S3E19 - “Tabula Rasa”
We open in Roanoake VA in 2004. We see Hotch and Morgan moving with a SWAT team through an apartment building. They stop at a door, guns drawn, and Hotch calls out: “Brian Matloff- we’re with the FBI. We have a warrant for you arrest.” They break down the door and we a kokopelli statue immediately. The apartment appears to be empty, but seems to have lots of dream catchers and tapestries and that sort of thing. Morgan looks out the fire escape and sees Brian Matloff making an escape on to the roof. Morgan pursues him, and Matloff attempts to jump from the roof of his building to the next, and doesn’t make it. Morgan attempts to jump over and help him, but he doesn’t make it in time and Matloff falls… to his death?
Cut to Quantico VA, nowadays. 2008? Reid and Garcia have found Prentis’ yearbook picture. She looks like the lead singer of a new wave band. Think Siouxsie and The Banshees. Prentis is like “Okay very funny, you guys must’ve photo shopped it” and Garcia is like “Oh no we didn’t.” And Prentis is like “Oh no.” We learn about the Brian Matloff, aka the Blue Ridge Strangler. He allegedly killed three victims in the Blue Ridge Parkway. Apparently he’s been in a coma for four years, and just woke up. But the thing is- he doesn’t remember anything.
Hotch goes to meet CeeCee Hillenbrand (the original prosecutor on the case) at the hospital where Matloff has been living. Hotch asks her what her plan is and she says “Try him and fry him”. We are again reminded that Hotch used to be a prosecutor, and he warns Hillenbrand to be careful: “I got burned more than once when time changed the fabric of a case.” And she’s like: “Well time hasn’t changed the facts. He killed three people, maybe more. Maybe Rip Van Winkle is ready to come clean.” However these hopes are quickly shattered by a doctor who informs Hillenbrand and Hotch that Matloff has focal retrograde amnesia. So Matloff does not remember anything about himself or the murders.
Matloff is put in jail while he awaits trial. Rossi, Hotch and Hillenbrand discuss the original case. Matloff had a type, young, white, brunette and jogging early in the morning. Hillenbrand gets a call that her key witness on the case passed away two days ago. This witness placed Matloff at the park with Darci Corbett, victim number three. The other two victims were Celeste Fermai and April Sotherford. Hotch agrees to help Hillenbrand try to salvage the case while Rossi gets the rest of the team up to speed.
We flashback to Roanoke VA four years ago, the police have just found the body of Darci Corbett. We see baby Reid with baby Hotch and Morgan. And I guess we get a profile? Or at least Hotch asks Reid for observations about the crime scene and Reid gives them?
PROFILE
He uses a belt – it’s his signature
Tan line on the wrist means her watch is missing – he takes trophies
They’re always buried face down – a sign of remorse – he can’t bare looking them in the face
He’s opportunistic – these victims happen to be in the wrong place at the right time
Because Matloff was a member of the parks service he would approach his victims with a rouse (relating to his job). He would then bury them in the park so that he could revisit them when he was working. Darci Corbett’s father comes to the crime scene to identify the body? I don’t really know why he’s here tbh. But Reid talks to him and talks him out of identifying the body? So I don’t really know why he’s here right now. But also we can see that the picturesque park waterfall image in Matloff’s fall coma thing was where Darci’s body was found.
Cut back to present day times. Morgan tells the BAU the Matloff also had an interest in Native American mythology. Reid says: “There is a Native American believe that burying the body face down blocks traps the soul and prevents it from haunting the killer.” JJ asks if there could’ve been more victims, earlier victims where he was honing his skills, and Morgan agrees potentially, as with the three bodies they do have there is no escalation. Matloff apparently worked for the Park Service at the park at the time of the killings, specifically the waterfall section.
Meanwhile, Hillenbrand requests that Matloff undergo the process of brain fingerprinting. This will analyze Matloff’s brain to see if the memories of the murders are still in there. Matloff’s lawyer argues that this is basically junk science and that Matloff is not physically ready for this “I can’t in good conscious let them go poking around in his brain.” Hotch tells the court that the process is non invasive, they’ll just hook shit up to his body to monitor his physical response to graphic images. Matloff’s lawyer gets all worked up, but Matloff is like, “I wanna do it. Your honor every day I waken to this uh, nightmare of not knowing who or what I am. And if this test can really help me remember then whatever the consequences I want to do it”
Outside the courtroom Mr. Corbett shows up. He asks Reid if Matloff’s amnesia is real, and states he is concerned about the trial following through.
Matloff is ready to undergo brain fingerprinting. He asks Hotch: “You don’t have any doubts about me, what I am?” And Hotch is like “No I don’t.” However, Matloff passes the brain fingerprinting test with flying colors? So I guess he genuinely doesn’t remember or they got the wrong guy. Idk what the fuck this test is but the screen the analyst is reading has six categories that are: Determination, Boostrap Index, Probe Selected, Interaction, Subject Number, and Block Numbers. Lots of cuts of Matloff looking blankly at the screen. There’s a philosophical debate about the fact that now Matloff doesn’t have those memories, he’s a different person. But someone has to pay?
Matloff starts to have some flashbacks of what happened while in jail. A friendly jail guard / sheriff lady feels bad for Matloff and is nice to him. He requests a piece of paper and a pencil and she says she’ll get one for him. He also smells popcorn and is like “Do I like popcorn?”
Matloff stands trial. His attorney calls profiling a “pseudo science”. So obviously we hate him. Hotch explains that the BAU zeroed-in on a park service employee, using profiling to narrow down the 1,718 employees using deductive reasoning. We see a flashback where Morgan, Hotch and Reid are narrowing down the potential suspects:
We get more PROFILE?
He won’t be a new employee at the parks service
Cautious and organized – leaves behind no trace evidence
Bordering on paranoid – the kind of guy who needs to know exactly what the cops know, likely already inserted himself into the investigation
Morgan (in the flashback) meets Garcia for the first time. He asks Reid who the new analyst is and Reid is like “Gomez?” and Morgan is like “Hey Gomez” and where Garcia doesn’t respond he’s like “hey baby girl” and that gets her attention! And apparently Garcia then ran the names of park service workers who had made reports to the police regarding the Darci Corbett case, and Matloff was the only one,
Back in now times- JJ finds out that the only visitor Matloff ever had was a woman who came every six months: Nina Moore. Nina Moore is described by hospital staff as cautious and nervous, on the initial visit she didn’t even make it in the room. Apparently Nina Moore read to Matloff and seemed “concerned with his pain”. Rossi, Prentis and JJ discuss this. Prentis apparently called Matloff’s parents who informed her that he was adopted. So Nina Moore might be his birth mother? Based on the hospital’s description of Nina Moore, Rossi makes the leap that she’s Native American. Garcia then hacks into the Virginia Department of Social Services website because she can? So they can find Matloff’s mother? All of this seems very invasive and bad?
Back at the trial, Matloff’s defense attorney is questioning Hotch on the stand. He’s trying to pick apart profiling and behavioral analysis by bringing up times when the BAU has been wrong. Apparently the Baton Rouge killer- the BAU said he was white and living in the city. He was black and living in the suburbs. BTK- the BAU said he was divorced and impotent. He was actually married with two kids. The lawyer is like: “Having been wrong on those case, isn’t it possible that you were wrong about Brian Matloff? The fact is that behavioral analysis is intellectual guesswork. You probably couldn’t tell me the color of my socks with any greater accuracy then a carnival psychic.”
And then Hotch stone cold goes- “Charcoal grey. You match them to the color of your suit to appear taller. You also wear lifts and you’ve had the soles of your shoes replaced. One might think that you’re frugal but in fact you’re having financial difficulties. You wear a fake Rolex because you pawned the real one, probably to a bookie. Your vice is horses. Your blackberry has been buzzing on the table every 20 minutes, which happens to be the average time of posts from Colonial Downs. You’re not having a very good day. That’s because you pick horses like you practice law- by always taking the long shot.” Court is adjourned.
Cut to Nina Moore’s house. JJ and Rossi confront her about being Matloff’s biological mother. She tells them that she was very young when she got pregnant with Matloff. She later married and had a family. Five years ago in 2003, before Matloff’s coma, Matloff called Nina out of the blue. She tells Rossi and JJ that the adoption records were sealed, but Matloff had them unsealed and wanted a relationship with Nina. And Nina told him that she wasn’t interested in a relationship. Rossi believes this was Matloff’s stressor- his biological mother’s rejection. Rossi asks why Nina visited Matloff at the hospital and she said it’s because she felt bad and wanted to be there for him. We also learn that Matloff sent his mother “gifts” which were really his trophies.
Meanwhile, Matloff is having more flashbacks. The lady prison guard who escorts him to and from the trail feels bad for him. She brings him popcorn on the way to court in the morning. She’s like “Do you remember?” And he’s like “I think I’m starting to.” As Matloff is being escorted into the courtroom, Mr. Corbett shows up with a gun and is sneaking up behind Matloff, but Reid stops him and talks him out of it.
In the courtroom Nina takes the stand. She basically rehashes what she went over with the BAU, including the “gifts”. It’s looking pretty bad for Matloff.
After the trial Matloff attacks the female security guard who was nice to him, he doesn’t kill her but he knocks her out and steals her gun. He then steals a law clerk’s car and takes off. He heads to the picturesque park with the waterfalls where he worked / buried his victims. He sees a brunette jogging past and leaps out from behind a tree to attack her. The BAU tracks him down, they find pictures he’s drawn on the papers that the lady guard gave him, and they see the waterfall. So they realize he’s going back to that park. They quickly find Matloff holding the body of, we presume the jogger we saw earlier.
We see the jogger begging for her life, Matloff is holding her in his lap. The BAU approaches, guns drawn, and we realize that the girl Matloff is holding is actually a badly decomposed body. He says: “She was my first. The minute my feet hit the ground I knew right where to find her. I killed them.” Hotch asks him is he remembers he says: “Everything. Every moment. Every small detail. But it’s still not real. It’s like the memories belong to someone else.” Matloff is taken into custody and we learn that he’s pleading out – “guilty”. He’ll get life without parole.
Reid shows up at Mr. Corbett’s house and gives Mr. Corbett the souvenir Matloff took from Darci, a watch that was Darci’s grandmother. He asks Mr. Corbett about the inscription on the back that says “Glory in the flower?”. Mr. Corbett says: “It’s Wordsworth. What though the radiance that was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back…”
“What though the radiance that was once so bright, be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.”
Rating Criteria
Criminal/Serial Killer: 12/20
Character development/ character arcs: 12/20
Forensics/Context: 10/20
Script writing: 15/20
Background characters: 10/20
Overall: 59/100