We open in Bristol VA, there’s a family getting into a car at night, ready to head off to a football game. We meet parents Sam and Candance Delily, and their son whose name is Lyle I guess? Anyways, they are ready to head off to the big game, but can’t find the tickets. Candance goes inside to grab the tickets from the kitchen counter. The door is open, the windows are open, and it’s a windy, creepy night. Candance tries to turn on the living room light, but it zaps her? She’s all spooked, but she gets the tickets, and Sam meets her at the door and is all impatient. As they’re about to walk out, the phone rings, and Candance thinks it may be their daughter Jenny checking in. So these parents literally named their children Jenny and Lyle. Like… can we just marinate on that for a hot second. Jenny and Lyle.

Sam is like “Fuck Jenny, she probably just wants to talk about a new dress she wants. Let’s go see some football”, and rushes her out the door. We hear the voicemail message, and it turns out it is Jenny. And she has some alarming things to say. “I’m in trouble, so much trouble. I know you taught me to not be afraid, but I’m so afraid.”

Cut to- Rossi’s house. It’s a very like, gold theme? He looks like he’s in his study, there are bookcases with fancy books, golden curtains, a fireplace with golden statues standing on it. He’s on vacation, and he’s supposed to be working on his new book, but he is SO bored and is not getting it done. Writer’s block is REAL. Hotch calls Rossi and Rossi is so hyped he goes “I hope you want me to come in” and Hotch tells him Rossi that the bodies of two girls were found in Bristol, VA, tortured and electrocuted. Rossi asks if either girls made a phone call, remember we heard Jenny’s phone call earlier, and Hotch is like- yes they did make calls. But without the signature.

Cut to BAU Headquarters in Quantico, VA. Hotch tells the team about Jenny Delily whose body was found yesterday. The first victim was Kiera Kirkland. We learn about The Butcher, a sexual sadist who killed 20 blonde women in Bristol VA from 1984 to 1993 and then vanished. Apparently, The Butcher was one of Rossi’s old cases. Rossi shows up with his files, and he is uncertain whether the Butcher is really back, or a copycat. Because they profiled the Butcher as being in his 40s at the time he was killing, which would make him in his 60s now.

Cut to the BAU Jet. They’re talking victimology. I just want to point out that Prentis calls the victims “vics”. The phone calls the vics make are on disposal cell phones. We know that Jenny left a message for her parents, but Kiera actually spoke to her fiancé on the phone before she was killed. The BAU talks about the previous cases from 20 years ago. And suddenly everyone is saying “vic”. I just feel like it’s rude? Rossi tells us that 13 vics left answering machine messages for loved ones, 5 talked to somebody, and 2 reached no one. Prentis points out that the The Butcher made his vics say they were “enjoying” the torture on their messages, which is not something the two recent vics did. Morgan also asks Rossi what is in his box of files and Rossi goes- “EVIL”.

Cut to Bristol VA. Detective Green is the lead on the case, and he is positive that the Butcher is not back, that they are dealing with a copycat. Although Rossi told the team in Quantico that he also believes that they are dealing with a copycat killer, he acts like he thinks it’s actually The Butcher with this detective.

Quick cut to the morgue- Morgan and Prentis talk to the ME who tells them some horrific things about what happened to the girls. They were tortured with electric items, burned and assaulted. She also tells the BAU that the girls were likely knocked unconscious during the abduction, which differs from the smooth-talking of the OG butcher. The ME also notes two different sets of knife wounds, so the BAU is starting to suspect that there may be two killers working together.

Cut to, a man bringing groceries in from the back of a van. A blonde girl named Anna walks by and says “Hi Colby.” She tells him that she “Got a job at Joe’s coffee” and tells him “come by sometime”. Sparks are flying. Colby goes “sounds good”. This romantic tet a tet is interrupted by Colby’s elderly father, who struts out of the house and down the driveway and yells “I’M HUNGRY” at the top of his lungs. The blonde girl quickly excuses himself, and the old man yells at Colby, who, to be clear, is his son. But the old man complains that Colby is a bad caretaker.

Cut back to Bristol PD headquarters, and the team interviews the families. Hotch is meeting with the Dellily family. And Rossi and Reid meet with Kiera’s fiancé. They ask about the specific language that the victims use. Reid goes “Would you say that her lexical features are consistent with her vernacular?” and Kiera’s fiancé, who again, literally received an “I’m being murdered” call from the love of his life, is like… what? Rossi clarifies “ARE THE WORDS HERS?”

Cut to the old man and Colby. Colby has a slide projector and is quizzing the old man on different locations. The old man does pretty good, but there are a few locations he does not recognize. He gets very angry and confrontational with Colby and this all culminates with him demanding that Colby take him out.

Reid and Rossi listen to some of the Butcher’s old tapes, and in one of the recordings, Rossi was able to digitize the Butcher’s voice. It is… very creepy. But at this point, it’s pretty obvious that the old man we saw earlier who was yelling at Colby, is the Butcher. As they listen back to the older tapes, they realize that the Butcher is actually making his victims recite what some of the original victims said. For example, Jenny Delilly’s message is verbatim what the Butcher’s last known victim, Susan Cole, said in her message. The BAU is now certain that they are looking for a killing team.

Cut to, somewhere in Bristol. The Butcher finds a blonde girl in a secluded area and runs over to her. He says: “Miss, you gotta help me, my caretaker had a heart attack!” So, of course, she hurries over, and Colby snatches her inside a van and knocks her out. Cut to The Butcher’s lair, and Colby and The Butcher torture and kill the blonde girl, whose name is Heather Langely. The BAU finds her body sometime later, and Rossi points out that both the positioning of Heather’s body and the disposal site directly match the Butcher’s last victim Susan Cole’s crime scene.

Rossi and Hotch get into it about whether it’s the Butcher or not. Rossi is CONVINCED that the Butcher is somehow involved, if not one of the members of the copycat duo. Rossi asks Hotch to hold back the profile because he has a “gut feeling”. And Hotch goes: “Do you really want to delay the profile for a gut feeling?”

PROFILE

These unsubs are considerably organized
They most likely have some sort of secondary location that they use to torture their victims
Their skill level is evidenced by the high-risk public nature of their abductions
They’re able to lure their intended victims with some kind of ruse. They then blitz them with overwhelming force.
We think that this is the work of two of the Butcher’s fans, and that they are going to strike again.

Hotch tells Rossi that if he believes the Butcher is involved, he can continue to investigate the case under that guise. But the rest of the team is going to focus on copycat unsubs.

Cut to, The Butcher and Colby. They discuss the murder of Heather Langely. I actually love this dialogue, I’m going to insert a large quote from the audio. But the gist is that The Butcher tells Colby he was incredibly helpful and has never been this helpful before. And Colby is like, what about that one time when I was a child and I helped with that woman in the hallway? And the butcher goes “Well, how are you gonna help me today?”

Colby has pictures of various blondes they’ve been stalking, and asks The Butcher to choose one to abduct. The Butcher suggests Anna, the neighbor girl who works at Joe’s Coffee. And Colby tells the Butcher she’s too close, they can’t touch her. So they go after a woman who is a knife saleswoman.

There’s a long montage of the BAU doing research and running theories by one another. This ends when Rossi shows up and is like- the unsub pair we’re looking for is a father/son duo. Rossi suggests that the Butcher groomed his son. Detective Green from Bristol PD shows up and tells them that Heather Langely did leave a message. When the BAU listens to the message, Heather says that she “enjoyed it”. The BAU discusses the fact that there were 20 victims and only 18 calls, meaning that there were 2 callers who did not make calls at all. The BAU is going to pull their files and focus on them and why they didn’t call. These two victims were Sylvia Marks and Karen Bachner.

Back with the Butcher and Colby, Colby is digging a grave in their backyard. The Butcher is hungry and his stories aren’t on, he is clearly suffering from Alzheimers. Colby reminds the Butcher that they killed the knife saleswoman yesterday, which we actually saw them do on screen. But The Butcher does not remember and tells Colby that it’s sloppy work and accuses Colby of hunting without him.

At Bristol PD, they discuss Sylvia Marks and Karen Bachner. Sylvia Marks was the Butcher’s first victim, so she likely didn’t make a call because the Butcher didn’t know what he wanted yet. The team focuses on Karen Bachner, whose husband at the time of her death, Lee Mullens, claimed he didn’t have an answering machine. Turns out Lee Mullens and Karen Bachner had a son together- COLBY. The audacity of the parents in this episode to name their children thinks like Lyle and Colby.

Colby was Lee Mullens’ adopted son, as Karen had him 2 years before she married Lee. The BAU suggest that perhaps Karen didn’t make a call, because the most important person to her, her son Colby, was already in the room with her. And Garcia tells the team that Lee Mullens and Colby are LICENSED ELECTRICIANS.

Cut back to The Butcher and Colby. So Lee Mullens, and Colby. After their fight, The Butcher is sulking, so Colby decides to go abduct Anna. As he drives to Joe’s Coffee, which, remember, she just got a job at, the BAU shows up at Lee Mullen’s house. They knock the door down and find Lee, aka the Butcher, and he is very disorientated and running around in boxers and a wife beater t-shirt. It’s very sad because he’s a killer, but he’s also clearly mentally affected. And as Rossi and Hotch pull guns on him, he pisses himself.

They find a fresh grave in the backyard, and a note from Colby saying he’s going to abduct a new girl. The BAU decides to move all the police cars out of the neighborhood in the event that Colby comes back, and they do move the cars, but it’s too late. Colby pulls up with Anna knocked out in the car, and sees the cop cars leaving, and he takes off. The BAU find Alzheimer’s medication and discuss how Colby has started assisting his father in murdering again, to help him remember things.

Rossi questions Lee Mullens, a little aggressively for my taste, because, again Mullens is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Mullens vacillates between being genuinely confused as to what is going on, and remembering fragments of his time as a serial killer. He tells Rossi that he’s scared, and Rossi tells him that he has no right to be scared. He tells Rossi about using a Lexwell, which was used for electroshock therapy. So the BAU are like- okay, Colby is using an ECT machine in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Garcia finds a mental hospital where Mullens worked back in the day, which has a few operational buildings, but the rest is abandoned. So the BAU hurry over to find Colby.

Meanwhile, Colby has kidnapped Anna and she’s pleading for her release. Colby has her tied up, but it’s clear that he’s devolving without Lee to tell him what to do. They find Colby inside, about to start torturing Anna. Rossi and Hotch start trying to talk Colby down, and they tell him that Colby’s mother was murdered by The Butcher when he was ten. Colby apparently thought his mother abandoned them and went to Boston to live with her sister. When he realizes that the woman he helped his father kill all those years ago was his own mother, he is distraught.

Colby ultimately allows himself to be arrested, and Anna is saved. We get this little moment where Prentis questions Morgan about his relationship with Ellie, and I think he does a good job defending why he’s staying in her life. And then at the end, Lee Mullens tells Rossi that he does remember him, and that Rossi is the reason he stopped.

Rating Criteria:

Criminal/Serial Killer: 20/20

Character development/ character arcs: 20/20
Forensics/Context: 20/20
Script writing: 20/20
Background characters: 18/20

Overall: 98/100

S6E3 - “Remembrance Of Things Past”

S6E4 - “Compromising Positions”

S6E2 - “JJ”