Tabula Rasa (Season 3, Episode 19)
Premise: When a suspected serial killer wakes from a four-year coma claiming to remember nothing, the BAU must rebuild its old case to convict him at trial.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 19
- Unsub
- Brian Matloff, “The Blue Ridge Strangler” (Eric Lange)
- Location
- Roanoke, 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
- “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” (Anatole France, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “What though the radiance that was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight, though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.” (William Wordsworth, read by Mr. Corbett and Reid)
- Guest stars
- Amy Carlson as Cece Hillenbrand, Steven Culp as Lester Serling, James Eckhouse as Mr. Corbett, Anne Betancourt as Nina Moore, James Sharpe as Detective Jarvis
- Director
- Steve Boyum
- Writers
- Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie
Summary
The Case
“Tabula Rasa” begins four years earlier, when an FBI raid sends Brian Matloff, the suspected Blue Ridge Strangler, fleeing across Roanoke rooftops until he falls into an alley. Now he has woken from a coma, and prosecutor Cece Hillenbrand wants to try him for strangling three young women jogging alone in the park. But her key witness has died of an overdose, the rest of the case is circumstantial, and doctors say Matloff can’t remember the murders or even his own name. Flashbacks show the original case: belt marks on each victim, a missing watch taken as a trophy, bodies buried facedown, and a profile that led to a Forest Service employee with free run of the parkway. Matloff agrees to brain fingerprinting over his lawyer’s objections, but the test shows no recognition of the crime scene images.
At trial, defense attorney Lester Serling attacks profiling on cross-examination, citing Richard Jewell, the Baton Rouge killer and BTK. The BAU witness answers by reading the lawyer himself, from his shoe lifts and fake Rolex to the horse race results buzzing on his phone. Meanwhile, Reid stays close to Darci Corbett’s father, and when Mr. Corbett turns up at the courthouse with a gun, Reid talks him into handing it over. Hospital records show a woman visiting Matloff every six months; Garcia traces her through a sealed adoption file to Nina Moore, his birth mother, who rejected him when he found her in 2003. Afterward he mailed her jewelry, and on the stand she identifies a watch worn by Darci in a photo.
Matloff weeps during her testimony and seems to be remembering. He escapes with a gun and steals a law clerk’s car, and the team works out that he is heading to Linville Falls, near where Darci was found. The team finds him there with the body of a woman he calls his first victim. He says he now remembers everything but the memories feel like someone else’s, and he is persuaded to surrender.
The Team
Flashbacks show Reid introduced to a local detective as the unit’s newest agent, and Morgan, unsure of the new technical analyst’s name, calling her “baby girl” for the first time. In the present, Garcia teases a colleague with a hacked 1989 high school photo its owner barely recognizes.
The ending
Spoiler: Matloff pleads guilty and accepts life without parole. One of the team doubts a conviction will bring Mr. Corbett real peace. Late that night, Reid and Mr. Corbett meet over the news and Darci’s watch, released from evidence, which had belonged to her grandmother. Mr. Corbett starts to recite the Wordsworth passage behind its inscription but cannot finish, and Reid completes them.
Why it stands out
- A flashback shows, in story order, the first time Morgan calls Garcia “baby girl.”
- The engraving on Darci’s watch comes from William Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality,” the source of the phrase “splendour in the grass.”
- The photo on Rossi’s desk shows him with Ringo Starr.