Fear and Loathing (Season 2, Episode 16)
Premise: When black teenage girls who love to sing are murdered in a New York suburb and marked with swastikas, the BAU sees past the hate-crime staging to a serial killer and clashes with a mayor afraid of its profile.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 16
- Unsub
- Terrance Wakeland (David Ramsey)
- Location
- Groton, New York; Mount Vernon, New York
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Opening quote
- “From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.” (Socrates, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” (Marcus Tullius Cicero, read by Reid)
- Guest stars
- Billy Brown as Det. Ware, Kenneth Meseroll as Mayor Hughes, Camille Winbush as Ally, Yaani King Mondschein as Tania, Tony Winters as Reverend Williams
- Director
- Rob Spera
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Case
“Fear and Loathing” opens with 16-year-old Sandra Davis leaving to meet a man in a car as her sometime boyfriend, Ken Newcomb, tries to stop her. Both turn up dead in a park in Groton, a mostly white Westchester County suburb of New York City. Two earlier victims, aged 15 and 17, were taken from their homes, beaten, strangled and stabbed, and had swastikas painted on their faces; another swastika marks Ken’s car. A reverend’s campaign against racism inflames the town, and Mayor Gregory Hughes calls in the BAU.
The team reads a threat Sandra received as a teenage girl’s work, and Morgan and Prentiss get classmate Tania Mathis to admit writing it out of jealousy; she is not the killer. Sandra was dressed for a date, and the profilers conclude it was with the murderer and that Ken was shot for interfering. Overkill and post-mortem stab wounds point to a sexually driven serial killer who keeps souvenirs and uses the swastikas as a smokescreen; every victim is a well-behaved black girl who loves to sing. After Naomi Dade, 16, disappears, the profile describes a black man of 20 to 35, a smooth talker with music-industry ties. The mayor balks at releasing it, fearing charges of racial profiling, but when Naomi’s body is found, Detective Rick Ware of the state police overrules him.
Morgan joins Ware on patrol. Checking out a black town car, Ware enters a yard and a frightened homeowner shoots him; he dies as Morgan tries to keep him talking about his children. When another singer, Ally Hadley, vanishes, a girl who saw the news recognizes the man who tried to recruit her after choir practice: Terrance Wakeland, a freelance keyboard player. Garcia traces him to a failed recording studio in Mount Vernon where he works as a security guard.
The Team
Prentiss, still getting to know her colleagues, finds a fellow Kurt Vonnegut fan in the office. Reid, struggling with Dilaudid since his captivity by Tobias Hankel, is pressed about how he is coping. He insists he can work but admits that he now looks at crime scene photos and knows what the victims felt. He is told this is empathy, and to use it.
The ending
Spoiler: At the studio, Wakeland records Ally singing, drugs her water and says something so beautiful can’t be allowed to live. She fights him off and runs. The agents find the studio empty except for his souvenirs, recordings of the girls’ voices. Wakeland catches Ally on the street and tells a police officer she is his drunk cousin, but the team arrives and, after a tense standoff, arrests him. Ally is safe. Ware is buried, leaving children who will grow up without him.
Why it stands out
- The episode places Groton in Westchester County, but the town is fictional; New York’s real Groton lies in Tompkins County in the Finger Lakes region.
- The case challenges the belief that there are no black serial killers; real examples include Craig Price, Wayne Williams and Henry Louis Wallace.
- A tombstone near the end bears the name Stacy Vetter, the name of the murdered wife in the 2003 film A Man Apart.