Parasite (Season 5, Episode 14)
Premise: A con man juggling ten aliases begins killing the investors who see through him, and the BAU follows his paper trail to the family he keeps hidden.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 14
- Unsub
- William Hodges (Victor Webster)
- Location
- Miami, Florida; Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- 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 I am what I have, and if I lose what I have, who, then, am I?” (Erich Fromm, read by Rossi)
- Closing quote
- “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” (Sir Walter Scott, read by Prentiss)
- Guest stars
- Annabeth Gish as Rebecca Hodges, David Eigenberg as Agent Russell Goldman, Valerie Cruz as Brooke Sanchez, Rebecca Staab as Lorraine Horton, Anna Marie Wood as Dina McKelson
- Director
- Charles S. Carroll
- Writers
- Oanh Ly
Summary
The Case
“Parasite” opens in a Florida restaurant, where a charming investment adviser calling himself Henry pitches an investment to a woman named Lorraine over lunch. Agent Russell Goldman of the FBI’s San Diego white collar team brings the BAU his case: for five years he has chased a con man who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors without ever turning violent, but Carla Marshall of Miami, who reported the man to a fraud website and meant to confront him, has been strangled and beaten in her home. The team profiles a psychopath who treats each con as theater and needs total control, and who may be killing because that control is slipping. Garcia finds ten copies of his bare-bones investment website, each under a new alias, more names than he has ever juggled at once. Late-night calls show Carla was also sleeping with him.
Frank McKelson of Fort Lauderdale is next, his skull smashed after he asks why his check is going to a different name; his wife, Dina, admits she brought the man she knew as Randy into their lives. At home the con man, Bill Hodges, is a doting father to his son, JD, and tells his wife, Rebecca, they are moving to Boston. He kills Lorraine Horton after she asks for her check back, and when JD says he wants to stay, Bill decides to wipe out his client list instead of moving. Reid notices that the con man spent three and a half years in San Diego and then swapped sports cars and condos for sedans and gated communities, the changes a new father makes. The team reasons his wife will be using her real name, and learns that Carla, a real estate agent, gave him lists of people who had just sold homes. Garcia finds Rebecca, who works in real estate and has a 9-year-old son whose birth certificate names William Hodges as the father.
Bill’s lover Brooke Sanchez, meanwhile, tells him she is pregnant with his child. Rebecca sees Bill leaving Brooke’s house and confronts her, and Bill, who has pulled JD out of school, walks in on the two women. The agents surround the house and talk him into letting JD go to his mother.
The ending
Spoiler: Bill then reaches into his pockets despite orders and is shot dead. The agent who fired thought he had a weapon, and the team concludes that a man so attached to his lifestyle chose his own fate over prison. Rebecca insists the gentle husband she knew for 10 years could not have done this, and the con man’s real name is never learned.
Why it stands out
- Victor Webster guest-stars as Bill Hodges, with Annabeth Gish as his wife, Rebecca, and Valerie Cruz as his lover Brooke Sanchez.
- One of Bill’s aliases is Hunter; Webster had played Hunter Jennings in Harper’s Island (2009).
- Joe Mantegna had played a con artist himself in the 1987 film House of Games.