Criminal Minds -- The Avenger

Original Airing: April 10, 2013

The Replicator was still underground, but after the last few episodes he now has new cases to replicate. I really do think there’s something off about Blake, but I’m probably projecting. I just think she fits my profile of The Replicator. She has an axe to grind with the FBI for letting her take the fall when the wrong suspect was arrested. And she’s still holding a grudge against Strauss.

This week’s case had me changing my mind a few times in how I felt about the killings. It was another good episode with a lot of twists.

The episode begins in 1988 when the then mayor is burying in Bronson Springs, Colorado, a time capsule that will be opened in 2013. In 1988 Bronson Springs won the title of City Of The Future, which was what inspired them to bury the time capsule to show the future what things had been like in 1988. Unfortunately, when the capsule is opened, a severed head is found.

The head is identified as missing twenty-three year old, Wade Burke. The team is called in when a headless body is found and the head is missing from the body. This time the victim is local law man, Charlie Ligg. The team surmises that the Unsub has been waiting twenty-five years for the time capsule to be opened and the severed head to be discovered and now he’s ready to make up for lost time.

When the team talks with Wade’s mother, she seems to be holding something back, She says her husband was a bit controlling of Wade, when the team wonders why. Several weeks before Wade disappeared he talked about leaving Bronson Springs. When the team digs a little deeper into Wade’s past they find out he’s not as squeaky clean as his reputation claims he is. He had 6 DUI’s and hit and run a pedestrian while under the influence. Wade’s father covered it up and that’s why he was so controlling of him.

Charlie Ligg was also hiding something. Lauded as a great family man, no one knew that he had a secret family living in another town. It also turned out Charlie wasn’t too honest of a cop, either.

The next victim is Wanda Sullivan. She’s the editor of the local newspaper. I wasn’t really sorry when she got it. The woman acted like she ran the town and apparently used her newspaper to do it. Back in 1988 she began publicly printing in her newspaper whenever someone had a run-in with the law to embarrass them into behaving so the town could win the award it did. It seems while Wanda was publicly anti-drug in the privacy of her home she was growing a patch of marijuana out in her garden.

Since all three victims weren’t living up to the pristine reputations they had, Hotch believes the Unsub is targeting people who are hypocrites. It seems Hotch is right when the Unsub comes up to Todd Backus as he’s fishing and takes exception because after he catches a fish, he throws it back in the water. He seems to feel it’s unnecessarily cruel to the fish have a hook inserted and removed from their mouth. So he shoots Backus and takes off his head.

At this point I thought this guy was a total nut. That he was just like the Unsub from last week who saw child abusers wherever he looked even though most of the people were innocent. Then we learned there was more to the story and I kind of felt maybe the Unsub was justified in what he was doing. He was just a vigilante trying to find justice for his wife.

All the victims were all tied to an event that took place in 1988 involving a sexual assault involving Wade Burke that got covered up by Charlie Ligg and Wanda Sullivan. And Todd Backus had witnessed it and was silenced by being given a job by Wade’s father.

The Unsub, Tory Chapman, heard Leanne giving her statement that she was sexually assaulted by Wade Burke. Afterwards, he killed Wade and secretly placed his head in the time capsule, then he stalked Leanne to Pueblo when she left town. He insinuated himself in her life by becoming a fry cook at the place she worked as a waitress. And as they say, the rest is history. He’s been waiting all these years to get revenge on all the people who helped cover up

That’s when the next twist happened that put an entirely new spin on what Tory was doing. The team went over Leanne’s statement from that night and they believe she made it all up. When Leanne finds the heads in Tory’s freezer, she realizes what he’s been doing. She confesses to him the truth of what really happened that night. She was in love with Wade and they’d been fighting. She was afraid what her father would do to her if he found out about her and Wade, so she lied she was assaulted. And when she tells Tory she and her family took $30,000 from Wade’s family to keep quiet that sends him off the rails.

He takes Leanne to the town courthouse where he displays the heads of Ligg, Sullivan and Backus. He declares she’s worse than all of them and is about to cut her head off so she can join the other heads in the display case when the team gets the drop on him.

As the team arrests him he’s already planning his insanity plea. He starts saying how someone who cuts people heads off isn’t sane and they shouldn’t be put in jail. They should be put in a mental institution until doctors are convinced they’re better and they can be released back in society. He even adds he can wait no matter how long it takes. He’s not kidding. He waited 25 years to finish killing the people he thought deserved to die for their hypocrisy.

This is exactly what I brought up in the blog a few weeks back. Why are they so determined to bring these monsters in alive? If they can cop an insanity plea, they’ll be let back out on the street and be a danger to more people. [It could also happen if they get an early release because of prison overcrowding.] If Tory is able to cop an insanity plea and convince doctors he’s well, the first person he’s going to go after when he gets out is Lying Leanne, so he can finish cutting off her head. And if her parents are still alive after that, they may be next on his list.

I mean, the people the BAU go after aren’t your garden variety killers. They’re serial killers. They didn’t kill in the heat of passion. If they get taken in alive and somehow get back out on the street they’ll start killing more people. Yeah, it may be a horrible thing to say, but if you can take them down, do it.

In Tory’s case, it didn’t appear he even knew the people he’d overheard covering up the assault case. He appointed himself judge and executioner and appointed himself Leanne’s hero getting her justice. He didn’t even have the excuse he knew Leanne. She was a stranger to him and he insinuated himself in her life. And that’s not sane to do something like that. He most likely will get put away in a mental institution.

This was a very good case. The cases seem to be getting better as we head towards the season finale.