Plain Sight (Season 1, Episode 4)
Premise: The BAU hunts a San Diego killer who strikes in daylight, glues his victims’ eyes open and slips past heavy patrols unseen.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 4
- Unsub
- Franklin Graney, “The Tommy Killer” (Kirk B.R. Woller)
- Location
- San Diego, California
- 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
- “Don’t forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror.” (Jacques Rigaut, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?” (Rose Kennedy, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Daniel Zacapa as Captain Griffith, Keith Diamond as Detective Cornelius Martin, Patty McCormack as Marcia Gordon, Albert Malafronte as Bill Gordon
- Director
- Matt Earl Beesley
- Writers
- Edward Allen Bernero
Summary
The Case
“Plain Sight” pulls the team away from Reid’s birthday party to San Diego, where a killer nicknamed the Tommy Killer has raped and murdered six women in their homes in daylight, gluing their eyes open. The latest, Brenda Samms, was strangled with a thin ligature, and since the fourth murder the killer has written verses on mirrors from a 17th-century ballad in which Death speaks to a lady. At her house the team finds he stayed a long time, vacuuming and smashing her valuables once she was dead or helpless, in line with the poem’s words about riches. The verses began only after the press first covered the case.
Nearby, an attempted rape of Marcia Gordon, a woman of about 60, is interrupted by her husband, Bill, who says the attacker was Black; Elle learns from her that he wore a ski mask. The profile describes Tommy as a white, organized man of middle income with a skilled trade and a work vehicle, who resents the wealthy, feels invisible among them and is dominated by a powerful woman. The team argues that Mrs. Gordon’s attacker is someone else, a young grocery deliveryman, whom Elle arrests, and lets the news imply that the Tommy Killer is in custody. The enraged killer calls the tip line and vows to strike again, but the call bounces through 25 substations and cannot be traced.
Watching a neighborhood, Gideon and Elle realize the victims were posed to see the killer after death, and that the one man who can study homes unnoticed is a phone repairman on a pole. Repair records name technician Franklin Graney, who is already inside a young mother’s house.
The Team
The case interrupts Reid’s 24th birthday, where JJ calls him “Spence,” the only person who does. On the flight home a colleague gives Reid box seats for a Redskins game and points out that JJ is a big fan, and Reid nervously goes to invite her.
The ending
Spoiler: Agents find Graney’s truck and corner him holding a gun on the woman. He is told that if he gives up, his name will be as famous as Bundy’s or Dahmer’s, while a shootout would leave him a forgotten burglar. Graney surrenders, and the mother and her baby are unharmed.
Why it stands out
- The killer’s nickname comes from The Who’s rock opera Tommy, right after an episode named for a song by the same band.
- The verses left at the scenes come from “The Great Messenger of Mortality,” a ballad printed by J. Deacon between 1683 and 1700.