Aftermath (Season 2, Episode 5)
Premise: When a Dayton rapist who phones his victims before each attack suddenly changes targets, the BAU works out what he wants, while Elle struggles with the aftermath of her shooting.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 5
- Unsub
- William Lee (Jason London)
- Location
- Dayton, Ohio
- 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
- “Although the world is full of suffering, but it is also full of overcoming it.” (Helen Keller, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Dahlia Salem as Maggie Callahan, Mandy June Turpin as Alicia Jordan, Tuffet Schmelzle as Cheryl Cosgrove, Robert Clotworthy as Don Norvell, Bruce Gray as Dr. Wagner
- Director
- Tim Matheson
- Writers
- Chris Mundy
Summary
The Case
“Aftermath” takes the BAU to Dayton, Ohio, where a rapist attacked five students at a small religious college, one a week, then stopped, only to return after two months with women in their 30s. He leaves each victim a phone message before he strikes, and the team reads him as a power reassurance rapist who sees the attacks as courtship. Detective Maggie Callahan leads the local case. A student victim, Cheryl Cosgrove, says her attacker knew her favorite place, drink and singer.
Looking for unreported victims, the team learns that Shelly Norvell, a student at the college, killed herself just as the campus attacks ended. Her father shares her note: she had been raped, was pregnant, and chose suicide over abortion. The team concludes the rapist wants children. The latest victim, Alicia Jordan, had just visited a fertility clinic, as had the other two recent victims, each within five days of the attack, before any insemination could take place. The clinic’s Dr. Wagner sells patient questionnaires to a marketing firm, First Hand Media, which Garcia finds also processes the college’s freshman forms. The firm has 250 employees across the Great Lakes region. One likely target emerges from the forms, but the rapist reaches her first while police knock unanswered at her door.
The team creates a decoy questionnaire with Elle as a 36-year-old divorced legal secretary. When a car watches the house, Garcia runs its plate to William Lee, a First Hand Media employee. Elle panics and comes out with her gun drawn, and the agents stop Lee with no real cause. When agents ask for a DNA sample, his lawyer ends the interview, and he walks free.
The Team
Elle is still struggling after being shot. Late one night she tells a colleague that the man who shot her reached into her wound to write on the wall in her blood, and that she can sometimes still feel his hand; the colleague reminds her he is dead. After Lee walks, she blames Hotch, saying the last time he sent her home she was shot, and Hotch tells her to think hard about the job and what she has been through.
The ending
Spoiler: As the team prepares to fly home, Elle confronts Lee at his home. He thanks her for letting him go, and soon afterward Lee is dead from Elle’s gunshot. She tells police he drew a weapon while they were talking, and the team is told it is clear self-defense and that she will have her badge back the next day.
Why it stands out
- Gideon says “wheels up” here for the first time in the series; two episodes later Hotch says it, starting a tradition.
- A.J. Cook and guest star Jason London had worked together in the 2001 film Out Cold.
- The team compares the case to Gary Heidnik, who held women captive in Philadelphia hoping to impregnate them.