Identity (Season 3, Episode 7)
Premise: After a militia-minded kidnapper kills himself during a traffic stop, the BAU hunts the submissive partner who helped him imprison women and is now becoming him.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 7
- Unsub
- Francis Goehring (Michael Cudlitz), Henry Frost (Kaj-Erik Eriksen)
- Location
- Great Falls, Montana
- 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
- “An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.” (Martin Luther, read by Rossi)
- Guest stars
- Pat Skipper as Harris Townsend, Jim Beaver as Sheriff Williams, Adria Tennor as Diane Goehring, Jenna Gavigan as Becky, Jason Hamer as Robert Miller
- Director
- Gwyneth Horder-Payton
- Writers
- Oanh Ly
Summary
The Case
“Identity” opens on a Montana highway, where troopers stop a stolen car and the driver detonates a grenade, fatally wounding an officer. The car belonged to Angela Miller, taken outside a Great Falls grocery store while her husband took their son to the restroom; three other brunettes have vanished there in 14 months, among them Jennifer Hillbridge. Dental records identify the driver as Francis Goehring, discharged from the army for bad conduct and listed in a federal file on aggressive militia groups. Home videos show his plan to build a kingdom with women as serfs. His estranged wife, Diane, who resembles the victims, says the militia threw him out over his abuse of her and that he took her late parents’ nine acres.
On that land the team finds Angela shot dead, her body still warm, so Goehring had a partner. At Rossi’s suggestion, Morgan and JJ visit militia leader Harris Townsend’s bar, where Townsend scorns the government but describes a small man trailing Goehring like a pack mule. Rose beds hide the other women’s bodies, and a hidden box held them for torture. While Garcia watches the tapes, the agents notice the cameraman lingers on Goehring, not the victims, and conclude he loved him. A nursery worker names him: Henry Frost, who has since destroyed his belongings and burned his face out of his photos. Frost, a bandage now covering the left side of his face where Goehring had a scar, forces a woman named Becky into a car trunk and calls himself Francis Goehring.
The Team
Before the briefing, the agents snoop in Rossi’s new office and profile him from his taupe walls and Renaissance painting, until he walks in and corrects them: Catholic and Italian-American, but no strict upbringing. Reid asks why his books barely touch on Ruby Ridge. On the mountain, Rossi tells Townsend he was there, and later recalls how its failures still haunt the FBI and once made him think of leaving. Asked why he returned, he again cites unfinished business; one agent vows to find out.
The ending
Spoiler: A photo on Goehring’s fridge points to Black Eagle Peak, an old militia training ground. The sheriff deputizes Townsend, a former Special Forces sniper, who raises Ruby Ridge when Rossi tells him to shoot; Rossi answers that Frost cannot be taken alive. As the agents talk to Frost, a shot ends the standoff; Frost is killed, and Prentiss frees Becky.
Why it stands out
- This episode establishes Rossi as an Italian-American and gives his age as 52.
- Goehring and Frost share many traits with the real killers Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, military obsessives who held and tortured women, and Lake, like Goehring, killed himself.
- Michael Cudlitz, a veteran of “Band of Brothers,” later starred in “Southland” and “The Walking Dead.”