Honor Among Thieves (Season 2, Episode 20)
Premise: When Prentiss’s mother asks the BAU to help a Russian immigrant family whose father has been kidnapped and mutilated, the team finds that the mob, the ransom and the daughter are not what they seem.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 20
- Unsub
- Lyov Lysowsky (Dimitri Diatchenko), Natalya Chernus (Olga Sosnovska), Fyodor (Zoran Radanovich)
- Location
- Baltimore, Maryland
- 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
- “There can be no good without evil.” (Russian proverb, read by Prentiss)
- Closing quote
- “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Leo Tolstoy, read by Prentiss)
- Guest stars
- Kate Jackson as Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss, Gonzalo Menendez as Josh Cramer, Elya Baskin as Arseny Lysowsky, Gregory Wagrowski as Sergei Chernus, Sergey Chernov as Anton Gorban
- Director
- Jesús Salvador Treviño
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Case
“Honor Among Thieves” begins when Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss arrives at the BAU with Natalya Chernus and her mother. Natalya’s father has been taken from outside their Baltimore home, and a cooler holds his severed ring finger with a note in Russian demanding $100,000 wired to a Moscow bank by noon, or more pieces every six hours. The note names no one and never warns against the police. Baltimore agent Josh Cramer tells Gideon and Reid he has spent a year on similar kidnappings in which Russian mobsters prey on other criminals, whose victims, missing ring fingers, refuse to talk. Yet Garcia finds the Chernuses are law-abiding, and Morgan, staying with Natalya, reads from their unused furniture and knockoff designer goods that they are broke.
The local boss, Arseny Lysowsky, turns up offering help, and Natalya drives him off; a neighbor, Anton Gorban, won’t speak to the agents. Cramer explains the thieves’ code, vory v zakone, which forbids members a wife or children. When a neighborhood boy delivers Chernus’s ear early with a higher ransom of $500,000 and a greeting for the FBI, the agents tell Lysowsky that someone in his organization is out of control, which he denies. Natalya then tells the team her father is fine and cuts them off.
The Team
Prentiss and her mother are guarded with each other, and Elizabeth’s question about whether Emily enjoys the BAU turns into a prickly argument over the word. Her contacts fail at first, but she goes back to them and returns with a chain of addresses and passwords for Garcia.
The ending
Spoiler: The team realizes Natalya lied about finding her father’s car and has taken the severed parts with her. Using the Ambassador’s path, Garcia gets into the bank and finds $500,000 just paid into an account under Lyov Fulenko, using the maiden name of Lysowsky’s late wife. The agents work out that Lysowsky paid Gorban’s ransom: the boss has been secretly covering every ransom from the gang’s shared fund to hide that Lyov is his son. Lyov and Natalya, who are lovers, plan to flee, and Natalya tells her father she could no longer bear their joyless home. Lysowsky, saying thieves handle their own trouble, has Chernus sent home safe and deals with his son himself. Elizabeth admits to Emily that she often doubts herself, and the two agree to dinner.
Why it stands out
- Kate Jackson guest-stars as Prentiss’s mother, Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss.
- As of 2025, this is Kate Jackson’s last acting credit.