Tonight on CBS their hit drama Criminal Minds returns with an all-new Wednesday, March 7, 2018, episode, called “Annihilator,” and we have your weekly Criminal Minds recap below. On tonight’s Criminal Minds episode season 13 episode 15 as per the CBS synopsis, “The FBI’s assistant director of national security, Linda Barnes, joins the BAU as they investigate a quadruple homicide of a group of roommates in St. Louis.”
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Recently, JJ had been appointed as the Unit Chief of her team and so tonight she wondered how she was going to handle it all.
JJ knew that she had only been appointed to her position because Barnes was reviewing the team and had wanted to drive a wedge through them all, but she didn’t want to let that happen on her watch and so she talked to Rossi. Rossi had been where JJ was and he knew how much harder her job became with Barnes watching over her shoulder. He just believed that they could ride through the turmoil because that’s what they have always done. Rossi reminded JJ that this wasn’t the first time someone had wanted to down their unit and so he told her that it shouldn’t get in the way of the job because they had joined the team to help people. They have saved countless lives over the years and so that’s what they needed to focus on.
The team later got a case and it was a bit different from there. They had gotten a case about one incident with four victims. The victims had all been roommates when one night someone broke in and tied them up while he ransacked their house looking for all of their valuables however the Unsub then killed the victims that were no threat to him or her and so right away the team believed that the Unsub had given in to the two parts of his brain. The one part that had gone to the house looking to rob the place and the other part that had gone to that house that night to cause chaos. It was an interesting insight into the Unsub and so the team didn’t have a problem with working the case, they merely questioned why it had come to them.
The truth of the matter is that it hadn’t. Assistant Director Linda Barnes had volunteered the unit to the St. Louis police and she had also wanted to oversee the case herself. She told them that she was going to go with them to the crime scene and that had made Reid snap. He didn’t want to pretend that Barnes was right and that Prentiss was harming her team, so he took an unprecedented “sick day”. The others hadn’t followed Reid in taking a sick leave and so they had gone with Barnes to St. Louis though she had ended up interfering more than thought she would. Barnes had decided she could lead the team and so she bully her way through everything. She looked at the case and picked a suspect, therefore, she wanted the others to only look into the suspect she deemed the murderer.
The man she chose happened to be another roommate. There had been three roommates that hadn’t been home that night when the others were murdered and two of them had alibis. There had been the roommate that was flight attendant and had been overseas during the murders while the other had slept over at her sister’s because she had been too tired to make it home. The third roommate happened to Larry Scanlon. Scanlon had had a criminal history and had been known for a violent streak, but the roommate that had slept over at her sister’s and who just so happened to be dating Scanlon had said that the housemates had all come together to vote Scanlon out of the house.
Barnes had said that was motive enough and what they found out later had only made Scanlon look guilty. He was someone that knew the layout of the house and that describes the Unsub. The Unsub had broken the glass to the house from the inside hoping to stage the scene and the murder weapon had actually belonged to one of the victims. The victim Ray Murphy had had a hunting knife under his bed and it was missing. So someone close enough to the housemates would have known about that knife and so Barnes thought it must be Scanlon. Scanlon was also found dead in his car with drugs all around him and a suicide note that claimed he had killed all the roommates. And that had been enough for Barnes, it just hadn’t been enough for JJ.
JJ demanded to see the tox screen and that showed there hadn’t been any drugs in Scanlon’s system when he died. The Unsub had messed up on that part because he had been so busy faking the suicide note that he hadn’t bothered with actually shooting up his victim and so the team created a profile based on what they found. They also hadn’t used Barnes when they created that profile. She was annoyingly trying to insinuate herself into their lives and they weren’t having it. They tried to keep her at arm’s length at all times and so they created a profile without any of his bias. They profiled the Unsub as someone that had always wanted to belong in the house and who was never accepted.
The team then went back to the one roommate they still had in their custody. They asked Rachel if there had been anyone that either she or her friends had too aggressive and she said she hadn’t known anyone like that, but then agents took a different approach. They asked her if they had been anyone that was always helpful and who had wanted to do things around the house without asking. And she told them that sounded like Justin Franco. Franco had seemed like a sweet guy who could never hurt anyone and so the team decided to check that out themselves. They looked into Franco and they found out he liked to post these anonymous as well as aggressive messages online because had wanted to hide that side of himself.
Franco was so obsessed with the family that had been created in that house that he hadn’t wanted to risk them finding out who he really was. But while the team was looking into Franco, Rachel kept asking about Scanlon and Barnes commanded that the others not tell her that her boyfriend was dead. Barnes said Rachel would fall apart if she knew and that it wouldn’t make her good for telling them what they wanted to know. The others hadn’t liked that and so that had given them another reason to hates Barnes. Barnes kept believing she knew what the best way was and so she continued to ignore the professionals even as they tracked down Franco. Franco’s apartment had been full of clothes that were just like Ray’s and so that changed their profile.
They thought Franco had wanted to belong to the family unit and Franco hadn’t wanted that. He had wanted the one person that he wasn’t expecting to kill that night – the flight attendant, Corrine. Corrine had been in Europe and so Franco knew she wouldn’t be in the house. He merely thought Rachel would also be there and so he had planned on killing everyone except Corrine because he thought the “family” unit had been keeping them apart. So the team raced to meet Corrine at the airport and they quickly moved her to a safe place. Then they waited for Franco to show up because they knew the only reason he was pretending to be Ray because he thought that’s what Corrine would have wanted.
Then when Franco did show up, he saw the police and put a gun to himself. He said he’d kill himself unless he saw Corrine and Barnes had wanted to send Corrine out there because she thought that would get Franco to lower his gun however the team knew better. JJ told Barnes that Franco was a narcissist. He would be upset with Corrine for rejecting his affections and point the gun towards her. And, well, Barnes disagree. She went behind everyone’s back and had brought Corrine to the scene. She had tried to tell Franco that he should put the gun down now that he’s seen Corrine and instead he had pointed the gun at her. He had shot her and the others had been forced to shoot him, so it was only chance that the bullet had hit Corrine’s vest because then her blood would have been on Barnes’s hands.
Barnes though hadn’t cared that she almost killed someone because she said she was going to report the BAU for their mistakes like killing Justin. She refused to believe she had made a mistake and so she made sure she talked to the Director before the team could because she had wanted to spin the story. She later told the Director that the team needed to be restructured and so he ended up agreeing with her. She chose to reassign most of the team, force Rossi into retirement and had even made Reid’s a full-time professor. In other words, she had split up the team and the BAU was now forever changed.
THE END!
