Machismo (Season 1, Episode 19)
Premise: Invited to Mexico to rule out a serial killer, the BAU finds one: a man in women’s clothing who murders elderly women in their homes.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 19
- Unsub
- Pablo Vargas (Alejandro Patiño)
- Location
- Allende del Sol, Mexico
- 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), Haley Hotchner (Meredith Monroe)
- Opening quote
- “Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.” (Anthony Brandt, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “The house does not rest on the ground, but upon a woman.” (Mexican proverb, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Carlos Gómez as Victor Navarro, Norma Maldonado as Maria Sanchez, Presciliana Esparolini as Milagros Villanueva, Darlene Tejeiro as Rosa Trejo, Andres Saenz Hudson as Roberto Gonzalez
- Director
- Guy Norman Bee
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Case
“Machismo” takes the BAU to Allende del Sol, Mexico, a town of 20,000, where 62-year-old Lupe Trejo has been stabbed to death at home during the Day of the Dead. Local papers tie her death to 11 killings of elderly women over two years, but the government denies there is a serial killer and has arrested her son, Miguel. Captain Victor Navarro, who met Gideon at a seminar, arranged the invitation. No forced entry, two glasses of tamarind water and jewelry taken from the daughter’s room are the first clues, and the stab wounds mark it as a sexual homicide by a heterosexual man. Navarro admits he knew Miguel is gay and could not be the killer; he needed outside experts before District Attorney General Maria Sanchez would take the case seriously. Miguel’s sister, Rosa, leads the team to his boyfriend, Roberto Gonzalez, who saw a heavy woman with papers and a badge going door to door.
Garcia’s lab results show a woman and a man drank from the glasses, so the profile becomes a man disguised as a female social worker, a longtime rapist who now kills mother figures. A second victim, Isabel Santiago, 67, is found with her daughter Anna’s necklace torn from her neck. When police haul in cross-dressing men, Sanchez orders the team home; Navarro wins more time and holds a press conference asking rape victims to come forward. Milagros Villanueva describes a man in a dress who attacked her two years earlier, in August; she fought back, laughed at him and called him a woman, and the first murder followed in September. She returns with six more victims, each blindfolded, driven into the desert and asked afterward how he did.
The team calls him a power-reassurance rapist who lives and works near his victims. At a clothing plant run by Consuela Ramirez, his need for approval points to floor manager Pablo Vargas, on vacation since the day Lupe died. His house holds keepsakes, Anna’s necklace among them, and Borquez’s chart of names reveals the pattern: Vargas has been killing his rape victims’ mothers, in the same order as the rapes, which makes Milagros’s mother the next target.
The Team
Hotch is spending a weekend at home with Haley, their baby and Haley’s visiting sister when the call comes. He promises to be back from the briefing in a couple of hours and is told to go; the briefing becomes a flight to Mexico.
The ending
Spoiler: The team rushes to the Villanueva house and finds that the women there have already overpowered Vargas. Asked whether they will be charged, the reply is that they were only defending their homes. Talk then turns to starting a behavioral unit in the district.
Why it stands out
- The episode reveals that Garcia, who took French in high school, got her surname from her stepfather, and that Elle’s mother is Cuban.
- The building that stands in for the Mexican federal police headquarters was later used as the CBI building in The Mentalist.