The Last Word (Season 2, Episode 9)
Premise: A pair of rival St. Louis serial killers compete for attention, while an unexpected new agent arrives at the BAU.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 9
- Unsub
- Mill Creek Killer (Jason O’Mara), Hollow Man (Scott Michael Morgan)
- Location
- St. Louis, Missouri
- 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
- “If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.” (Elbert Hubbard, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “Remember that all through history there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.” (Mahatma Gandhi, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Maury Sterling as Jim Meyers, Christopher B. Duncan as Agent James Sheridan, Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Betty, Victoria Kelleher as Ellen Carroll, David Barry Gray as Tom Carroll
- Director
- Gloria Muzio
- Writers
- Debra J. Fisher & Erica Messer
Summary
The Case
“The Last Word” opens at a St. Louis playground, where a stranger asks Ellen Carroll to help him find his lost six-year-old in the trees, and Ellen vanishes. The city has two serial killers at once. The Mill Creek killer lures educated, middle-class women from public places in daylight, beats them to death and leaves them in the vast Mark Twain National Forest; Ellen is his latest. The Hollow Man, named for his hollow-point bullets, shoots prostitutes at night with a .44 Magnum and has written to Jim Meyers, a Missouri Herald reporter, demanding recognition.
JJ persuades Meyers to print nothing about the Hollow Man; the mother of his latest victim, Marci Mitchell, tells Hotch and Reid that nobody cares when prostitutes die. Ellen’s body is found within a day, wearing fresh lipstick and brushed hair, a sign that the Mill Creek killer returns to defile his victims. The ignored shooter then kills two women behind an upscale hotel and leaves a newspaper between them. When Meredith Dale, 25, disappears, ranger schedules from Garcia point the team to Saltgrass Cove, where her body lies, but the stakeout collapses when Meyers arrives, tipped off by the Hollow Man. Denied his ritual, the Mill Creek killer tries to grab a woman in public, and she escapes.
The newspaper leads the team to its classifieds, where the two have traded coded ads for months as “Sunny,” the Hollow Man, and “Holden,” the Mill Creek killer, names from “The Catcher in the Rye.” The shooter sought a mentor, then grew jealous. Reid writes an ad in Sunny’s voice offering a “gift,” a female agent posing as a body in the woods, and the Mill Creek killer is arrested when he comes for her. Gideon goads him until he admits the murders but begs that no one learn he went back to the bodies.
The Team
Emily Prentiss, an agent of almost ten years and an ambassador’s daughter, arrives at the BAU with transfer papers Hotch never approved, and he tells her she has been misinformed. When he returns from St. Louis four days later, she is waiting with her own profile of the I-80 killer, who preys on college women in Indiana, and insists she belongs in the unit. Hotch promises nothing but tells her when morning briefings start and where to get a desk.
The ending
Spoiler: JJ then tells the press that the Mill Creek killer is a uniquely sophisticated criminal, while dismissing the Hollow Man as a common street thug and his letter as a prank. Enraged, the Hollow Man arrives armed at a security checkpoint, insisting he is no copycat, and is arrested. Meyers’ story honors the victims without mentioning the shooter.
Why it stands out
- This is the first episode featuring Paget Brewster as Emily Prentiss.
- The team cites only three known cases of two serial killers working one city at the same time, including New York in 1977, when Son of Sam was active, and Phoenix in 2006.
- Mandy Patinkin and Maury Sterling (Jim Meyers) later appeared together in “Homeland.”