since Strauss' death, Hotch has been doing double duty. He has been asked to fill her position permanently - the only member of the team who he has told being Rossi - which he is seriously considering, if only to provide more time to spend with Jack, and to prevent an outsider from putting an unwanted administrative eye on the team. He will have time to contemplate this potential move when the team travels to Glendale, Arizona on their latest case. Two single, young women in individual cases were found in parks, each raped, shot through the heart, and placed in a praying/begging position postmortem. A third victim is found by the time they reach Glendale and a fourth shortly thereafter. Beyond the third victim being married, albeit separated from her husband, the team finds other similarities, namely that the victims were forced to eat human flesh, all from the head. The team believes that there is one single human head being used, that belonging to whoever the unsub's first victim yet to be found, and that uncovering her identity will provide necessary further clues as to the identity of the unsub. Written by Huggo
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The team is called back to Glendale, Arizona, when it is determined that who was arrested for the praying mantis murders was the wrong person. They did not apprehend Wallace Hines as they thought, but rather Jesse Gentry, who they learn is Wallace's twin brother and was given up for adoption when he was a child. The two did not know of the other growing up. A paralegal, Jesse has a strong legal team, headed by his boss Mark Anderson, who threatens to sue the FBI if they continue to "harass" Jesse in any way. The team knows that Jesse is involved in the case in some manner as his reappearance after all these years cannot be coincidental. They also learn that Carla Hines is not as innocent as she first appeared, as in their search for Wallace and going through her house, they find that she tried to burn evidence, the nature of that evidence which they do not know. But they determine that that evidence probably has to do with whoever the twins' biological father, whose identity Carla has never divulged. Written by Huggo
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On a lunch hour in crowded Archer Plaza in Dallas, Texas, a sniper, firing twelve shots, manages to kill six people...
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Mateo Cruz has just been introduced as the new section chief. A surprised J.J., who knows him, and Cruz seem not to want to divulge that they have a history. They don't even seem to want to let the team know that they know each other, which may be difficult to hide amongst a group of profilers. Cruz wants to accompany the team into the field on their next case, which takes them to Baltimore, Maryland, where a young John Doe was found stumbling around a warehouse district. Alive, he has ligature marks on his wrists, and drill marks in the corner of his eyes which they determine was a just performed lobotomy. He ends up paralyzed without the ability to speak, but his mental faculties seem to be in tact. Through what slow communication Morgan is able to do with him, Morgan learns that the unsub is white male that the victim did now know, and that there was a female victim as well, who is probably still captive. The team believes the unsub held him captive in one of the nearby warehouses, and that he let him go purposefully. This M.O. does not seem to match with the fact of choosing as the victim who the team believes travels in a circle where he would not be soon missed. When a further medical examination is done on the victim, they learn the purpose for letting him go: a microscopic camera was inserted in his eye, meaning that the unsub has been watching everything going on. Through this technology, the team is able to communicate to the unsub, who takes more direct measures in showing the team what he is up to. The key to finding who the unsub is still rests with identifying the victim, and tying him to a similar case that occurred recently in Berlin, Germany.
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During the BAU's initial briefing for their latest case, Hotch collapses. He is rushed to the hospital suffering from complications resulting from his near fatal stabbing by George Foyet aka The Reaper. Meanwhile, the rest of the team, while concerned for his life, are urged by Rossi to go to Wichita, Kansas to work on that case of sixteen year old Samantha Wilcox who was abducted by her ex-con father, Eddie Lee Wilcox. In the process, Eddie severely beat Samantha's boyfriend. Eddie had not been in contact with his ex-wife, Samantha's mother Melody Grimes, in quite some time, she who moved with Samantha to Wichita to get away from him. In reviewing evidence, the team believes Samantha may not have plotted with her father, but was a willing participant in their getaway. She is probably unaware however of her father's most recent past, which looks to include armed robbery, mob connections and murder, from which he is probably running. They're afraid that Samantha may not survive if Eddie is pushed into a corner. Back at the hospital, Hotch is in surgery, during which time he encounters Haley and Foyet together in his thoughts, which may determine his fate on the operating table.
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When the BAU investigates victims of possible ritualistic murders in Utah, clues lead them to believe that the UnSub they are looking for might have a fascination with the Salem Witch Trials. Also, Garcia prepares for a "Day of the Dead" celebration at her apartment, on the next episode of Criminal Minds, Wednesday, 9/8c. Only CBS /CTV in Canada
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The BAU heads to Boston, Massachusetts where three men thus far have been found strangled to death in the downtown area. Each were lower middle class which generally rules out theft as the motive, and some sort of garrote was used in each strangulation. Other aspects lead the team to believe that the killings were not random but that the unsub probably didn't know each of the men personally. In interviewing family and friends of the victims, the team also learns that each victim was well liked despite having a major character flaw, those flaws which may be partly the motivation of the unsub in killing them. The team has not been able to identify the last person who would have seen the latest victim, Scotty Delfino, that person who would have been his latest one night stand. But when a fourth and fifth victim emerges, both who don't quite fit the profile, it is their indirect connection and that to Scotty Delfino that may lead the team to the identity of the unsub and the reason why he feels the need to kill. Meanwhile, Rossi is sad to hear that one of his long time haunts, a bar where he met his first wife Carolyn, will probably soon close.
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When teenagers who were reported missing are suspected of a series of mass murders in Chicago, the BAU investigates their whereabouts to find a motive for the crimes. Also, Morgan has conflicting feelings when his girlfriend takes her job at a hospital as seriously as he takes his.
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While fixing a burst water main, a city works crew digs up the back yard of the home of the Johnsons - father Charles, mother Tina, and their middle aged son Lyle - upon Tina's approval. The Johnsons have lived at the house for thirty-five years. The crew finds the skeletons of two human bodies buried in the yard. The BAU takes the three members of the Johnson family in for questioning, who they believe know something about the skeletons, primarily because Lyle ran when he saw the authorities at the house. While Hotch, JJ, Morgan, Rossi and Cruz question the Johnsons individually, Lyle initially comes across as the most guilty by his animosity, however the team eventually believes his attitude is more a facade hiding other issues. Charles also demonstrates a more reserved form of animosity, he being a history buff who continually implies how he and his family, as being black, have been persecuted, this situation being no different. The identification of the two bodies and of the others which are eventually found in the yard, in addition to what Reid and Blake are able to find in the Johnson house may piece the puzzle together. Meanwhile, JJ wants to divulge to the team the fact that she and Cruz have been on special assignment, against Cruz's wants.
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The BAU heads to St. Louis, Missouri where ten year old Andrew Taffert has gone missing. The reason it is a BAU case is that the Tafferts - father Malcolm Taffert and mother Lida Taffert - had been receiving prank calls from someone with a childlike voice stating "I'm gonna get you", and that blood was splattered on their front door after Andy had gone missing. Reid notices that this case is much like a fifteen year old cold case that the BAU worked on where the parents in that situation received such prank calls prior to their son being abducted and eventually found dead. The father in that case, Richard Clayvin, was always considered a suspect. As such, Malcolm is initially considered a prime suspect, especially considering his over controlling temperament. The similarity between the two cases extends to the post-abduction prank calls with the voice changing its statement to, "Did you see what I did?". But as the investigation progresses, which includes re-interviewing Richard Clayvin, the team may have to find other similarities before they can identify the unsub.
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While concluding a case with the team in Los Angeles, a case where she receives a minor bullet wound to the arm, Blake receives a telephone call from her father, retired Kansas City police detective Damon Miller, about the murder of a middle aged man which he believes is the latest in series of murders conducted by the same unsub. He believes this murder is tied to the murder of a pair of teens one year ago. Beyond the overkill beatings inflicted in both sets of murders, there are no ties between the two on the surface. Blake's father is able to convince KCPD to invite the BAU, which does not sit well with Blake's brother, KCPD homicide detective Scott Miller, especially as there is animosity between the siblings. Although Blake wants them to take the case, she implies that she is not looking forward to returning to Kansas City itself, where she has not been in five years, and where family demons about which she has never mentioned to the team reside. As the team works through the case, which they do determine is serial in nature and is tied to an incident at a high school years earlier, Blake will have to face those family demons, which includes dealing with her relationship with Scott, and facing the memory of the tragic deaths of both her mother and older brother, also a former police detective.
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In 2004, the BAU traveled to San Jose, California for two reasons. One was to recruit Garcia, a hacker at the time, who was known in her circles as the Black Queen and who was given the choice of the job or prison. The second was to investigate the murders of eight prostitutes. Although he didn't fit the profile exactly, a man named Sam Russell then admitted to the eight murders, he who is now on death row at San Quentin, his execution scheduled in two weeks. However, the San Jose Police Department computer system was just hacked, and Russell's files stolen. The anonymous messages the SJPD received from the hackers are that Russell is innocent. Garcia believes the hackers are a vigilante justice group called Star Chamber, Russell who used to be a hacker himself and who Garcia knew online. Russell also now recants his admission of guilt, he stating that he was drug addled at the time, with the lead investigator, now retired Det. Bob Cooper, feeding him drugs to satisfy his habit in return for the confession. The case takes on extra dimensions when more prostitutes end up dead, which may be a red herring by Star Chamber who now have his case file and thus can mimic those previous murders, and when messages from Star Chamber go specifically to Garcia, which she recognizes as coming from her old hacking mentor and boyfriend, Shane Wyeth. Garcia's encounters with Shane about this case end up being uncomfortable for her, especially in light of the sensitivity and sexual harassment training the department went through highlighting what are deemed the inappropriate comments especially between her and Morgan.
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While the BAU looks for a vigilante killer on the loose in Cleveland, Rossi is concerned when his former Marine sergeant goes missing and heads to Los Angeles to find him. Also, the secret JJ has been keeping from the team may be catching up with her. Series star Joe Mantegna directs his first episode of the series. Meshach Taylor guest stars.
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Will arrives at the BAU office with news that JJ has gone missing. On JJ's directive if she ever did go missing, Will has come to inform Mat, who would "know what to do" as the two are still working on a top secret case from their joint State Department days. This news surprises the rest of the team, as they had no idea JJ and Mat even knew each other prior to him being appointed Section Chief. However, they all discover that Mat is also missing, which they fear the worst for both JJ and Mat. Hotch is able to find out some basic information about what JJ and Mat were working on - that is was an Afghanistan based mission in trying to locate Osama bin Laden - but the BAU is told by the State Department not only to mind their own business as their disappearances are a State Department matter, but that they are to cease any work in trying to find either JJ or Mat or face the consequences if they do. The team ignores this directive, but they know that they have to work clandestinely to avoid detection by the State Department. They call in reinforcements in the form of Emily, who was in contact with JJ during her State Department years, and thus may have extra insight into what JJ was working on. They quickly discover that the person who has probably kidnapped JJ and Mat is a man named Tivon Askari, who worked as a translator on Mat and JJ's crew in Afghanistan but who was discovered to be a double agent, one who went to the highest bidder. But the team not only has to find out what Askari's goal is and where he may have taken the pair, but they also have to find out something that JJ already knows about someone else in their Afghanistan crew to uncover the full details and thus JJ and Mat's location.
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The BAU travels to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where two young women, in two separate incidents, were found dumped at the side of the highway, strangled to death. Both were semi-clad, wrapped in a shower curtain, which they later learn is commercial grade used by hotels, but neither victim was sexually assaulted. By tracking the last known whereabouts of one of the victims, they are able to trace her to a nearby motel where an unusual piece of evidence is found leading to that belief that there are two unsubs, one male and one female. On the BAU's directive, Pittsburgh PD discover that several murders can be attributed to the pair dating back to 1994, with a few breaks in time periods. But another subsequent victim not fitting the profile of any of the other victims and finding a victim of one of the past crimes who survived the attack may lead the team to the identities of the unsubs. In tracking the pair, the team may also learn how solid or fragile their actual partnership is, and if it is the latter, what they can do to work that relationship to their best advantage. Meanwhile, Morgan and Garcia share their Valentine's Day plans and problems with each other.
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The BAU travels to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where four year old Gabby Hoffer has just been abducted. While her divorced mother Kate Hoffer was on a "raffle prize" Caribbean cruise with her boyfriend Rodney Baderson, she left Gabby under the care of her cousin, Sue Walsh, who is more like Kate's sister in that they grew up together after Kate's parents took Sue in as their own following the death of her own parents. A sleeping Gabby was abducted out of Sue's car parked in a gas bar parking lot late one evening as Sue made a quick stop to pick up grocery supplies. Between being abducted by strangers or someone Gabby knows, the BAU, checking both paths in their investigation, believe that the first suspect is Gabby's biological father, Doug Hoffer, a trucker and drug addict who has not seen either Gabby or Kate in over a year. The only other immediate piece of evidence is a witness seeing a dark colored minivan in the parking lot around the time of the abduction. This evidence leads to the team picking up a man by the name of Ian Little, who was Doug's old drug dealer and who Kate knows. Ian, who has second and third degree burns to his face, refuses to disclose how he received those burns, for which he did not receive medical attention, or any knowledge of Gabby. The BAU will have to uncover further ties Ian has to the family to discover Gabby's whereabouts, if it is not too late.
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The BAU travels to Las Vegas, Nevada, where the dead bodies of two young women, one killed in the last twenty-four hours, the other two weeks ago, are found outside the city in the desert. The M.O. seems to be the same, the most unusual similarity being that both drowned. Initial indication is that the most recent victim is a local, the longer deceased victim a tourist. They are eventually identified respectively as local waitress and former drug addict Frida Bancroft, and "strip-miner" (a person who steals left behind money and chips at casinos) Renee Sheffield. Believing the victims may have been working together as two of perhaps several grifters and a hobo code "2/10" near the bodies, the BAU comes to the conclusion that the unsub is from among that group, probably homeless, and is seeking revenge on people within the community who stole from him/her. Testing the water in which the victims drowned gives the BAU a starting point as to the geographical locale of the unsub, whose leadership within a cult-like group may be further rationale for the murders. Meanwhile, Reid has mixed feelings about what ends up being the reunion with his Las Vegas-based mother.
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When three bodies are found with animal and human bite marks in a shallow grave near Milwaukee, the BAU has puzzling questions to answer. Meanwhile, Reid and Garcia work out for a company fitness test, but try to hide their preparation from Morgan.
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Morgan is helping Daria Samsen prepare for a trial in a case where she was held captive for close to a year outside Hamilton, New York, before she was able to escape. It has been a year since that escape, the intervening time being spent first at the hospital, where she was recovering from her several physical injuries, then at a mental institution, where she has been recovering from her emotional trauma. Morgan and JJ initially questioned her a year ago when the BAU was working on the case, and he is now following up on the statements she made at that time. Many of Daria's fellow captives were tortured, continually beaten and eventually killed, with precise puncture wounds to the body made by an ice pick. Unlike the initial victims who were dumped, the latter victims were "displayed", hung like scarecrows. Daria's lead captor was a man named Joe Bachner, but based on the nature of his being and Daria's statement, the BAU knew that Joe was working with a partner, someone with OCD who was the one who made the puncture wounds. Morgan's job is to make sure there are no surprises in the courtroom. Daria ends up remembering more during this follow-up with Morgan, including how she was actually abducted by Bachner, her new statements which could change the face of the case.
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The BAU travels to rural West Virginia, the area around Wheeling, where two men, Clark Howard and Mathias Lee, were killed in separate incidents, both by some form of barbed wire as the murder weapon. The BAU learns that the men hated each other, leading to the question of whether the second killing was done in revenge of the first. They also learn that the men's feud extends to their extended families. The feud is currently led by Cissy Howard and Malachi Lee, the respective matriarch and patriarch of the two families, the two who have not seen or talked to each other in years by choice. What concerns the BAU is that barbed wire was stolen from three local farms, meaning that at least one other person is being targeted to be killed. The feud seems to stem historically to moonshine, and the BAU believes the current feud concerns production of today's version of moonshine: meth. But when they learn what the product being fought over is, their attention turns to Caleb Howard as the ...
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A series of targeted abductions near Memphis have the BAU searching for a commonality between the missing persons and a motive that will lead them to the unsub. Meanwhile, Savannah vents her frustration to Morgan about the amount of traveling he does for his job.
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Victims of arsenic poisoning are found in Long Beach, California. The investigation reveals that the killer has a fascination with Greek mythology, based on handwritten death threats to the deceased and other mysterious clues. Meanwhile, Hotch is concerned about participating in Jack's third grade career day.
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As a favor to Cruz whose friend, Peter Coleman, is the lead investigating sheriff, the BAU take on as their next case the murder of prostitutes in rural/small town Texas, the latest in Briscoe County. The latest victim is Abigail Jones, who was shot execution style in the back of the head, but not before she was tortured by having deep lacerations carved into her back in a cross-hatch fashion. This M.O. mirrors the murder of another prostitute, Hannah Kelly, in a neighboring county six months earlier, and the murder of a john, Lucas Wagner, eleven months earlier. The team quickly learns that Wagner, although convicted as a john, was truly a prostitute as well. They will also learn that forensic evidence will be difficult to come by due to the general protocols of various officials in the area. Their initial suspicion is that the murders were indeed torture, or consensual S&M sessions gone wrong, and that a john nicknamed "Mack the Knife" may be involved. With subsequent victims, they ...
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In the aftermath of the shootout the authorities have with Preacher Mills, several people are down. Among the dead are Mills himself and Sheriff Coleman, and three people associated with the pool hall. Injured is Morgan. But seriously injured is Reid, whose shooting Blake blames on herself as he pushed her out of harm's way. What the BAU is able to determine is that the three pool hall victims were dead before the shooting started, which confirms their theory that Mills was being framed by the true unsub, that the unsub was at the scene among the shooters, and that Dinah Stidham is connected as the only person associated with the pool hall who was not there. When they eventually catch up with Dinah, they can see that she is scared but does know much about what is going on. The nature of how she was located leads to the team coming up with a new theory, one where they have to find a way to make Dinah talk while protect her while she is in the unusually unsafe police station, and ...
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With Blake deciding to return to Boston to teach full-time and Prentiss declining the request to return, Hotch is interviewing for the vacancy on the team. Who he hires is a known entity to the team, namely Kate Callahan. Her first case working for the BAU takes them to Bakersfield, California, where three human torsos have been found in deserted locales within the past month - one male and two females. The medical examiner is able to determine that the limbs were removed with precision, that the victims had leather in their digestive tract, that they were kept alive up to 48 hours after the limb removal and the torsos had been preserved. The team soon discovers that the unsub has sold some of the limbs on the black market. Those sales and the identities of the victims may provide some clues as to the unsub's identity and location.
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Because she has been having nightmares about the aftermath of the issue, Garcia feels the need to go to Texas to speak to Greg Baylor, the man on death row who almost killed her and Reid. She needs to tell him that his death is not what she wants and that she has tried to stop it. Hotch allows her the time off to go to Texas. She finds that she is way in over her head and needs Morgan's support, but he may not be able to provide it as he does not understand or agree with what she is doing. In Garcia's absence, Lynch takes over her analyst duties in the team's next case, which takes them to Seattle, Washington, where two men have been found murdered in separate incidents. Beyond their being in the same age range, the two victims are seemingly unrelated, with dissimilar murder M.O.'s beyond their respective vehicles being found abandoned nearby, and random mutilations around the mouth. By the time the team arrives in Seattle, there is a third victim. At the M.E.'s office, Reid discovers...
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Trans Alliance flight 420 from Pittsburgh to Phoenix just crashed in a Colorado field, with only one known survivor, co-pilot Frank Canvers, of the approximately 150 aboard. A witness saw a flash of light, which could mean a surface to air missile. However, the crash area is sparsely populated largely by anarchists and extremists, which could make on-ground witness statements unreliable. The BAU is called in to determine if indeed this was an attack and if so to provide a profile of the attacker(s). The plane was off course approximately 150 miles when it crashed, and there are thirteen minutes of lost communication between the plane and air control. As the team goes through the clues, Reid comes across an issue specific to the plane which he believes is key to determining not if it was an attack, but from where the attack definitely did not originate. However, they do believe that other planes will be targeted unless they can find the attacker.
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Atlanta PD has invited the BAU in for an equivocal death investigation, that of investigative journalist Albert Stillman, who died being run over late one evening as he wandered into highway traffic. An eyewitness who tried to help Stillman just before he was run over states that he was waving his arms in the air yelling, "get them off me", this depiction which goes against Stillman's history of no mental illness. Reluctantly, Stillman's editor, John Carlson, discloses that Stillman was using heroin as medication for a back problem. Stillman was scheduled to meet with a source on a story concerning vaccinations when he vanished for three days just before he died. Garcia learns that another person associated with the case is a Dr. William Suri, a research scientist of entomology, who is later found dead, shot to death. Upon investigation, the team discovers that both Stillman and Suri were abducted - meaning that they are dealing with a serial killer - and had minute bite and deep ...
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On October 30, 2014, a frightened eleven year old Joshua Parker is found at a Halloween fair in San Diego. He went missing on Halloween day the previous year. His case mimics that of Tommy Wilcox, who went missing on Halloween 2012 in Los Angeles, only to be found on Venice Beach October 30, 2013, alive but he who eventually died of malnutrition a few hours later. Joshua, however, is expected to live. Both boys had atrophied muscles, and had splinters and puncture wounds, although Joshua seems to have been fed somewhat properly. Both boys were also considered troubled, Joshua who was never listed officially as missing since he was a chronic runaway. The problem for the BAU is that Tommy's captor, Rodney Tanner, who confessed to the crime, is currently incarcerated, meaning that he either had a partner, there is a copycat loose, or that his confession is a lie. They have to figure out this issue before another troubled early or pre-teen Caucasian boy is abducted in the next day. Reid ...
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The BAU is called to Missoula, Montana, where Douglas Clark, a wealthy Caucasian college student, was found murdered in a remote wooded area, stabbed multiple times, and his cell phone stuffed into his mouth. The reason there is a suspicion that this is a BAU case is that a local shopkeeper was killed recently by a college student, whose rich father got him off, hence the possibility that this murder was a revenge killing. En route to Missoula, a second victim is discovered with much the same M.O. Other similarities include the fact that the cell phone alarm was set to midnight, and beyond the stab wounds, there is one wound on each that was made by something else. The revenge killing theory is thrown out as these murders seem more personal in nature. With discovery that Clark was a closet homosexual, the BAU thinks that the murders may have to do with sexual deviance. Evidence from a subsequent victim and JJ figuring out what made the unusual puncture wounds points to the unsub being...
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Morgan and Savannah can't seem to find time to make what he at least considers meaningful time away, the most recent case disrupting what would have been the start of a vacation. That case, a local one, is the murder of teenager Tara Harris in her home. She had a strong online presence, continually posting her every movement, she with 200,000 Twitter followers. According to a friend, the more provocative the post, including photos, the better. She seemingly was attacked while she was looking at herself in a mirror, she eventually being slashed across the throat with the broken mirror. It is a BAU case since the unsub posted a selfie of Tara's dead body on her Twitter page. There is a subsequent victim, a male killed in his car with a nail gun, with a somewhat similar online presence. The online similarity is heightened with the "#" symbol at the crime scene. The unsub also is able to post photoshopped pictures to others' Twitter pages, stating that they are on the unsub's hit list. A ...
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The BAU is called to Boston, Massachusetts, where former prosecutor turned defense attorney Jack Westbrook has just been abducted in a convenience store parking lot. He was in the process of a 911 call to report his car being vandalized at that very moment when he was abducted, which to the team means that he is probably still alive and that his abduction was targeted by the vandal. From the sounds on the 911 call recording, they can tell that there are at least two unsubs. In speaking to his seven month pregnant wife Linda and looking at his background, they see that he has led a model life including a 94% win rate, but could easily be a target of those few he was unable to get off, or in turn those that he formerly prosecuted. However, in digging a little deeper, they find that Jack has led a secret life, most specifically in the form of an apartment unknown to Linda, which they assume is a love nest. But what that secret life entails takes a turn and explains the reason for the man...
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A random string of murders in Northern Virginia has the BAU hunting a rather paradoxical UnSub whose desire to kill is uncontrollable; yet, somehow, this person feels extreme remorse for their crimes. Meanwhile, Rossi is surprised when he receives a visit from a woman who may hold a mysterious secret from his past.
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The BAU is called to Salt Lake City, Utah to investigate a suspicious triple-homicide. Throughout the course of their investigation, they eventually discover that a fugitive killer could possibly be linked to the UnSub and he could also be a familiar face.
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The BAU team members convene at Gideon's isolated cabin where his murdered dead body was found, he killed by multiple gunshots. Each team member, especially those that knew him personally, grieves in his or her own way while they all investigate his murder. While Garcia tracks his last driving trip which included an extended stop in Roanoke, one hour away from his cabin, Hotch speaks to Gideon's now grown son, Stephen Gideon, and Rossi and Morgan examine the crime scene, most specifically trying to sequence the series of gunshots which led to Gideon's death. In piecing together all the information, Rossi believes Gideon was trying to send a message to them before being fatally shot, Rossi who travels back in time to a case the two worked on in 1978 when the BAU was then known as the Behavioral Science Unit. The unsub in that case, he who was never caught, was obsessed with birds, and strangled twenty-something Plain Jane, insecure, brunette women. The recent death of a woman leads the...
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The BAU heads to Indianapolis, Indiana where a bomb has just exploded at a popular chain coffee house, killing several. The police believe this bomb, crudely made using TNT, is related to a bombing one week earlier at a school, also using TNT. That bomb, because it was detonated at night, killed only one, the night time custodian, who was not supposed to be in the school at the time. Based on the exact location of the coffee shop bomb, Rossi and Morgan are uncertain if the bomb was meant to be as deadly as it was or not. In relative terms, there were also some good news stories associated, where a pregnant woman was saved, she who delivered a healthy baby. A third bomb attempt coupled with other information leads to the team figuring out who the bomber is. However, that third bomb, plus the school bomb, provide the biggest clues as to the nature of the entire picture. They hope that planting a little public misinformation may help them catch the unsub.
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The BAU heads to Los Angeles, California where two women, in separate incidents, were found murdered in the suburb of Diamond Bar. Both were young, brunette, bound in their captivity, their throats ultimately slashed, and their bodies dumped in dumpsters. Neither women was sexually assaulted, and the M.E. later finds that both women died from blunt force trauma to the back of the head, the throat slashing done postmortem. The team also learns, following interviews, that both women suffered from self-esteem issues. When a third woman, Greta Thomas, is abducted, the team believes the unsub watched domestic abuse of his father beating his mother when he was growing up, these victims being surrogates for his mother, who did not do anything to stop the abuse. In searching through old domestic abuse cases in the area hidden as "accidents" by the females, the team thinks they have found the identity of the unsub and what he is trying to accomplish with his current victims. Meanwhile, Kate ...
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The BAU heads to Reagan Federal Penitentiary in Liberty, located in east Texas. They are called in on the request of its warden of six months, Miles Tate, who met Hotch once at a business meeting. Officers Keith Rivers and Rudy Hightower were both found murdered within the span of three months, each with their throat slashed, a sock stuffed in their mouth, and with seven broken fingers. Hightower's fingers were broken as defensive wounds during a prison riot, while Rivers' were broken post-mortem. The inmates disabled many of the security cameras during the riot, the reason why the two murders could occur without detection. As such, the large inmate population are all suspects. Reagan is privately owned by the Citadel Corrections Company, who bought it from the government a year ago. As an aged facility, Reagan would have been shut down otherwise. Although he likes Tate, the chief officer, Captain Dale Shavers, a twenty year veteran of Reagan, is open about his disdain for Citadel, ...
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Before the BAU members head off on their next case, Kate tells her colleagues that she's pregnant, news that excites them, but adds some difficulty in her home life specifically with thirteen year old Meg who was already rebelling before the news. That case takes them to Madison, Wisconsin, where three women in separate incidents have been found murdered in their beds, their wrists tied with scarves to the bed, sexually assaulted for several hours then strangled with nylon rope. The same DNA was found at each crime scene, and there was no sign of forced entry. Despite each victim having a different sexual and dating life, they were all sexting with the same person. Evidence at one of the crime scenes and the sexts indicate that the common thread between all the victims is a widely popular erotic romance novel called "Bare Reflections", which details a story of consensual BDSM between a couple. The unsub, who they believe is married, and his victims are recreating the sex in the book, ...
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Approximately twelve hours after she goes missing, the BAU is brought into the probable abduction case of Sophie Troy, the wife of first term Congressman Benjamin Troy, who has many enemies on all sides. The team recommends that the Congressman and his family - his mother Dinah Troy, and his brother Paul Troy who has just been released from rehab and is living with Dinah until he gets back on his feet - come in for protective custody until the case is solved. Organized Crime believes that Sophie's abduction may have been by low level Russian thugs for hire, one of their agents, Dorian Loker, who has surveillance on their hideout. While Reid joins Loker in the surveillance to see if they can find out anything on that end, the rest of the team remains at headquarters where they deal with a ransom request, and conflicting stories from the Congressman and those associated with him. They have to wade through the stories to discover the truth before the ransom demand comes and goes, and ...
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When an innocent family of four is abducted while vacationing in Barbados, Hotch and Cruz enlist the assistance of the FBI's most elite team in handling international cases. They realize that this situation closely resembles a case that the BAU once handled in Florida. Upon this discovery, the BAU contacts Jack Garrett, (Gary Sinise) the unit chief of the team with whom they will be working. The BAU will need to pool together their skills with Garrett's elite team in hopes to save this family. This will serve as the backdoor-pilot episode for the new spin-off, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.
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When a family from Maryland is found murdered at their dining room table, the team tracks down other family members and friends to uncover secrets and details from the past in hopes to find out what may have led to it, and to catch who is responsible. Also, Hotch must try to make peace with his father-in-law, Roy, (Ed Asner) after discovering he's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and it has become painfully noticeable.
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The BAU is holding three different murderers - Larry Merrin, Daniel Karras and Christine McNeil. In each case, the victim is a loved one, with each murder taking place in a different part of the country. Christine is in a semi-comatose state. In the other two cases, the male murderers tell similar fantastical stories of not killing the victim, but of smelling burning sage before feeling ill and then being attacked by a shadow monster with talons. In both instances, they use the exact same terminology of "shadow monster" and "talon". The BAU knows that the killers were somehow placed under a psychotic suggestion using a drug. Each of the three murderers were adopted in 1985 when they were three or four years old, leading to the thought that each crossed paths with the unsub in the adoption system. When a fourth similar story arises, they realize another similar link between the four situations are people who have had what they believed to be repressed memories but were actually ...
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The team heads to Los Angeles, California where three people have been murdered in two separate incidents over three days, each victim shot thirteen times while sitting in a car or next to a car located in the same crime ridden neighborhood. The ballistics show the same .45 caliber gun was used in both instances. The first victim, Gary Fisher, was known to have frequented prostitutes and was found in area where he was probably meeting with one. Nate Cochran and Tasha Brooks, the second and third victims in the same car, were a john and a hooker. When a fourth and fifth victim are discovered together, they an elderly woman, Clara Miller, and who seems to be a mugger, Lamar Taylor, the team believes the unsub is a vigilante - a moral enforcer - who is looking to clean up the streets of what he sees as immoral behavior. Because of the overkill, they know the reasons for the murders are personal. Information they learn about Clara and Lamar, and the discovery of subsequent victims leads ...
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Kate receives a text from Meg of what is the beginning of their emergency code word. Kate does quickly discover that it is not Meg acting out as she has been of late, but that she and her best friend Markayla are in trouble, having been seen voluntarily getting into an unknown van, shortly before their cell phones went dark. The BAU is certain they were abducted when Garcia discovers that both Meg and Markayla's computer activity has been wiped clean, the thought being that they met their abductors through social media. Evidence from one of their friends leads to Kate knowing that the abduction has to do with one of their old cases, the torso killings, which Kate investigated further on a tangential issue. As such, they believe Meg and Markayla were abducted by a sex trafficking ring. Looking into an associated issue, they eventually come to the realization that it is not sex trafficking, but trafficking of a more dangerous variety. Regardless of the nature of the trafficking, they ...
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With Kate having quit the team to spend time with Meg, and J.J. on maternity leave, the BAU is down two profilers as Hotch conducts interviews to fill Kate's position and as the remaining team members work on a case in progress. The case has two victims thus far - a suburban dad and a drug dealer - killed in two days, in two different cities across the country from each other, namely Albany, New York, and Seattle, Washington. The only reason they were able to identify the two deaths as being tied is that both victims had their face painted much like a pulchinella. It isn't until the autopsies are done that they learn that both were killed by a massive injection of a liquid nutritional supplement, much like one would would consume if one has trouble eating. They tie this evidence together to determine that the unsub has suffered a facial injury that does not allow him now to speak or eat. When a third victim emerges in Charlottesville, Virginia, the team has a clearer picture of the ...
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The BAU heads to Los Angeles, California, where a sarin attack on a CityLink bus has left all ten inside the bus dead. A homemade timing device found on the bus was what was used to release the sarin without the unsub needing to be on the bus. The team looks into any chemists who may have had access to sarin stockpiles and had a grudge of some sort as a possible suspect. But a man named Charlie Senerak jumps to the top of the suspect list when surveillance footage shows that Charlie was sitting in his car in a park and ride lot where the bus originated, and that he and his wife Tracy, with who he works, usually take that bus, but neither who were on it this day. In questioning Charlie, Rossi and Lewis don't believe Charlie to be the unsub, but they do know that he is hiding something major that he did not want to divulge to them, meaning that that something could be related to the attack. As further evidence piles up on Charlie, the team, if they discover the truth, will find that ...
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The BAU's continued work on the Dirty Dozen case without much substantive progression takes its toll especially on Garcia, who is worried she won't find out who the dozen targets are before they are murdered. Meanwhile, the team has a new case in Savannah, Georgia, where brides-to-be in town for their bachelorette party from elsewhere are found murdered, with the actual murders taking place the night of the bar hopping parties. The other similarities between the two victims thus far are that their dead bodies were found in a dumpster, and both were wearing sashes identifying themselves as brides-to-be. Shortly after the team's arrival in town, another victim is discovered. Based on her death and the autopsy of the second victim, the team discovers that the unsub is a female with mental health issues, she who has self-esteem issues as well as a nervous habit of biting her fingernails. Being engaged herself, Lewis may have special insight into the case, that insight which could prove ...
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The BAU heads to Detroit, Michigan where community activist Russell Pearson is found murdered. His latest cause was opposition to a proposed gentrification project of high end condos, however it was recently discovered that he took bribes from the condo developers. As identified by the tag next to Pearson's body, the murderer is renowned street artist, Morpheus, whose actual identity is unknown. Morpheus, whose art has a social activism bent, would have been on the same side as Pearson of the condo development issue up until the discovery of the bribes. Morpheus, who works primarily in New York, Los Angeles and the Gulf coast, generally shows up after an issue has become known, leading his voice to the cause through the art. Morpheus' art first appeared in Detroit a few weeks ago, next to a burnt out car where a homeless mother and her infant died, the car where they were sleeping. By the time the team arrives in Detroit, Morpheus has struck again, this time kidnapping Corinne Wallace...
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The BAU heads to Glenport Village, Florida to investigate a single murder, that of resident, adult and married Paige Lincoln, by stabbing, she who was wearing a recently purchased cheerleader uniform. What makes this case one for the BAU is not Paige per se, but Glenport Village, which is a planned community of close to two thousand non-violent sex offenders, such as voyeurs, flashers, and statutory rapists. Lewis had been directly involved with the community and knows Reverend Jorge Santos, who oversees the self-isolating community and is also a resident, he who was convicted of statutory rape forty years ago, but who has been happily married to his "victim" when she became of age. Santos screens the people before they are allowed to move into the community. Santos' goal is reform through self-policing. The general thought is that one of the residents is the unsub. Law enforcement for the community is by Sheriff Paul Desario, who is overprotective of his two children despite not ...
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While Reid is in Las Vegas attending to his mother, the rest of the team is on heightened alert with discovery that Garcia is the intended target of the Dirty Dozen, with four of those hit men known to be after her. If the situation gets to a certain worse case scenario point, Garcia may be forced to go into the witness protection program. Regardless, the BAU still has cases on which to work. The latest case takes the team to Phoenix, Arizona, where two men have been abducted, one who was later found murdered, seemingly held captive for an extended length of time, and tortured extensively before murdered. Besides gender and residence, the two men seemingly have no connection. Based on other evidence coming to light, the team believes the men were random targets. That conclusion is also based on they believing that the men were picking up a hitchhiker in distress along a section of Highway 10, therefore being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Based on the abductions seemingly ...
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Hotch is asked as a favor by Tony Axelrod of the NSA to work on a case of three missing DEA agents in El Paso, Texas who were working on a joint NSA/DEA case to dismantle a Mexican drug cartel called Libertad with both in the field and online components. One of those three agents has since been found murdered, the face of his dead body covered by another dead man's face, that second victim not yet identified. The specific reason Axelrod has asked for this favor is that he believes the agents were given up by a mole, the specific person he suspects being Assistant DEA Director Bernard Graff. Axelrod wants to go this route as he does not want to tip off Graff that he is being investigated (which would be the case if Internal Affairs was conducting the investigation). The BAU would have an outward motive to work on this case as it would be connected to Giuseppe Montolo and the Dirty Dozen case. The only other team member who Hotch is able to confide in as to the rationale for working on ...
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The BAU heads to St. Augustine, Florida, where a young woman and an elderly man are found dead in a swamp area outside of the city, seemingly unrelated. The woman had her blood drained, and placed into the man's body. Based on the triangular cut mark in the man's thigh, what was known to be his ill health (specifically Parkinson's), and the young woman's healthy lifestyle, the team surmises that the unsub is using his victims for medical experimentation to find a cure for some disease. Animal DNA found in the male victim also shows that the unsub has some fantastical notions of what that cure could be. Another young woman, Andrea Gambrell, who was a colleague of the first female victim, goes missing, she who is deemed to be the next healthy subject for the unsub in his experimentation. They have to see if they can find another missing person as the "unhealthy" subject with some sort of neurological disorder to close in on the unsub. The nature of the animal DNA and the St. Augustine ...
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Reid has what appears on the surface to be an Internet arranged blind date at an upscale restaurant with a young woman named Cat. It is, however, a supposed business date, with Reid pretending to be a potential client for her, one of the Dirty Dozen assassins, she the "Black Widow" of the bunch. In a break in the case, the team has determined that there are four assassins, all working independently, but acting like spokes on a wheel to a central axle, that axle being someone code named the Snowman. However, she, being good at her job, knows that the meeting is a set-up. When Reid and Cat come clean to each other, what results is a thirty minute game of psychological cat and mouse between the two. The outcome is affected by how well Reid and the team have Cat profiled, how well she in turn has calculated the strategic moves in their chess match, plus a little, or perhaps a lot, of what Reid just went through visiting with his mother on his recent time off from work.
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The BAU heads to Boston, Massachusetts where two unrelated women are found within days of each other in very public areas of city parks, beheaded, the heads not yet found. Beyond leading low risks lifestyles, there are seemingly no other ties between the two. Each woman has wounds on the knuckles of both hands, and electric shock marks like she was tasered. With no sedatives found in their toxicology, the victims were alive and conscious when they were killed. By the time the team arrives in town, there is a third victim. While the first victim's wounds are jagged in nature, the second and third victims' beheadings are clean, meaning that the unsub has found his preferred method of killing. Reid believes that he has discovered the instrument of killing based on the very public nature of the dead body sites. And the team discovers other similarities between the victims including some issue in their lives which has made them act out in various ways, and canceling a ride share request ...
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The Atlanta field office requests the BAU's assistance in a case with two victims thus far, both stabbed multiple times to death, both victims found bound in different truck stop rest rooms, one outside of Chattanooga and one outside of Birmingham, posed post-mortem, both victims missing their left ear, with the murders probably taking place elsewhere as concluded by the lack of blood at the scenes. The wounds indicate indecisiveness and inexperience in the act of killing, while the posed bodies in highly public locales indicates the exact opposite of experience in the act, leading to the competing theories that there are two people working together, or one person who has long fantasized about what he is doing and is only now being able to act upon those fantasies. One victim is a homeless John Doe, while the other is a well regarded schoolteacher. When a third victim emerges with a slightly different M.O. in that she was killed at the disposal site, the team knows that the victims ...
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The BAU goes to St. Louis when an 18-year old woman escapes from a house where she and 2 other women were held for a decade.
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The BAU heads to the Los Angeles, California area, where two women, in separate incidents, were found murdered within a day of each other, each found in their own home with no sign of forced entry, both single, and both having died of asphyxiation from being wrapped pre-mortem by a regular household item like a blanket or rug. By the time the team arrives at the Los Angeles FBI field office where they are basing their investigation, a third dead body with the same victimology is discovered. From surveillance footage at the third victim's apartment complex, the team believes the unsub is either masquerading as an FBI agent or truly is one. When the team determines that he is only masquerading as one, but that he needs to gain the confidence of his victims by real world events, they decide to set a trap for him that is potentially dangerous for the public. But in doing so, they, in the process, learn of an unfortunate real life tie to the agency. Through it all, Morgan can't help but ...
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The team learns from Savannah that Morgan has been abducted. They have no idea who the perpetrators are, only assuming that he is still alive, and with their first thought being that it has to do with the Dirty Dozen case and that the entire team may be eventual targets. Meanwhile, Morgan, while being tortured by his abductors, who he too has no idea who they are or who they represent, is disassociating his mind from his body and the pain he is enduring. During that dissociation process, he is guided by the vision of an old man he learns is his deceased father as he would be now if he was still alive. Morgan has to figure out why it is his father he has as his guide during this difficult time if he has any chance of getting out of this predicament alive.
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It's six months after Morgan's abduction and eventual rescue. He and Savannah have since gotten married and are awaiting the imminent birth of their first child. On what is his first day back at work, his welcome back is interrupted by a new case, which takes the team to Wichita, Kansas. A child named Ronnie Brewer is abducted from his rural farm home, with both his parents, Jim and Lyla Brewer, murdered on site. Both parents had their eyes filled with sand and glued shut. The team will learn that the ritual with Jim was done post-mortem, while Lyla was still alive. In addition, each parent was killed differently, Jim by having his throat slashed, Lyla by blunt force trauma to the head. By the time the team arrives in Wichita, Ronnie's dead body is discovered. However, a second victim family, the Zumwalts, is discovered. The early teen daughter Josie Zumwalt has been abducted from the home, father Luke Zumwalt dead on site with the ritual with the eyes and the throat slashed, but ...
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While Morgan and Savannah are standing in a hospital parking lot, Savannah is shot by an unknown long distance sniper, with her and the baby's prognosis touch and go. Because of circumstances, Hotch orders Morgan off the case, which does not sit well with him. The team is certain that the shooting is connected to the Dirty Dozen case and Morgan's recent abduction, that link stronger when Garcia sees a Montolo, Chazz, Giuseppe's father, on hospital surveillance footage around the time Savannah was shot. In addition to locating Chazz Montolo, they have to find out if there is a long game plan to stop what the he and his associates are doing. Meanwhile, Morgan, who is out for revenge, has to decide how much he will divulge to the team in his effort to achieve his own end goal.
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The BAU team members are still feeling the loss of Morgan, who has quit the unit for a more stable life with his wife and son. But with one down, there is the temporary return of another in the form of Interpol agent Emily Prentiss, who is certain that a Son of Sam copycat killer in New York City is the same person she has been following through Europe doing copycat killings of famous serial killers. Prentiss had almost captured the unsub in London, that operation which claimed the life of a Scotland Yard operative named Louise Hulland. The team is able to get a description of the unsub from a survivor of the New York killings and produce an artist's rendering for distribution, a visual which Prentiss had not got previously. The team has to figure out what the unsub's next move will be following his Son of Sam spree and where that will take him. Through it all, Prentiss admits that she has had a recurring nightmare pertaining to the case. What she does not divulge however is why this ...
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The BAU heads to Sacramento, California, where two women were found dead together in a water tank in an SRO in the poor Oak Park neighborhood. Although only one woman is initially identified, it is believed that both women led a high risk lifestyle of prostitution and drugs, albeit the one identified who they learn was trying to get out of the life, including becoming clean. Both women also had their faces slashed several times, both pre- and post-mortem, although the instrument used to make the slashes post-mortem different - more precise - than those when the victims were alive. The identified victim was also wearing a dress not typical of her attire, while there are signs of a poorly done recent hair dye job on the Jane Doe, leading the team to believe that the unsub is remaking his victims into the vision of the real woman of his rage. They begin to get a clearer picture of the unsub by the types of drugs found in the women's systems, and what Reid learns is the reason for the ...
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The authorities believed that two Virginia based cases of missing boys, Adam Morrissey and Jimmy Bennett, from two years ago were unrelated, until their bloodied clothes, those in which they were last seen, had just arrived in one intercepted package at Fletcham Correctional Center in Troy, Virginia. The addressee of that package is Antonia Slade, a serial killer of young teens, she who was convicted in part by work of the BAU, most specifically Gideon. A social worker, she ran a fake youth hot-line as a means to lure her victims to her home, where the dead bodies of the young teens were found encased behind her basement drywall. Since, she has never talked about the murders, and has refused all visitors. However, she seems to know about the clothes and the missing boys before the BAU's arrival at the facility to speak to her. They know that she, a narcissist despite not responding to the correspondence from any of her legion of groupies, has no compelling reason to talk to them ...
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Reid is trying to decide where to take his mother for vacation, Garcia is excited by her upcoming trip to London to visit with Emily, and Rossi and Hayden, who have decided to rekindle their relationship, try to figure out how to tell Joy they are back together as a couple. This calm within the BAU is shattered when at Hotch's house, a SWAT team storms in taking him into custody, all done in front of a traumatized Jack, JJ and Henry. A confused Hotch, who is placed under the authority of the federal government, eventually learns that the Department of Justice (DoJ) has been monitoring him for weeks based on testimony by Peter Lewis - Mr. Scratch - who was apprehended by the BAU in a case last year, has evidence of his suspicious activities involving the making of a bomb, and felt the need to bring him in now based on a 911 call he made. Hotch knowing that he made no such call, the BAU team members come to the quick conclusion that Antonia Slade, the serial murderer involved in their ...
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The eighth of thirteen serial killers that recently escaped from prison has just been apprehended. The latest capture and many of the others were led by Agent Luke Alvez, who sees his role in the FBI solely as a manhunter. He accepts the invitation to join the BAU in the search for number nine, Daniel Cullen aka the Crimson King, who seems to have surfaced in the Tempe, Arizona area. Alvez's interest in Cullen is a personal one. Cullen's latest victim, a young man named Brian Phillips, emerges from the desert with all the hallmarks of Cullen's victims: his arms bound behind his head to an arm stretcher, and a word carved into his abdomen, in this case the letters "BAU". Hotch and Tara quickly notice that the abdominal wounds are not hallmark to Cullen, being much more shallow than Cullen would have inflicted. In interviewing Brian and gleaning from him what little he remembers of his abduction, the team comes to the conclusion that the perpetrator of this crime is not Cullen but the ...
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Beyond her bandaged burnt hand, Luke can tell that JJ is out of sorts because of the goings-on with their just completed last case. But it isn't until JJ arrives home in the middle of the night to find Will awake with the baby who has the croup that she is forced to talk about what has happened as Will will not let her go to bed before she gets the specifics of what is bothering her out in the open. That case, which took them to the Los Angeles area, began with the discovery of two teenagers, an older girl and younger boy, who were found burnt to death together in an abandoned building. The two, who were not related, were abducted in two separate incidents days apart in different parts of the city, both abducted in broad daylight, both middle class. This case mimics one in San Diego a few years ago, with a few differences, namely that those two victims were at risk runaways, and were discovered away from where they were burned. With this case, another teenaged girl, Francesca Morales,...
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With Hotch and Lewis both temporarily away, Emily comes back to the BAU for extra support until their return. The first case upon Emily's return takes the team to Boynton Beach, Florida, where the dead body of a young woman is discovered in an illegal dump site, her body encased in concrete in a gasoline drum. She apparently was buried alive. Shortly after the team arrives in Florida, a second and third victim are discovered, also encased in concrete in gasoline drum, also discovered at illegal dump sites, also buried alive. Besides racial differences, the victims have in common being middle class devoted single mothers of sons, choosing what they considered safe living environments to protect their sons. Because the third victim is discovered hours after her encasement, the M.E. is able to discover more about what the unsub is doing to his victims, namely performing chemical lobotomies using concentrated chlorine injected into the nasal passage. The team will have to determine the ...
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The BAU heads to the Appalachian Trail less than one hundred miles away from Quantico as State Trooper Jim Carson, investigating a shoplifting case by a homeless man, found the man's camp just off the trail - but no man - his camp which included a bag of body parts. After separating the body parts, the medical examiner determines that they belong to four middle aged Caucasian men and one twenty-something Caucasian woman. The bodies were crudely hacked apart, the victims killed anywhere from approximately one year ago to a few weeks ago, the woman the latest victim. The store where the shoplifting occurred has surveillance footage of the homeless man, who, according to one account, looks like he would not have the cognitive ability to tie his shoes. All he stole was dog food and nothing for himself to eat, leading to the team believing that his food source is his victims, and that the killings are not targeted but rather incidents of opportunity. When the team is able to identify the ...
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Derek Morgan returns to help the BAU investigate the case of two murdered families, where two high school students are the sole survivors. |
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When a known child predator resurfaces at one of Jack Hotchner's ball games, Hotch formally resigns for the BAU and goes off grid in attempt to keep Jack safe. Emily Prentiss is offered the post as the team gets a new case of 3 teen boys by the names of William "Bones" Jarvis, Josh Harmon P.K. Riggins missing from Clayton, Delaware.
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Tara is meeting with her three year younger brother Gabriel Lewis, who is visiting from California. Gabriel is as equally brilliant as Tara, but has always led a slightly shady life, he having forgone a fully paid for Yale education when given the opportunity when they were younger. The person who shows up to their meeting claims to be Gabriel, has Gabriel's cell phone (which later shows that he has been in the DC area for about a month, which Tara did not know), but looks nothing like Gabriel. However, the man seems to know every small detail about Gabriel, and Gabriel and Tara's relationship, as well as their relationship with their father, Albert Lewis. As such, Tara arrests the man, and brings him into BAU headquarters for assistance into the matter from her colleagues. Although Tara wants to lead the investigation, Emily knows they have to treat this case like all their others, which means that Tara has to take a back seat into the proceedings. From some information provided to ...
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The BAU team members head to Yakima, Washington for their next case. Several 911 calls were made to report a young woman, described to be dressed like a hooker, frantically knocking on doors yelling for help, she who eventually was seen abducted. The reason the BAU is called is that in the search for the woman, two dead bodies are discovered by the local creek, one skeletonized and the other stabbed multiple times, wrapped in burlap and tied with barbed wire, she a known sex worker. The abducted woman is eventually identified as Cherry Rollins who is indeed a prostitute. When the team discovers two more bodies, they are aware that the unsub has been active in his serial murders for some time. They believe the burlap and barbed wire is a religious ritual. The skeletonized victim's identity is important as the team believes she is a connection to the unsub. The team hopes that their presence will throw the unsub off his routine to give Cherry a fighting chance until they can find her ...
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Stephen Walker's first day with the BAU coincides with Rossi's birthday, something he no longer celebrates. It's because a serial killer he helped put away named Tommy Yates aka the Womb Raider - so coined because he mutilated his female victims' reproductive organs along with their vocal cords - made a deal with Rossi that once every year, on his birthday, he would divulge the location of one of his missing victims in return for his death sentence being commuted to life in prison without chance of parole. Yates was one of the inmates who escaped during the mass prison break last year, this the first year he's been out since the deal was made. Yates does contact Rossi today, not to divulge the location of one of his old victims, but of his latest victim, killed following the telephone call. She is Jody Wilson, unlike Yates' other victims who all led a high risk lifestyle. For this case, the team enlists the help of the agents in Rossi's latest advanced profiling seminar - by ...
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Based on information from one of Walker's sources, Prentiss decides the team should investigate a spate of robberies and murders in homes in upscale neighborhoods in the San Diego, California area, the crime scenes showing no evidence of forced entry. The crimes were committed by a gang, evidence that it being mixed male and female. The gang partied in the house - the parties fueled by drugs and alcohol - ultimately trashing it, while the victims were kept tied up in another part of the house, where they were ultimately killed, each victim by a single gunshot. The leader, a probable alpha male, seems to be in control, meaning no drugs or alcohol for him, this belief based on the precision of the gunshot wounds, the same on each victim. Among the gang, there is also a second in command who is fiercely loyal to the leader, and a "muscle" who causes most of the damage to the houses. The remaining members of the gang are the followers - the soldiers - whose primary role is the act of the ...
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Reid has returned from Houston, where he was visiting his mother who is in a new facility on an experimental drug program. He is called back home from the office while the rest of the team heads off on their next case. It isn't until the team is in the air that they learn that Diana is no longer in the Houston facility, but that she is now living with Reid, as the trial drug was not having the intended effect. Reid had received professional advice that his mother should be in a facility both for her and his own good, but it may be news from a more caring rather than clinical voice which may carry more weight with him. Regardless, he makes himself available to the team, who are in the Tampa, Florida area where two individual deaths have occurred, both now considered murders, the two tied together by ink drawings on the inner arms of the victims, the second victim's whose has one more stroke of the pen than the first. The M.E. is able to determine that the markings were made with the ...
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The team heads to Palm Springs, California where the torso of a body is found in a dumpster, the unsub murderer probably intending that it never would have been found and if so the decapitation a possible counter-measure to not be able to identify the victim. The BAU is called in the possibility that is related to a still unsolved serial murder case in DC from 2004. The Palm Springs authorities are able to identify the victim as twenty-eight year old Paul Mastriano, who was killed after a night at the bar, his drinking which was apparently the cause of his marriage breaking up. Shortly before the BAU's arrival in Palm Springs, a second torso is discovered in the same neighborhood, that victim eventually identified as Brent Miller - similar physical type to Mastriano - who, although unmarried, had just gone through a break-up and was drowning his sorrows in a bar the evening before. The BAU suspects that the victims were targets of opportunity at the bar, who were probably slipped the ...
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In a high speed chase in the desert, the local police in a town south of the US-Mexico border apprehend the driver they are chasing, the trunk of his vehicle in which $20,000 worth of heroin and cocaine and a large wad of money is discovered, leading the police to believe that the person apprehended is a drug runner. The driver?: Reid. Reid is barely lucid, he under the influence of some drug. All he can remember is that he went to Mexico to meet with someone named Rosa, who has something to do with his mother. News of Reid's incarceration gets back to team who only knew that Reid had taken some time off to head to Houston to speak to his mother's doctor. Their first inclination is that Reid's predicament was orchestrated by Peter Lewis aka Mr. Scratch, whose campaign against the team members has been quiet of late. They learn that Reid broke protocol in traveling into Mexico on his personal as opposed to work passport, as, although not on a work trip, he did not inform the FBI of his...
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Prentiss remains at the prison on Reid watch, the BAU certain that his plight the work of Mr. Scratch. The FBI as an organization has abandoned him, they not providing him with legal support as he was out of the country without their knowledge and as he was on personal business. As such, Prentiss wants to provide him with the legal services of someone that she trusts, and hopefully will thus act on Reid's best interest. That lawyer is an old friend named Fiona Duncan, who ultimately does take Reid's case after meeting with him. She admits that they will have an uphill battle based on the amount of circumstantial evidence against him, and that he himself cannot remember what happened as he was drugged at the time. In the process, Reid may have to make some difficult decisions. Meanwhile, the rest of the team heads off on their next case, which takes them to Bradenton, Florida, where in two separate incidents in exactly the same spot, two drivers, in the exact same late modeled car, ran...
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Denied bail for being deemed a possible flight risk, Reid is sent to a correctional facility in the general population for holding instead of in protective custody in the overcrowded jail. Reid's predicament, which places him at risk, may not be by accident. He receives some unexpected advice on survival on the inside. Meanwhile, the rest of the team is called to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where in two separate incidents half an hour apart, two twentysomethings, a male and a female, were doused in the face with acid. These incidents follow two other closely timed acid dousings one week prior, also of a twentysomething male and female. Of the three victims the team is able to interview, they all state that their attacker was a male wearing an overcoat and baseball cap, and uttered something in a foreign language just prior to the attack. In determining those foreign words, the team is able to track the direct source of the unsub's rage to a website for lonely singles, the outsiders who...
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While the rest of the profilers head off on their next case, J.J. stays behind to do "Reid visiting" duties. Beyond updating him on the status of his situation, she also fills him in on what she knows of the case so as to keep his mind occupied. The team has headed to New York City, where a third dead victim has been discovered, all at the hands of who the news outlets are coining the Bone Crusher for the unsub's penchant for breaking and crushing the victims' bones pre-mortem. All the victims have been young attractive females, well educated and considered low risk. All were picked up at a bar and had both alcohol and ecstasy in their systems. Shortly after the team's arrival, the authorities are approached by a woman named Miranda White, who is certain that the Bone Crusher is her twenty-three year old son, Danny White, who she had recently kicked out of the house. She has written evidence - Danny's journal - which outlines his fantasies of breaking and crushing bones of young women...
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The BAU heads to Burlington, Vermont to deal with what looks on the surface to be two unsubs, that surface implication which they believe may be unlikely seeing as to the small 40,000 population of the city. The first unsub is meticulous, leaving none of his own DNA behind at the scene, and shoots hunters in the woods with a single long distance shot through the heart. As it is not hunting season, the team believes the three victims of this first unsub are poachers, something that the M.E., who knew all three, can confirm, he stating that none were considered pillars of the community. The second unsub is haphazard, who stabs his victims to death in nighttime home invasions. The only thing tying the two sets of murders together is that the fatal stab in all three cases thus far have been the one to the heart. The team's initial assumption of there only being one unsub is confirmed when they are able to retrieve some DNA from one of the hunting crime scenes. Lewis comes up with a theory...
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Encouraged by Prentiss to visit Reid who has been asking for him, Rossi, who had his own personal reasons for not visiting earlier, stays behind as the rest of the team heads to New York City for their next case. That case is of Katie Hammond, missing now for five days, today her sixteenth birthday. The team is able to tie Katie's abduction back to two cold cases, the murder victim in both those cases and Katie who could be sisters based solely on their physical resemblance. While Katie does have parents who love her and thus has a supportive home life in that respect, the previous victims both led high risk lives, hence the reason their cases went cold. The previous victims were held for one week before they were murdered, their dead bodies posed in a public location, with their bodies having been drained of blood both pre- and post-mortem. Because of the time frame, the team knows they have to work fast as Katie, if still alive, only has a few more days before the unsub will kill ...
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Even with the prison on lock-down due to Reid's actions which the prison officials don't yet know were his doing, Prentiss is able to get one of the team to visit with him. Lewis is chosen for a very specific reason, she who is to do another cognitive interview. The hope is that Reid will now be able to remember that Scratch was in the motel room when the murder happened, which if he is able to do, Walker and Prentiss may be able to get Scratch placed on the terrorist watch list if only because he was recently spotted in Latin America, making him now an international fugitive. While Lewis has prison duty and Prentiss is off to London to speak to her Interpol colleagues, the rest of the team head off on their next case, which takes them to the Saguaro Desert east of Tuscon, Arizona, where three dead bodies were found side-by-side, all three perched on poles. The team is able to determine that small boulders were purposefully moved to strategic locations within sight of the victims. The...
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Reid's case takes many turns, including his and Lewis' discovery in the cognitive interview that the person in the motel room was not Scratch, but a woman, identifying features about her which he now remembers. This news Lewis is able to pass along to the team to work as a new lead. Another turn is that his trial date has been moved back by six weeks, which Duncan actually sees as a possible blessing in disguise. Reid also receives an unexpected visit in prison, that visit which is bittersweet, but which may have a more direct bearing into his case than he would have imagined. Walker in particular is sidetracked from Reid's case when an old colleague, Sam Bower, the two who worked together undercover in Russia in the BAP, is in hospital on what looks to be a heart attack. However, Walker directly discovers that he was injected with a radioactive toxin which was supposed to mimic a heart attack, the toxin which is now causing internal organ failure. As such, the BAU decides to work ...
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A worried Reid informs Prentiss and Duncan about Lindsey Vaughan, who is now holding his mother without she knowing that she is in danger - Lindsey posing as Diana's new nurse, Caroline Atkinson - and is the woman in the motel room in Mexico that killed Rosa Medina. Although Prentiss believes Reid's story especially about Lindsey being Diana's nurse is a figment of his sleep-deprived imagination, she and the team investigate. Most of the team do remember Lindsey and her mob enforcer father Jack Vaughan as being involved in a BAU case about ten years ago, they placed in the witness protection program following, Jack in particular considered too valuable a witness not to face prosecution for his own crimes. In that specific case, Jack killed the unsub on Lindsey's urging in front of Reid. If Reid's story is indeed true, the belief is that Lindsey is working with Scratch. But the most urgent issue is that they have to locate Diana and her real nurse, Cassie Campbell. Regardless, Prentiss...
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With J.J. by his side, Reid goes to see Cat Adams in prison, she, in partnership with Lindsey Vaughan, who were the ones who orchestrated everything that happened to him in Mexico, including his incarceration, with Lindsey now holding Diana hostage somewhere unknown. Reid knows that he will go into a psychological game with Cat, much like he did in their previous encounter, with the one big difference which may affect how Reid is able to handle the situation being that Diana's life is on the line. The rest of the team remains at headquarters, where they have to figure out the connection between Cat and Lindsey: what brought them together as partners in this venture, how they have been able to communicate with each other with Cat in solitary confinement in prison, and how Cat in particular seems to know as much as she does about Reid's personal life. Prentiss decides to use a controversial and less than ethical approach to advance the case, most specifically in locating Lindsey and a ...
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On their way to apprehend Scratch, the BAU team members, minus Garcia and Reid, who has not yet been reinstated, are instead ambushed in what was a trap set by Scratch. For a specific reason, Garcia brings along SSA Matt Simmons formerly of the International Response Team to the BAU team members' last known site of communication. There, Garcia and Simmons do find the team members, each suffering from a range of no injuries to the opposite extreme. However, one team member is missing, assumed apprehended by Scratch. Reid - who is unofficially reinstated in this extenuating circumstance - Simmons, Garcia and the healthy team members continue their search for Scratch in trying to save their apprehended colleague. They have access to what most of the team was unaware of which is a hard copy only file folder on recent activities regarding Scratch. Adding Reid back to the team has both pluses and minuses, for the team, for the case and for Reid himself. Meanwhile, Scratch chose the specific...
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Following the final incident with Scratch, the team has been taking a mandatory break to decompress. In addition, Reid has gone through his reinstatement evaluation, he who has been conditionally reinstated without the possibility of negotiation on that condition. In their time off, there has been a backlog of cases. However, they depart to Naples, Florida on a case of some currency, as a female has just been discovered murdered, her body stuffed into an old suitcase and placed in a public location. She is the second victim, the first as of yet an unidentifiable Jane Doe whose body had decomposed beyond a state of visual identification. By the time the team lands in Naples, a third victim is discovered. Beyond the suitcase in a public locale, the other similarities between the two identified victims is gender, that they were strangled, and that the same old fashioned shade of lipstick had been smeared on their mouth area. The lipstick and the suitcases indicate that there is some ...
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The BAU team members head to Detroit, Michigan where two men in two weeks have been discovered dead. Both were married, Caucasian, mildly successful professionals. Both were found in very public places hanging by a meat hook, naked and their private parts cut off pre-mortem. The authorities eventually receive a snuff movie of the second victim, Curtis Wyler, including the entire time it took him to bleed out to death. The team analyzes the video in order to find any clues as to the unsub's whereabouts. Garcia discovers that both men had been systematically withdrawing large sums of money from their bank accounts, small enough not to be questioned by the banks. In questioning the Wyler's wife, the team believes that both men were probably using the money for the services of an escort. What Garcia finds is that it is not an escort service, but rather an online dating site, Blue Siren, where members arrange their own meetings. Both victims had been involved with the same member, a woman ...
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The BAU team members are called immediately to the Silicon Valley in California on an active shooting at a video gaming company, the shooter who was able to get away. The team will be liaising with Homeland Security on this case. When the team arrives, they find there are only three casualties despite the large number of employees who were in the active shooting area of the building. Despite there being no ties between the three victims beyond the place of employment, the team believes the victims, with the exception of the security guard who was collateral damage for being in the way, were targeted as they were shot multiple times with few stray bullets. Eyewitness accounts prove of little help due to the inconsistencies. The initial thought is perhaps that the unsub is a disgruntled ex-employee. However when a second attack occurs at a different site of a different video gaming company - all four of the coders in the building working that evening who were killed - the team believes ...
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The BAU heads to Bridgewater, Florida where a prostitute, Rebecca Strong, was found murdered, her dead body discovered in a rest stop ladies room. The killing has all the hallmarks of a case that the team worked on ten years ago, that of Floyd Feylinn Ferell. Ferell's alleged murders contained elements of Satanism and cannibalism, Rebecca whose legs and fingers were cut off, fingers which were found in her stomach. However, the fingers she ingested were not her own, meaning that there is another victim not yet discovered. The problem for the team is that Ferell has been in a psychiatric institution since that case, he who was never deemed mentally fit to stand trial. That problem in tying Ferell to these two recent murders changes when the team learns that Ferell had recently been granted day privileges, something that the institution did not feel the need to tell the FBI since his case was never deemed a criminal one as he did not go to trial. Certain aspects of Rebecca's death that ...
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The team stays local for their next case where four young women have been abducted under similar circumstances over the past five years, the Richmond field office which was handling the case now wanting the BAU's assistance as the fourth has just been abducted. Crossing racial lines, the four are all youngish, successful professionals - an obstetrician, a teacher, a dentist and the latest victim Allie Leighton, a chef. Two of the victims were abducted in a parking garage, their vehicles and their belongings not stolen. All four were abducted around midnight. There have been no ransoms requested and no dead bodies discovered, leading to the team believing all four may still be alive. The fact of the BAU being called in leads to a young woman, Joanna Miller, coming into the office hoping that they can also look into the disappearance five years ago of her sister, Chrissy Miller. The field agents in the Richmond office previously working on the case didn't believe Chrissy's disappearance...
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Minus Tara who is on assignment, the team is called to Austin, Texas, where two thirtysomething women in two separate incidents were abducted, only to emerge a day later in their car with no knowledge what had happened to them since the time they entered their car before going missing. Both women had their face intricately cut with several pieces of the derma layer removed which will result in permanent scarring, and a white plastic mask next to where they awoke. They also had two small puncture wounds which are initially thought to be taser burns, but with Reid's deduction are found to be the way the unsub was able to subdue the victims. When a third victim emerges shortly after the team's arrival in Austin, they believe the unsub works in the body modification business doing more than just tattoos, and that snake imagery is important to that person. Reid is also able to tie the location where the victims' vehicles were located to point not to the unsub, but to whose attention the ...
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The team is down Reid and Lewis on their next case, with the rest of the team joining Rossi in Miami, Florida, the latest stop in he doing publicity for his latest book. In three separate incidents in that city, three women have been shot and killed while sitting behind the wheel of their parked car. All three are in their twenties, have long brunette hair, lead low risk lifestyles, and were shot in the heart with a .44 caliber magnum, which the team believes is the unsub wanting attention in what he is doing. A fourth and fifth victims are discovered by the time the team arrives in Miami, they a pair out on a date, the male of the pair who the team believes is collateral damage in the female being the target. From police photos, they are able to find that each of the female victims had a discreetly placed hair clip behind the ear. When such is reported by Channel 3 News complete with photographs, the team knows that someone with inside knowledge had to have provided them with the ...
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The BAU team members are in Roswell, New Mexico where two murders have occurred among a group of truthers, more commonly referred to as conspiracy theorists. They have determined that the murderer is hiding among them. The team knows they have a difficult task in that the truthers believe that the authorities in general are working against them. A few days into their stay in Roswell, the team makes the unprecedented step of delivering the profile to the truthers themselves in the hopes that they can identify the murderer, possibly a faker, among them. But something that happens at that meeting turns the tables on the team. While most of the truthers decide to clam up and hire lawyers to protect themselves, one, Melissa Miller, at least decides to talk to the team on the caveat that she be able to record the proceedings and broadcast it on her podcast. As a forensic scientist, Tara is tasked with dealing with Melissa. She has to be able to prove to Melissa that she and the team are not...
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The team heads to Ramona, California where three sets of murders have taken place in backyard pools. In all three cases, a male victim was tied to a cinder block and drowned, with a female victim shot in the chest found floating in the pool in the third set. Also in all three cases, seemingly minor items were burgled - an inexpensive coin set, bowling trophies and costume jewelry - with more expensive items still remaining in the houses. Because of the stolen items, the crimes were initially deemed burglaries gone wrong by the local authorities. When the team arrives in Ramona, they find that it is a recreational town largely developed by the creation of Lake Palmer twenty years ago, it a man made reservoir. The town is going through some economic hardship due to drought which has dropped the lake's water level and thus has closed many of the recreational activities on the lake, such as fishing. Because of the economic situation, burglaries have been on the rise, hence the reason for the local authorities' thought of these three cases being burglary centered. What the falling water level has also caused is dead bodies coming to the surface, they largely previously unrecovered victims of lake activity accidents. The team believes the backyard pool murders are tied to the drought - the reason that the unsub has chosen to drown his victims in pools instead of in the lake. To discover the identity of the unsub, the team will have to uncover many mysteries of the lake itself and its creation twenty years ago.
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The BAU heads to nearby Hitchens, Virginia where Trish Gaines, the wife of local Police Chief Steve Gaines, was found barely alive, partially buried, in a national park, the federal jurisdiction of the park being the reason that it becomes an FBI case. Trish is currently in a coma. Steve and their two children were off camping at the time, this the first time Steve had left Trish alone since they moved to Hitchens a year ago. On her own, Trish went to the local bar for a girls night out the evening before, the bar where she was harassed by a man named Rick Sturgess, who had previously served time for sexual assault. After taking Trish's statement at the bar, Assistant Chief Jimmy Mackenzie - Mack - escorted Trish home to make sure she was all right. These items lead to Sturgess being at the top of the suspect list. By the time the BAU arrives in Hitchens and Sturgess is in custody, they rule out Sturgess as the unsub. They also find that people involved in the case seem to be hiding a plethora of pertinent information. They discover what looks to be evidence of domestic abuse within the Gaines family with Trish having made several trips to the ER to deal with "accidents" for issues such as broken ribs, with one of those medical incidents being a miscarriage a few years earlier. The Gaines' move to Hitchens is also somewhat suspect as Steve had lost a mayoral bid in their previous residence, more cosmopolitan Ashburn, leading to this lateral move to largely rural and economically depressed Hitchens. They also believe Mack may be involved in what happened to Trish, if he being the unsub it an act of revenge for having been passed over for the Police Chief job in favor of outsider Steve. Beyond something that JJ notices about Trish in her coma, they may only be able to bring all the secrets to the surface and discover the identity of the unsub if Trish emerges from her coma.
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The BAU is called to New York City where a second person in the span of a month has been found dead in Central Park, the victims disemboweled, and their throats torn out. Beyond both victims being male, they have little in common, the first the member of a vicious street gang, the second a late night jogger who led a low risk lifestyle. The killings could conceivably have been done by an animal, such as a wolf or a vicious dog, especially as there are puncture wounds on the victims that look to be made by extremely sharp non-human canine teeth. If it was animal killings, the animals could have been trained to do so as opposed to them being random attacks. When the M.E. discovers no canine blood or hair on the victims and that the victims' seeming bite marks contain ecstasy laced human saliva, coupled with the killings having taken place on full moon nights, the team believes the unsub is having drug induced psychosis believing himself to be a werewolf. However, because of the bite marks having been made by something non-human, they further believe that the unsub, rather than suffering from a psychotic break, is conscious of his activities having fashioned a mouthpiece for himself mimicking that of a canine. It may be the encounters the unsub had with a subsequent victim, the first female, and with a youth named Chad Higgins, a runaway from the foster care system, that may provide some missing pieces to the puzzle of the unsub's identity and why he is compelled to kill in the park. Through this case, Alvez can't help but be preoccupied about his blind date before the case with Lisa Douglas, she the first woman in some time with who he believes he could have something special.
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The next case for the BAU is assisting DC police in an active homicide, that of Andrew Hirota, an asset fund manager killed in his office. His shaken associate, Abigail Fuller, who was also in the office at the time of the murder, was gagged and bound by the masked unsub, Fuller who was otherwise not physically hurt and who states that the unsub was dressed in all black like riot police. She also states that their company was going through difficult financial times having lost a lot of money over the past year, including for their investor clients. Hirota was killed by multiple shallow slashes all over his body, his blood used to scrawl what looks to be a serpentine staff on the office wall, which his body was posed facing. The insignia is generally used to signify healing. It isn't until the M.E.'s examination that they discover a message written in code placed into Hirota's throat. With Garcia and Reid breaking the code, they discover the message is a manifesto railing against institutions of power, especially those in law, finance and religion as the causes of social ills. The writer or writers - as the manifesto uses "we" instead of "I" - believes themselves to be the cure, hence the probable use of the serpentine staff insignia. The BAU, however, does know that they are dealing with one unsub, the use of the word "we" used as means to signify power and narcissistic tendencies. They also deem that that the message was solely for their eyes rather than it being a public manifesto, signifying the unsub's want to indulge in a game with the FBI to see who is smarter. Three subsequent victims later all similar to the first build upon the initial evidence and point to the victims being specifically targeted as people. It is the fact that the last victim, family court judge Scott Taveras, survived his attack, and whose girlfriend, Elena Duran being a possible victim but who instead managed to scare the unsub attacker away, that may provide the biggest clues as to the unsub's identity and his motives. JJ can't help but be preoccupied throughout the case by an email received and cc'd to Prentiss sent by Assistant Director Linda Barnes asking to meet, that meeting which ends up taking place immediately following the conclusion of this case. The last time JJ received such a message, she was removed from the team.
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Almost immediately following their last case, the BAU is called to New Orleans, Louisiana where ten dead bodies, recently deceased, have been found in a vandalized crypt. All ten are burnt beyond recognition, each body being drained of its blood. Due to other evidence, the team believes the murders may be ritualistic and related to voodoo. The identification of the first five victims results in a mixed victimology across races, genders, ages and socioeconomic status, with three having been homeless and two working professionals. The M.E. is also able to determine that all victims were killed by large doses of ketamine, with the exsanguination and the burning, where the unsub used rubbing alcohol as an accelerant, occurring post-mortem. When a further victim emerges alive, the team believes they know the unsub's targets: anyone who displays any open symptoms of being sick, his mission to put the targets out of their misery, with voodoo not factoring into the crimes. Beyond the ten in the crypt and the few others discovered after the team's arrival in the city, J.J. comes to the conclusion that the unsub had an original target who has yet to be discovered. The discovery of the original victim will help the team discover the identity of the unsub. The team is without Prentiss on this case, she staying behind in Quantico to meet with Assistant Director Linda Barnes, and J.J. placed in the role of acting unit chief for this case. The team, especially J.J. and Simmons, are most concerned as J.J. had already met with Barnes and told in confidence only scant pieces of the reason for the meeting with Prentiss, while Simmons' prior dealing with Barnes was in her dismantling of the IRT of which Simmons was then a member. The meeting between Barnes and Prentiss is on the surface an annual review, this one important on the first anniversary of Reid being jailed, but Prentiss begins to believe that beyond Barnes' own ambition to become Director that she has a specific agenda about which she is not being forthright. Prentiss has to decide to play nice or fight back against Barnes' hardball tactics.
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The BAU's next case will be the first with J.J. as acting unit chief following Prentiss' suspension, J.J. not happy about the means of this promotion. The entire team is also not happy that Barnes hand-picked this case as what she considers an "easy win" and that she too will be joining them in the field. While one member takes action to show displeasure in Barnes' actions, they all know that Barnes' end goal is to dismantle the unit, she doing so by picking them off one by one, or if the unit is able to survive that she recreate it in her own vision. The case takes the team to St. Louis, Missouri, where four young roommates have been murdered in their home, they bound and gagged, and stabbed multiple times. Based on social media, the house seemed to be the focus of the group's extended social circle, and that the roommates acted like a family, each member fulfilling a specific role. Upon arriving in St. Louis, the team further learns that there are three other roommates who were not home at the time and thus escaped the murders: Rachel Willow who at the last minute ended up staying with her sister for the night, Corinne Jordan, a flight attendant, who was overseas for work at the time, and Larry Scanlon, who for other reasons was not at the house at the time. With the evidence on hand, Barnes is certain that Larry is the unsub. The rest of the team members are not as quick to jump to the same conclusion, this only one of the many battles in the field between the team members and Barnes. Only the resolution of the case will show if Barnes or the team has the upper hand, at least at this point in time, in their internal battle. Meanwhile back in DC, Prentiss is taking the first step in getting back to work, only it's not quite the step the team would expect. Only Reid may be able to provide some perspective on the matter due to what happened between him and Prentiss in Mexico.
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It's been two weeks since Barnes has reassigned the BAU team members, and no one is settling into their new position well. Besides Rossi who was forced into retirement and who has his own issues in his post-FBI life, Prentiss arguably has the biggest adjustment in what is obviously designed to be a disciplinary demotion. Even those still in the skeleton BAU - JJ as conditional chief, and Alvez and Simmons as the remaining profilers - are facing challenges in that Barnes has not approved any of the cases JJ has brought to her. JJ calculates that twenty-six people have died as a result of Barnes denying the BAU these cases. But Garcia stumbles onto some material in her work in cybercrimes that JJ believes is appropriate. Despite Barnes denying that case as well believing it to be a fake, JJ convenes the old team who agree to work on the case on the sly with Prentiss back at the helm. They all go into it knowing that Barnes will eventually find out, and regardless of if they are able to solve the case, Barnes may end up firing them all. They believe that the case is a serial murder case, the unsub who has taken a series of three time stamped photographs of a young woman, the first a posed photo, the second where she is seemingly drugged, then third and final photo taken post-mortem with her dressed in white lingerie. A fourth later time stamped photograph is included of a different but similar looking woman in that posed position, she who the team knows is meant to be the next victim. As the team works on the case, they may find that they have a few simpatico people in the FBI. However, they hit a roadblock when they know to solve the case, they need Barnes' assistance. As such, they have to decide if it is worth the risk to approach her directly about what they're doing.
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The team heads to small town Guymon, Oklahoma to investigate a home invasion, burglary and murder of the homeowner, Mark Wilson. The unsub in the case had most recently committed similar crimes in a home in equally small town Campo, Colorado, killing the homeowner, Sam Franklin. Both victims were husbands and fathers, Caucasian, hard working midwestern types. Both men were severely beaten with something the unsub had found in the house, and had their mouths cut at the corners to be posed with an exaggerated smile. Also in both cases, the unsub had broke into the isolated home while it was empty, seemingly lying in wait for the victim in each situation to return home. In the Wilson situation, there is an eyewitness, the Wilsons' seven year old son, Dylan Wilson, who, before he stopped talking due to the trauma, said that the person who killed his father was dressed as a clown, which the team has to figure out is real or a manifestation of a clown phobia. As the unsub was probably aware of Dylan in the house, the team believes the unsub is specifically targeting strong male types. Garcia is able to discover other home invasions in Colorado prior to Franklin's murder which they believe to be tied to the case in that a clown-like smiley face was carved into the doors of each home located in an isolated area. As such, the team is able to determine that the unsub is traveling the back roads perhaps to some ultimate destination. Not only for his own welfare, the team hopes that Dylan will overcome this trauma to be able to speak again to provide more information that can lead them to the unsub.
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The unit heads to Chicago, Illinois, where two women in two separate incidents in two days were found murdered in their respective home, each woman with a single stab wound in the back - the cause of death - and a red rose placed in each of the victim's mouth. Otherwise, the two women on the surface are vastly different, the first a younger woman living a promiscuous lifestyle, and the second a middle aged wife, albeit one in a troubled marriage. By the time the unit members arrive in the city, a third victim is discovered. Each of the crime scenes had a different calling card each which Lewis is able to determine is associated with a different pop music standard from the 1930s to 1950s. The unit members are also able to determine that each of the victims were night owls, either by nature or by necessity for work. The complicating matter is that each of the women were targeted by the unsub, who the unit members believe was in some sort of romantic relationship with each of the victims. They have to figure out how the unsub would have had the long game to find each of the vastly different women. The one unit member not on the case is Rossi, who has taken a few days off to remain in DC as ex-wife number three, Krystall Richards - an ex Las Vegas croupier, the two who were only married for thirty-six hours before sobriety led to them annulling the marriage - is coming to the city for her daughter's wedding. Rossi and Krystall have not seen each other since the annulment. But in meeting with Krystall, her daughter Portia and Portia's fiancé Wick Rollins, Rossi is unable to turn off his professional mind, red flags which are raised and which he feels he needs to investigate.
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The BAU is asked to take charge in dealing with an active hostage situation downtown, it at the offices of the American Legal Defense Council (ALDC) which occupies one floor of an office building. This case hits the unit especially hard when they learn directly from Simmons that his wife Kristy just started working there two weeks ago and is probably one of the two dozen or so hostages. As such, Prentiss has to be careful in where to place Simmons on the case, he wanting to do whatever necessary to save his wife's life. By the time the unit starts working on the case, they learn that the unknown hostage takers have secured the floor with explosive devices at each point of entry, not enough to bring the office tower down, but enough to kill everyone on that floor. When the lead hostage taker makes contact, the unit discovers the motive for the commandeering of the ALDC offices: the release of death row prisoner, Leonard Hagland, who is scheduled to be executed at the end of the weekend. The demand is Hagland's immediate release, with one hostage killed every fifteen minutes until the demand is met. Hagland is the leader of a separatist group called the Horsemen who do not believe in official authority, such as that of the FBI or the ALDC which helped bring him to justice. Through the communication with the lead hostage taker and eventually with Hagland, the unit hopes that they can discover more about the hostage takers and how to use that information to their advantage. Through it all, Kristy tries to make contact with her husband, while Simmons looks for any opportunity, official or unofficial, to hasten the process to save Kristy and the other hostages.
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The BAU is called in by the Center for Disease Control in an expected case of bio-terrorism in Arlington, Virginia, where two people, over the span of twenty-four hours, spontaneously bled to death, the symptoms mirroring the effects of Ebola. The two victims, a divorced female commercial loans officer at a bank and a married male civilian analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, had peripheral contact with each other which could be the connection in this case. The M.E. determines that the substance with which they are dealing is easily obtained rat poison, meaning that there is probably only one unsub instead of a terrorist organization at play. With a subsequent target, the unit is able to determine that the unsub is targeting the Arlington business community, the analyst the outlier among the victims. They believe the bank is the key to the unsub's rage. Food as a method of attack is important, but it also means that the unsub could easily poison mass amounts of food at a number of targets and locations. In addition to Reid who is still on a mandatory sabbatical, the team is also down Garcia for this case, she, who will be working remotely when she can, for the first time attending the parole board hearing for Jesse Wilson at San Quentin, he the drunk driver who killed her mother and stepfather twenty years ago. Of Garcia's many stepbrothers, only the youngest, Carlos Garcia, will be attending the hearing, he who will making a victim impact statement on behalf of the entire family, all who are determined to see Wilson remain behind bars for the entire twenty-five years of his sentence. As Garcia deals with this personal issue, she struggles with the entire notion of the choices one makes in life, some bad which lead to tragic consequences like the death of her parents.
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The unit heads to Taos, New Mexico where in the span of a week two people were killed, each victim - a male teacher and female clinic physician - with a hole drilled into the exact same spot on the left side of their head. The M.E. is able to determine that the drilling took place pre-mortem and was the cause of death. By the time the unit arrives in Taos, a third victim, a male construction worker, is discovered. One lead is that the physician, Stacy Uqalla, was on the phone with her husband, Michael Uqalla, at the time of her murder, he being able to hear the unsub looking/asking for some specific unnamed item. The unit members discover that all three victims had money issues, and leading out of a subsequent attack and from the nature of the drill holes believe that the attacks have some auditory component to them, with the unsub possibly suffering from humming in the ears, such phenomena which was first attributed within the general population to the Taos area in the early 1990s. The unit members believe the unsub is trying to find the source of the hum, with the victims being anyone who prevents him from doing so or whose help he enlists cannot stop the hum. As such, the unit members have to go on a search for what the unsub believes is the source.
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Reid receives notification via anonymous email of the hidden whereabouts of Owen Quinn, an FBI agent with the Violent Crimes Apprehension Program (ViCAP) until he quit one year ago. He aspired to be part of the BAU, but broke protocol in a potential case, leading to he quitting to pursue the case on his own in his obsession on the issue. That case, the unsub who he coined the Strangler, had one known victim, although he believed there were others, he fitting missing persons into his victimology to support his theory, most of those missing persons who ended up being found and not potential victims of this supposed unsub. The many questions of the BAU, the answers to which would will help them solve the mystery of Quinn's situation, include: who the anonymous email sender is; what the email sender's motive is; and why the email sender chose Reid, who barely knows Quinn. Through questioning Quinn, Quinn's family (the case which led to the breakup of his marriage), and his ViCAP colleagues, the BAU has to decipher if Quinn is telling the truth about what has happened to him over the past year or if it is just a story in hiding that he is the Strangler himself. That story is that he was held captive by who would seem to the outside world as a model suburban family, the parents, purportedly the Stranglers, who tortured him, while their late teenaged son, Theo, the only one in the household who showed him any sympathy.
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When the mummified remains of numerous victims are found in the walls of an elderly couple's remote South Carolina home, Rossi, J.J., and Simmons are dispatched to track down a trail of clues that date back over 20 years. The hunt becomes urgent after BAU learns the killer has a specific ritual of when to strike, and like clockwork another person goes missing. Also, Rossi reconnects with his ex-wife, Krystall.
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The BAU must determine what connects six people that each received a mysterious package in order to identify the Unsub. Also, Simmons and his wife Kristy must deal with their son, who got suspended from school.
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Soon after the BAU steps in to help local law enforcement isolate a prime suspect for a ritualistic murder in Tallahassee, Fla., a second person who is related to the first victim is killed under similar circumstances. Also, Prentiss is concerned about Garcia's behavior in the aftermath of her abduction and has an idea of how to help with the healing process.
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The BAU investigates a spooky local ghost story of the "Tall Man" and the clues it provides when two people go missing in the woods of East Allegheny's Dead Man's Conservatory, and a third mysteriously surfaces the following day with limited details as to what happened to her friends. To assist with the case, JJ reluctantly returns to her hometown, triggering emotional flashbacks to age 11 and her older sister's tragic death.
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The BAU heads to Bethesda, Md., to investigate four murders in the span of three days along the eastern seaboard. The crimes become personal for Alvez, when the team discovers there are ties to his time spent five years ago working alongside the DEA and the Mexican police force in pursuit of the most notorious hitman in Mexico. Also, Alvez and his girlfriend, Lisa, decide to move in together.
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It's literally a race against the clock for the BAU to capture the vigilantes behind a series of attacks taking place every 27 minutes in the nation's capital. Prentiss and Unit Chief Andrew Mendoza lead the effort to identify the Unsubs and what's motivating them.
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The BAU investigates a double homicide and kidnapping in New Hampshire. Also, Rossi's plans to elevate his relationship with Krystall don't go as planned.
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A professor from Lewis' past tips off the BAU to an alarming number of overdose deaths of patients who just completed rehab.
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Prentiss plans a first date with Mendoza but the evening is cut short. Prentiss faces her past when the team investigates murders of businessmen who have had their hearts taken.
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The BAU team heads to Portland, Ore., to investigate a chilling abduction that may be linked to a local couple killed in their home a week earlier.
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Prentiss and the BAU team fly to Iowa to investigate the disappearance of three 10-year-old children who appear to have been abducted from their homes in the middle of the night, with surveillance video from a neighborhood park as their only lead to finding the children's whereabouts.
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Rossi questions his actions in the aftermath of a near-death struggle with a serial killer who appears to have outsmarted the BAU.
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Wedding bells are ringing as Rossi prepares to marry Krystall. But first, the BAU team travels to Los Angeles to investigate a series of fatal shootings in broad daylight following car accidents.
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The team search for multiple serial killers. One who removes women's faces and another who cuts up men's torsos. J.J. and Spencer are still reeling after her admission. J.J.'s life is put in danger.
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JJ is in the hospital clinging to life having been seriously wounded in Everett Lynch and his daughter Grace Lynch's successful escape from custody. Besides Will, Reid is standing vigil at the hospital, he who is angry at himself for not realizing sooner that JJ was in trouble. If JJ doesn't make it, Reid will not only lose arguably his best friend, but he and she will not have been able to clear the air about the strain that has existed between the two of them since their previous case. Reid is also torn in two different directions emotionally as he is called by the facility where he recently moved his mother, they wanting him to come right away. With the Lynches, the team knows they they have disrupted Everett's plans - he a highly organized man - and thus Everett and Grace will be working on the fly. The team believes they have to find any connection that either Everett and/or Grace would have in the DC area for that support they need, including financial, to go off the grid. If Prentiss is able to speak to JJ about the shooting, they may get another piece to what is happening with Everett and Grace. Also working for them is the fact that they still have Roberta in custody, who, despite being a criminal in her own right, would probably want to protect Grace at all cost, perhaps even at Everett's expense.
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The members of the BAU enjoy a Saturday off in vastly different ways. While Rossi and Prentiss help Simmons assemble a new crib, Garcia leads a hacking competition, and Dr. Reid strikes up a conversation with a woman named Maxine
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Following a series of fatal shootings, the BAU team travels to Des Plaines, Ill to investigate what appears to be a copycat serial killer. There efforts are thrown off track when members of the BAU are targeted.
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After a father and daughter get kidnapped, a former foe of the BAU returns with very specific demands for Dr. Reid that give a whole new meaning to the phrase "wheels up".
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When the BAU team travels to Denver to investigate several murders, Prentiss is forced to evaluate her relationship with Special Agent Andrew Mendoza (Stephen Bishop).
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Prentiss and J.J. decide about their future as the BAU goes to Beaumont, Texas, to investigate a series of killed businessmen.
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It has been a year since Rossi nearly died at the hands of Everett Lynch, a.k.a. "The Chameleon," and he has developed some new theories, with inspiration from his former partner, Jason Gideon. The BAU team sets out on an epic hunt to capture Lynch.
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Series Finale. Following an explosive face-to-face encounter with Everett Lynch, Dr. Reid suffers from a brain injury and, while experiencing hallucinations, is visited by ghosts from his past. Also, the BAU makes a shocking discovery about Lynch that affects Rossi personally, and the entire BAU team comes together to celebrate Rossi's retirement.
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When a family annihilator abducts a teen girl, the BAU works the case on either side of the country to save her. But an unlikely connection to a mysterious kit leads to a bigger investigation and at the center of it is Penelope Garcia.
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