The Angel Maker (Season 4, Episode 2)
Premise: When a dead serial killer’s DNA turns up at a new murder, the BAU must find the devoted copycat determined to complete his work.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 2
- Unsub
- Chloe Kelcher (Lauren Bowles)
- Location
- Lower Canaan, Ohio
- 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
- “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.” (Chuck Palahniuk, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.” (Wendell Berry, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Neil Hopkins as Angel Maker, Patrick St. Esprit as Sheriff Merrill Dobson, Blake Lindsley as Shara Carlino, Pat Destro as Sela Dobson, Robert Catrini as Dr. Hagen
- Director
- Glenn Kershaw
- Writers
- Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie
Summary
The Case
“The Angel Maker” begins in Lower Canaan, Ohio, where Delilah Grennan is beaten and raped in her home, her body posed face-up and her stomach punctured after death. The signature belongs to Cortland Bryce Ryan, the Angel Maker, who killed six local women ten years earlier and was executed a year and a day before. The semen at the scene matches Ryan. The team reads it as a copycat using smuggled evidence, but when a letter signed by the Angel Maker reaches the local paper, Sheriff Merrill Dobson, who grew close to Sela Dobson after Ryan killed her daughter, has the grave opened over the BAU’s objections. The coffin is empty. The prison doctor admits the execution went badly, taking nearly an hour, and that Ryan vowed to return.
Garcia traces Ryan memorabilia to Sid Rutledge, a guard at Hawkesville prison, who is found shot dead. The team concludes the copycat is a woman: Rutledge smuggled out Ryan’s semen and then demanded sex for his silence. Shara Carlino, who visited Ryan more than 70 times, has an alibi, but she reveals Ryan wrote to another woman he called “my dove.” After Maxine Chandler, a day-care owner, is killed, the wound patterns are found to have been traced from a paper template. Reid decodes Ryan’s letters, which use a binary cipher he picked up from Aryan Brotherhood inmates, and the stab wounds turn out to map constellations from the Heavenly Waters family. Ryan finished six of nine; the copycat has done two more, and only Columba, the dove, remains. Shara later attacks a woman herself and is overpowered by neighbors.
The letters hint at a child, and birth records lead to Chloe Kelcher, a juror at Ryan’s trial whose baby died. Her appointment book points to her next target, Faye Landreaux, an accountant who works from home. With Chloe holding Faye at gunpoint, the team reads her lines Ryan sent word for word to other women, keeping her occupied while Morgan, as planned, slips in through an open window and gets Faye out.
The Team
Hotch’s ear was damaged in the New York blast. His doctor diagnoses hyperacusis and a torn eardrum, warns that his hearing could go entirely and resists clearing him for the field, but he pushes to return. At the exhumation he has a spell that leaves a colleague asking whether he is all right.
The ending
Spoiler: Cornered, Chloe refuses to drop her gun and dies by her own hand, making herself the dove that completes Ryan’s set. Saying he should not be flying, Hotch decides to drive the seven hours back to Quantico alone and is encouraged to take a day or two on the back roads.
Why it stands out
- Reid carries a revolver as his service weapon for the first time, in place of the FBI-issue Glock.
- There is no real Lower Canaan, Ohio.
- Patrick St. Esprit, who plays the sheriff, later co-stars with Shemar Moore on S.W.A.T.