Birthright (Season 3, Episode 11)
Premise: When women start vanishing around Fredericksburg in the pattern of an unsolved 1980 killing spree, the BAU needs the original sheriff and a survivor who has denied her ordeal for decades.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 11
- Unsub
- Charlie Wilkinson (Curt Bonnem), Robert Wilkinson (Matt Hoffman)
- Location
- Fredericksburg, Virginia
- Starring
- David Rossi (Joe Mantegna), 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
- “It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” (Anne Sexton, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “A simple child, that lightly draws its breath, and feels its life in every limb, what should it know of death?” (William Wordsworth, read by JJ)
- Guest stars
- William Morgan Sheppard as John Caulfield, Dendrie Taylor as Karen Foley, Jennifer Hetrick as Mary Wilkinson, Rodney Eastman as Stephen Foley, Sally Pressman as Chrissy Wilkinson
- Director
- John Gallagher
- Writers
- Debra J. Fisher & Erica Messer
Summary
The Case
“Birthright” begins at a party in the woods outside Fredericksburg, Virginia, where 20-year-old Molly McCarthy disappears, the third woman taken in six weeks. Remains of the first, marked by cigarette burns and tool cuts on the bone, have turned up on the Chancellorsville battlefield, matching an unsolved 1980 case in the same place at the same time of year. Molly wakes beside Julie Stanton, whose captor calls their torment a party and forces them to dance.
John Caulfield, the retired sheriff broken by the old case, joins Rossi, Morgan and Prentiss. Garcia finds a 1979 complaint by Karen Foley, who reported being kidnapped and escaping, but Karen now says she made it up. Reasoning that she came home only once her attacker was gone, the team arrives at Robert Wilkinson, a violent drinker who fell into his combine harvester in December 1980, just as the murders ended; his widow, Mary, had left him while pregnant. When Tara Ricker is taken, the team decides a copycat with private knowledge is at work and looks at Robert’s son, Charlie. Garcia learns Karen has a son, Stephen, conceived in the rape; newly out of jail for drunk driving, he says he has known the truth for a decade and denies hurting anyone.
At Charlie’s farm, agents find a torture room in the barn and a locked closet of Robert’s belongings, including writings that seem to have given Charlie a sense of inheritance. Karen recalls a peace sign she scratched into a wall; there is none in the barn, so she is brought to the farm. She confronts Mary, who confesses she killed Robert before Charlie was born. Walked back through her memories of leaves, a hill and tall stones, Karen leads agents to the north side of the property, where the missing women are found alive, one unconscious.
The Team
Hotch tells JJ that since Jack was born he has dreaded the child cases she brings him, and that losing composure now and then is fine; when she notes that he never does, he suggests perhaps he should have. An agent shows Caulfield a photograph from an early, still unsolved case in Indianapolis, children beaten to death on Christmas Eve.
The ending
Spoiler: Asked about her husband, Charlie’s wife, Chrissy, points the team to a spot over a ridge on the battlefield. There Charlie is confronted about the barn and the missing women and called a sick man like his father; gunfire follows, and he is killed by someone who says he came at them. Caulfield is reminded that he could never have solved a case whose killer was already dead. As the team heads out for drinks, Hotch is served with papers: Haley is filing for divorce.
Why it stands out
- William Morgan Sheppard and Jennifer Hetrick had both guest-starred on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- The team weighs the 27-year gap between killings against the BTK killer, who resurfaced after a silence of about 25 years.