Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network

Show Name: Real Cases, Fictional Minds

Episode Title: Episode 2: Dinner is Served

You are listening to Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host(s) Jaylli Kushi.

In this episode of Real Cases, Fictional Minds, we discuss: Criminal Minds Season 3 Episode 8, Lucky, and how it is based on the true crime killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

In this dark and disturbing episode, the BAU travels to Bridgewater, Florida, after being called in after the torso of a college student, Abby Kelton, is found in the Everglades, a swamp in Florida. The lower half of her body had been eaten by alligators, and there seems to be an inverted pentagram carved into her chest, along with her throat being slit. The BAU turns the body over to the coroner, and the autopsy reveals Abby was force-fed ten severed fingers. The forensics team determines the fingers belonged to 10 different women, none of whom were Abby, hinting at a signature or message from the unsub. This evidence leads the team to think the killer has been active for years. Since each finger belonged to a different woman, the forensics team was able to obtain fingerprints. Garcia, who is their technical analyst, used those fingerprints to identify the women as 10 missing sex workers from the area. This led the BAU to confirm that Ferrel had been killing for some time without being noticed. The number of fingers proved that the unsubs' crimes were not a recent occurrence. The team profiles the killer as a white male in his 30s, socially isolated, and likely previously institutionalized for mental health issues, and is no longer taking medications because of the brutality of his crimes. They called him an “adaptive satanist”, someone who twists religious passion to justify his twisted fantasies, and who's now deliberately trying to get noticed after years of flying under the radar. The unsub's actions suggested an obsession with false Satanic rituals, which are not based on real beliefs but delusions. Rossi, one of the seniors on the team, had expertise on Satanic cults, which was crucial to the case; he believes true ritualistic killings are rare and that the symbolism is often a cover for other violent urges. Agent Prentiss and Rossi go to examine a crime scene where another victim, Tracey Lambert, was abducted. Inside the public restroom stall, they discovered a small stack of books nearly piled on top of the toilet, which is super weird and has very odd placement and is completely out of place for a public bathroom, which immediately drew Rossi’s attention. He explains to Prentiss that this meticulous act of how he ordered the book is something that severely mentally ill individuals often do, because they have chaos in every aspect of their lives, and they are trained to create a sense of order, such as keeping their belongings clean and neat. Prentiss then calls Garcia to have her research local institutions, which directs the team's focus to a psychiatric facility in Bridgewater. Hotch and Reid, the other agents on the team, ask Garcia to cross-reference records of local institutions, looking for patients who had been committed for violent acts, especially with a history of arson. Why? Because the records they needed were believed to have been destroyed in a fire in Hazelwood Hospital for the Criminally Insane, which suffered a fire years earlier that destroyed most of its files. Hotch and Reid visited the burned-out hospital and found out that one staff member, Dr. Lorenz, they needed to talk to, had died in the fire while trying to save a patient's file. Luckily for the team, Dr. Lorenz’s salvaged notes and journal provided the information the team needed. Reid was able to read the doctor’s journal, which documented the institutionalization of a 7-year-old boy named Floyd Feylinn Ferell. The journal said he had been institutionalized for attacking