Blood Hungry (Season 1, Episode 11)
Premise: In a small Tennessee town, the BAU hunts a psychotic killer who takes his victims’ blood and organs and then abducts the young boy who saw him.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 11
- Unsub
- Eddy Mays (Kris Lemche)
- Location
- Harringtonville, Tennessee
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Closing quote
- “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” (Harriet Beecher Stowe, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Lindsay Crouse as Mary Mays, Mark Rolston as Sheriff Hall, Doug Jones as Domino Thacker, Tait Smith as Oley Maynor, Drew Carr as Wally Brisbane
- Director
- Charles Haid
- Writers
- Ed Napier
Summary
The Case
“Blood Hungry” takes the BAU to Harringtonville, Tennessee, a town of 5,000 where widower Paul Thompson has been stabbed in his yard and music teacher Annie Stuart beaten with his stolen shotgun, her throat torn open. Circular blood stains suggest the killer is collecting blood and organs; her liver and stomach are missing. Elle learns that 7-year-old Wally Brisbane, Annie’s singing pupil, glimpsed a tall, thin man through a window. Meth user Domino Thacker admits robbing Annie’s house, but the team believes him when he says he found her already dead and saw a hooded man leave.
The profile describes a psychotic local man in his twenties who eats human flesh and drinks blood, like Richard Trenton Chase. Mary Mays, from an old local family, points police to former football star Oley Maynor, recently out of an institution, but Oley is stable on his medication. Then Wally’s grandmother, Lynette Giles, is killed with her heart removed, and Wally and her car are gone. A human stomach, apparently Annie’s, is later left behind, and the team reads the organ theft as a religious delusion about the seat of the soul. Morgan and another agent spot the stolen car and arrest Mary’s son, Eddy Mays, a comparative religion student who broke down on drugs in Boston.
Medicated with his mother’s consent, Eddy still cannot say where Wally is, only that he brought an angel. A doctor at Eddy’s Boston hospital says Mary never came to collect him on his release, and a search of her spotless house finds bleach and traces of blood. GPS records from her Cadillac show repeated stops at one spot on Route 3.
The Team
Gideon, on crutches after a skydiving accident, stays behind at Quantico and takes over Garcia’s office, to her loud annoyance. He reveals a list of things to do before he dies, including skydiving and seeing the White Sox win the World Series, and at the end he calls his son, Stephen, to suggest they get together.
The ending
Spoiler: Hotch drives Mary to the Route 3 site, saying they are going to the hospital, and searchers with dogs find Wally alive. Mary says she did not know Eddy was the killer until he brought the boy home, and that she only wanted to protect her son. Hotch, a father himself, says he would never wipe victims’ blood off a floor for his children, accuses her of doing nothing while Eddy sank and never calling the police, and tells her almost anything would have been better.
Why it stands out
- Gideon lists seeing the White Sox win the World Series among his goals; the team won that same year, its first title since 1919.
- Three guest stars had appeared on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lindsay Crouse (Maggie Walsh), Doug Jones and Brian Turk.
- Doug Jones, who plays Domino Thacker, returns in the season 4 episode “Brothers in Arms” as a different character.