Scared to Death (Season 3, Episode 3)
Premise: When a mass grave in Portland reveals victims killed in wildly different ways, the BAU tracks a psychiatrist who poses as a phobia specialist and uses each patient’s worst fear against them.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 3
- Unsub
- Stan Howard (Michael O’Keefe)
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
- Starring
- 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), Erin Strauss (Jayne Atkinson)
- Opening quote
- “He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” (Lao Tzu, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” (Eleanor Roosevelt, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Matt Bushell as Bill Calvert, Danielle Sapia as Missy, John Bobek as Patrick, Stephanie Venditto as Jane Howard, Casey Kramer as Landlady
- Director
- Félix Enríquez Alcalá
- Writers
- Debra J. Fisher & Erica Messer
Summary
The Case
“Scared to Death” opens with a trapped victim begging to be let out while a calm voice asks whether it is worse than he thought. Near a Portland, Oregon, trail, the FBI has found a grave holding three bodies about six months old and a fresh one nearby, Jenny Wittman. The victims died in different ways, from burning to suffocation, with no sexual assault, and families were kept calm by fake emails from their missing relatives. Agent Bill Calvert, a Bostonian who moved to the Portland office a month ago, assists. Jenny’s building shows she avoided the elevator, and the victims share only being young, single and new to the city. Reid compares the shifting methods to Gary Taylor, the Phantom Sniper.
The profile describes a controlling man acting from weakness, likely abused, possibly impotent, married and a father, trusted enough that victims put themselves in danger, and likely to kill himself rather than be caught. The team warns newcomers on television. Dr. Stan Howard takes a patient, Patrick Walker, to the water he fears, and Patrick is later found drowned in a river with a shepherd’s crook nearby. Recalling Morgan’s panic when the two were stuck in an elevator, Reid sees the link: each victim was killed by a phobia. Fliers in a laundromat recruit people with anxieties for a research project, and Garcia traces the number to a fake Goodman Institute with an online questionnaire. Its dated terms point to a psychiatrist in his forties, and Garcia names Howard, whose practice closed a year earlier.
The Team
Strauss tells Hotch that Gideon’s resignation is official and asks for his input on a replacement. Reid tells Prentiss that Gideon’s letter reminds him of the one his father left when he walked out on Reid and his mother; Prentiss tells him to read it again and ask why Gideon explained himself only to him.
The ending
Spoiler: Howard’s wife, Jane, says his mother died last year and her family owns property downtown. There, Howard has buried a patient, Missy Cassell, who fears being trapped underground. Cornered, he goes to the roof, tells Hotch that what Hotch fears most is failing to save everyone, and jumps. Missy signed in hours earlier, her journal names her fear, and dirt under Howard’s nails sends the team to the basement, where they dig her out alive. Later, Hotch admits Haley has left him and he does not know if she will return.
Why it stands out
- The episode is dedicated to Mark Kamps, the show’s supervising sound editor, who died at 44 in August 2007, less than a month before it aired.
- Gary Addison Taylor, the “Phantom Sniper” Reid cites, was a serial killer and rapist active from 1954 to 1975 and is suspected in up to 20 more unsolved killings.