A Shade of Gray (Season 4, Episode 21)
Premise: When a third boy disappears from his home in Cherry Hill, the BAU catches a child killer but finds that the latest case doesn’t fit his pattern.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 21
- Unsub
- Hugh Rollins (John Billingsley), Danny Murphy (Kendall Ryan Sanders)
- Location
- Cherry Hill, New Jersey
- 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
- “To lose a child is to lose a piece of yourself.” (Berton Grebin, read by Rossi)
- Closing quote
- “Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.” (André Maurois, read by Rossi)
- Guest stars
- Spencer Garrett as Det. Bill Lancaster, John Allen Nelson as Dan Murphy, Gretchen Egolf as Sarah Murphy, Robbie Tucker as Kyle Murphy, Caroline Bielskis as Mrs. Seager
- Director
- Karen Gaviola
- Writers
- Debra J. Fisher & Erica Messer
Summary
The Case
“A Shade of Gray” brings the BAU to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where seven-year-old Kyle Murphy has disappeared from his home overnight. Two other boys were taken from their beds in recent months and later found strangled, with head wounds, in Wharton State Forest. Kyle’s parents, Dan and Sarah, plead for him on television beside his older brother, Danny. Detective Bill Lancaster, who leads the case, grew up with Dan and is “Uncle Bill” to the boys, and the agents warn him that he is too close. Prentiss questions the family while the team profiles an organized, socially skilled offender with a steady job who studies a household before striking. Kyle’s room is wrecked, and a basement window was broken from outside.
Cutting down a list of 439 local sex offenders, the team and Garcia settle on Hugh Rollins, a TV installer whose phone and bank accounts went silent on the days of the first two abductions; both earlier families had bought new televisions. His house holds child pornography and toys kept as souvenirs. When Rollins runs, Lancaster goes after him so recklessly that an agent reminds him they need Rollins alive. The Seagers recognize their son’s toy, but Dan can’t identify any of Kyle’s. Terrified of what inmates do to men like him, Rollins agrees to confess to Kyle’s murder for a federal prison deal and says he threw the boy in the Delaware River, which the team doesn’t believe.
At the house, Reid and a colleague find that Kyle slept in Danny’s bunk bed, where the bottom bunk was wet and Kyle’s bear was left; his own room was torn up to match the other abductions. Kyle’s body is found off an unmapped service road, laid out with care, unlike the dumped earlier victims, and Rollins admits Kyle was too young for him. Suspicion turns to Lancaster, who knew the details of all three cases. Confronted with the loss of his own children in a car crash three years earlier, Lancaster claims he killed Kyle.
The ending
Spoiler: While the parents are questioned, Prentiss sits with Danny, who has a sharp temper and resented his little brother. He tells her that early that morning Kyle broke the model plane he had spent a week building, and he attacked him. Dan and Sarah found the boys and called Lancaster, who took Kyle to the woods and struck him to mimic Rollins’s victims so the family might stay together. The autopsy shows Danny forced plane parts down Kyle’s throat, and the parents are told their surviving son is a sociopath incapable of remorse. Lancaster asks whom any of it served, and is told the BAU doesn’t get to choose who wins.
Why it stands out
- One of the suspects on Garcia’s list is named Nate Phlox, a nod to John Billingsley (Hugh Rollins), who played Dr. Phlox on Star Trek: Enterprise.
- The reporter at the opening news conference is played by Samantha Zweben, who grew up in Cherry Hill, where the episode is set.