To Hell… (Season 4, Episode 25)
Premise: An Iraq War veteran falsely confesses to ten murders to force the BAU to hunt the killer he believes took his sister and other homeless people from Detroit.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 25
- Unsub
- Mason Turner (Garret Dillahunt), Lucas Turner (Paul Rae)
- Location
- Detroit, Michigan; Ontario, Canada
- 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
- “If there were no Hell, we would be like the animals. No Hell, no dignity.” (Flannery O’Connor, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Sharif Atkins as William Hightower, Rowena King as Det. Tay Benning, John Lacy as Officer Jeff Bedwell, Vernée Watson as Maxine Hightower, Lily Kershaw as Kelly
- Ripped from the headlines
- Mason Turner was reportedly based on Robert Pickton, a real-life serial killer who ran a pig farm with his brother; unlike Turner, Pickton was not paralyzed.
- Director
- Charles Haid
- Writers
- Chris Mundy
Summary
The Case
In “To Hell…”, the first half of the season finale, a driver at the Port Huron border crossing waits until the guards leave their booth, smashes his car into it and tells Canadian officers to call the FBI because he has killed ten people in a month. William Hightower, an Army sergeant who lost a leg in Iraq, has logged names, photos and dates for each supposed victim, all homeless people from Detroit’s Cass Corridor. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, led by Officer Jeff Bedwell, a graduate of Rossi’s first BAU training fellowship, ask for help, while Morgan and Prentiss find the street people moving in frightened groups.
Hotch dismantles the confession: Hightower acted on the street like a protector taking nightly head counts, and the crash forced the inquiry Detroit police had refused. He is searching for his sister, Lee, and has hidden a call in which she says a man is taking her somewhere; an Army contact traced it to a tower near Port Huron. Rossi talks Bedwell into releasing Hightower to the FBI, and Detective Tay Benning, who had brushed him off, opens Detroit’s records. Garcia finds thefts of anesthesia, sterilizing gear, an infusion pump and O-negative blood from medical sites in the corridor, and the team profiles a sexual sadist with medical training who keeps victims alive to prolong their torture.
Hightower’s mother tells JJ that Lee vanished the day after her first welfare check. The male victims were all taken around the first and fifteenth, and Walter Patterson, a street contact, points the team to a motel that cashes welfare checks for a cut. A young woman named Kelly has just gone missing; the clerk saw her there minutes before and says customers bought drugs from a man in a dark sedan across the road.
The ending
Spoiler: With every crossing watched and no sign of him, the team reasons that he uses the old Underground Railroad route, and Garcia pinpoints a surviving Victorian house near the Blue Water Bridge. Hotch, Prentiss and Hightower find cars stashed on both banks of the river; one belongs to Mason Turner, a medical school graduate with a farm in Ontario. Hightower is refused a gun for the raid. The man inside appears badly disabled, and the agents wonder if he can really be their unsub. When Hightower shows him a photo of Lee, Turner orders the FBI out of his Canadian home and has his phone dial 911, and the story continues in “…and Back.”
Why it stands out
- Kelly is played by Lily Kershaw, daughter of Criminal Minds producer Glenn Kershaw; some of her songs are also heard in the series.
- Sharif Atkins, who plays the wounded veteran William Hightower, played Army doctor Michael Gallant on ER.
- Thomas Gibson needed numerous takes to get through a line about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and some of the flubs made the season’s blooper reel.