Poison (Season 1, Episode 13)
Premise: When residents of a New Jersey town are secretly dosed with LSD and rohypnol, the BAU races to identify a vengeful poisoner before his real attack.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 13
- Unsub
- Edward Hill (Nick Jameson)
- Location
- Beechwood, New Jersey
- 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)
- Opening quote
- “What is food to one is to others bitter poison.” (Lucretius, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” (Confucius, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Nestor Serrano as Detective Hanover, Peter Mackenzie as Jack Fisher, Annie Quinn as Samantha DiForio, Matt T. Baker as Danny Wallace, Lynn Odell as Lynn Dempsey
- Director
- Thomas J. Wright
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Case
“Poison” opens on a dark road outside Beechwood, New Jersey, where teacher Jack Fisher, driving home with his son, Eric, stops to fix a flat tire, begins hallucinating and beats the boy with a tire iron. Fisher and six others had taken 10 to 20 times a normal dose of LSD; a 78-year-old woman was killed by a car and a 9-year-old girl lies in a coma. Gideon finds Fisher shattered and angry over his divorce, but concludes the drug released rage that was already there. Labs also find rohypnol, which wiped the victims’ memories of how they were dosed.
A café linked to several victims leads to busboy Danny Wallace, whose girlfriend, Samantha DiForio, tells Elle she woke up beaten after a night with him. The team decides Danny did not drug her and that she was simply an eighth victim. The BAU profiles an “avenger”: a careful man aged 35 to 50 punishing people he believes have wronged him, using this attack as a test before a larger one. When a TV report reveals that an unnamed local restaurant was poisoned, panic floods the hospital, but JJ and Reid find one real case: a woman paralyzed by botulism. Morgan and Elle find every original victim on security video at a local bank, where that woman, Lynn Dempsey, is seen swapping candy in a bowl.
Dempsey dies before she can explain. She was an assistant at Hichcock Pharmaceuticals, and Garcia ties her to chemist Edward Hill, whose patent bid for an anti-aging formula, and a bank loan Dempsey sought, were rejected because Hichcock had already patented it in a deal backed by the bank. Hill surrenders quietly. Hotch, a lawyer, offers to take his case, and Hill reveals poisoned punch at a company party; agents stop it, and the sick receive antitoxin in time. But the team realizes Dempsey’s dying words meant “the envelopes”: Hill was testing poison on envelope glue, and the punch was another decoy.
The Team
Late that night Hotch explains why he left prosecuting murder cases for the BAU: he wanted to stop killers before their cases reached his desk, though he admits he is still working out the full answer.
The ending
Spoiler: Hill dies by suicide in custody before he can be questioned again. The office manager has told Elle that Dempsey was planning a retreat, and the team realizes Hill’s real targets are Hichcock’s executives, who are deep in the woods with no phones and sealing ballots in envelopes. State police, searching alongside a helicopter, find them, and medics reach them with the antitoxin in time.
Why it stands out
- Hotch reveals that he is a lawyer who once prosecuted murder cases; Thomas Gibson had also played a lawyer in Dharma & Greg.
- Nick Jameson guest stars as Edward Hill, a chemist who kills with poison.