“But he served six months and when he got out he couldn’t land a job, let alone something in his major. No company would have anything to do with him—nor would any municipality. He walked around with a ton of student loans and a big chip on his shoulder. Got into a few bar fights and eventually moved back to Virginia. He found a gig driving a bread truck, which put him on the road at 4:00 AM and at home by 3:00 PM. That later became significant because it gave him a lot of time to troll for his victims.
“For those of you who don’t remember, he killed a total of fourteen people, eleven women and three men. Back when Underwood developed his assessment, the BAU was still using the terms ‘organized’ and ‘disorganized.’ We’ve moved away from that terminology, but Underwood felt he was a classic organized offender, meaning he was intelligent. Thought out his crimes beforehand. Selected his victims, studied them, watched for lifestyle patterns. Once he spotted a weakness, he chose his spot and snatched them up. He came prepared. No weapons of opportunity. Whatever he needed, he brought with him.
“He kept his vics under lock and key at an undisclosed location—to this day we’ve never found it—and tortured them. Brought them to the brink of death and revived them before finally murdering them. And then …” She sighed. “Well, the same thing I described before. The sliced lines on the abdomen and the excising of the external genitalia. Male or female, the ritual was the same.” She stopped and glanced around. They were listening intently, waiting for her to continue.
“How did he subdue them?” Morrison asked. “You said there were three men. Not as easy to control as women.”
“He used an inhaled anesthetic to incapacitate them. Very effective.” Vail turned back to the others. “The ME was able to determine that the vics were sodomized with smooth objects, probably plastic or glass, neither of which leave behind any kind of telltale signs or residues. But there was trauma to the tissues, as you would expect. Enough to conclude there was some anger behind it.”
“Do we know why?” Tarkoff asked.
“I’d planned to ask him but never got the chance.”
“I thought you met with him,” Walters said. “From what I know of the BSU, wouldn’t that be high up on your list, to understand what motivated him?”
“I’m in the BAU, and, yes, the BRIU would be interested in that. As would we. But you can’t walk in and sit down across from one of these guys, especially the bright ones, and start asking questions like that without building a rapport—which takes a long time. If you don’t establish some kind of relationship, they’ll either tell you where to go, or they won’t answer the question. Or they’ll give you a bullshit answer. None of those scenarios are worth a roll of pennies.”
“Is there anything to that? The sodomy? In your experience?”
“Yeah. I can guess, but I don’t think that’ll do us any good. We’re not at that point where we’ve exhausted everything else and have to resort to educated guesses. There are numerous psychological explanations for sticking an object in a victim’s anus and doing physical damage. The most obvious, which is why I mentioned it, is anger. You want to move farther out on the limb, you can make inferences. Maybe he’s homosexual and isn’t comfortable with his sexuality. Maybe he was sexually assaulted as a young adult by a male power figure. Maybe he was sexually assaulted during his stint in the joint when he was in Indiana. You see what I mean? Not going to help us find him.”
“I think it could help us,” Hurdle said. “If he’s homosexual, rather than looking at prostitutes or trying to find former girlfriends, we should be looking at gay bars and other hangouts and neighborhoods where gays tend to congregate. I think it makes a huge difference.”
Fair point. Vail bit the inside of her bottom lip. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll dig through the file in case there’s something I’m not remembering. I’ll talk with Jasmine, see if she remembers seeing anything when she was a kid.” She pulled out her Samsung to make a note and gestured at Curtis to continue. “Oh—I did notice something I hadn’t seen before. When I interviewed him at Potter, he had what looked like a self-inflicted scar on his left forearm. We’ve learned that self-mutilation is often found in adults who were sexually abused as children. So there’s that.”
“We had definitive evidence tying him to only two of the murders,” Curtis said. “He pled to those in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. We know he did the others but they’re officially listed as unsolved. We were never able to tie him to them forensically.”
“And that’s not unusual,” Vail said, looking up from her phone. “Being a smart offender, he’s aware of the basic concepts of forensic evidence. Since we don’t have a crime scene where he did the actual killing, we’re left to examine only the dump sites where he left the bodies. And he knew to cover his tracks. So to speak.”