Mosley Lane (Season 5, Episode 16)
Premise: When a girl is snatched from a crowded festival, the BAU comes to believe a grieving mother who has spent eight years insisting her own abducted son is still alive.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 16
- Unsub
- Anita Weld Roycewood (Beth Grant), Roger Roycewood (Bud Cort)
- Location
- Ashburn, Virginia; Leesburg, Virginia
- 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
- “Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, read by JJ)
- Closing quote
- “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.” (Emily Dickinson, read by JJ)
- Guest stars
- Ann Cusack as Sarah Hillridge, Evan Peters as Charlie Hillridge, Brooke Smith as Barbara Lynch, Toby Huss as Frank Lynch, Cameron Protzman as Aimee Lynch
- Director
- Matthew Gray Gubler
- Writers
- Simon Mirren & Erica Messer
Summary
The Case
“Mosley Lane” begins at a winter festival in Ashburn, Virginia, where eight-year-old Aimee Lynch disappears while her mother, Barbara, turns toward a woman frantically calling for a lost girl named Lindsay. At the press briefing Sarah Hillridge, who has been drinking, asks for JJ. Her son Charlie was taken at eight, eight years ago, and her ex-husband, Jake, has since remarried and taken their daughter. Sarah was also distracted by a woman searching for a lost son, suggesting a team active for about a decade. After the first day, Frank Lynch objects as agents leave his home. A colleague asks JJ whether being a mother is why she now believes Sarah, but the team comes to read the ruse as a signature, and JJ keeps working with Sarah, who promises to stop drinking and shares her research on 12 missing Virginia children.
In an isolated house, a teenage boy whom the captors call David tells Aimee they will rename her Alison. Walking the festival again, the team concludes that three people took part: the decoy, a male partner who carried Aimee off, and a driver. The profile is a controlling woman who is not a mother, a subservient man, and a boy kept for years who now helps them. Sarah tells Hotch that she glimpsed a teenage Charlie crossing a street three years ago and helps a sketch artist age his picture. Agents interview Stephen Shepherd’s parents, whose son was taken a year after Charlie; one of them recalls helping a woman looking for her boy. Barbara and Frank recognize the sketch from the pony-ride line, and Barbara lashes out at Sarah. At the house, a boy begs the captors to take him and spare the new girl.
Garcia cuts 107 households visited by social services to 23 single-income families, and agents knock on doors. At 2150 Mosley Lane, electrician Roger Roycewood says his wife has the children out on a field trip, while the children are hidden inside and one is threatened into silence. The agents see extra locks, a minivan and a picture resembling Charlie. With a warrant, dogs and radar, they find photos of the captives, including Aimee with dyed hair. Garcia then learns that Anita Weld Roycewood’s family owns a Leesburg funeral home with a crematorium.
The ending
Spoiler: At the funeral home a woman orders a screaming girl put inside, but the children are found, and the agents go to arrest Roger. Reid tells Sarah that her belief in her son has brought children home. Jake arrives and Charlie is reunited with his mother. The Shepherds learn that Stephen died protecting the little girl. Sarah thanks the agents for being the first in years to believe her.
Why it stands out
- This was the first episode of the series directed by Matthew Gray Gubler, who plays Reid.
- Brooke Smith, who plays Barbara Lynch, played the woman held captive by Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
- The photo of Charlie on the team’s board of missing children is a real picture of Evan Peters.