Tonight on CBS FBI airs with an all-new Tuesday, May 23, 2023 season 5 episode 23, “God Complex,” and we have your FBI recap below. In tonight’s FBI season 5 episode 23 called, “Torn,” as per the CBS synopsis, “When a prominent doctor is found dead in a ritualistic slaying, the team must race against the clock to hunt down a religiously motivated serial killer. Also, Scola faces a life-or-death decision, on the fifth season finale.”
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On tonight’s FBI finale episode, a doctor was found on federal land. The victim’s name was Dr. Paul Hendrix. He was found at a park and that made his murder a federal crime. Only his murder was an odd one. He wasn’t killed at the park. He was just dumped there. He was missing his clothes as well as personal effects.
There were several pieces of his flesh that were cut away. His hands were also tied together with a rosary to make it appear as if he was praying. It all very ritualistic and it was because he was the first victim that no one wanted to use the words “serial killer”. To say the words was like it was inviting trouble to their door.
They ignored the ritualistic aspect initially. They looked into Paul’s life. He was never married and he recently had to ask the cops to intervene because the angry husband of a former patient had harassed him. The man that did so was Derek Lawson. Derek works in construction.
e was married for a long time to the love of his life and then she got sick. Paul was supposed to perform surgery on her only he pushed back her surgery to instead take a young and healthier patient into the OR. And so Derek blamed Paul for his wife’s eventual death.
Derek firmly believes that his wife would have lived if she had gotten her surgery first. Derek also had an alibi for the time of the murder. Meaning he wasn’t their killer. They became even more sure of this when the second body dropped. The body of Colonel James Logan was found in a dumpster in the city.
He was killed elsewhere like Paul. He was also found in the same manner as Paul. The two men just didn’t know each other. Their paths never crossed. One was a neurosurgeon considered the best in his field. The other was a soldier that wrote a book about his time overseas.
They both became famous. Albeit for different things. They never worked together. They never even knew each other and still someone killed the both of them. The FBI used surveillance footage of James’s time in the city to determine that someone had been stalking him.
The photo they have of this man was too grainy to run facial recognition and so they identified their perp by the rosary beads he used. The beads were only sold at one place in the whole city. It was sold in a seminary gift shop. Father Roger Burns ran the place and he identify the man from the photo.
The priest said that was Frank Silver. Silver used to work for the seminary. He originally wanted to join their order and they had to turn him down because he didn’t meet the educational requirements. Father Burns felt bad for Silver after turning him down. He gave Silver a job as a custodian so that he would get to be a part of their community. He also asked Silver to start taking some college courses on the side in order to qualify as a priest. Silver seemed very religious at first and everything was working out. And then he began devolving.
Silver later claimed to be God. He believed the priests were there to worship him and that only he could pass judgement. Silver became aggressive with several of the priests. He threatened parishioners. Father Burns had to fire him. He still had a file on Silver. He handed that over to the FBI and they learned that Silver came from Iowa. He was new in the city. He probably committed several crimes back home that he had to run from. He was also staying at an abandoned church that the FBI quickly found.
The FBI raided the church. They found hidden tunnels there. In one of the tunnels, there was a young woman named Mary. Mary met Silver at a soup kitchen at a homeless shelter. She was a volunteer there and Silver became infatuated with her. They were friendly. They weren’t friends and there was also no hope of that after he asked her to have his child out of the blue. She of course turned him down because she didn’t know him nor did she wish to get to know him after that. And he responded by kidnapping her in order to repeatedly rape her in the hopes of getting her pregnant.
Silver told her that he was God. He told her he chose her to have his son like the original Mary was chosen. He wanted to bring the second coming on and he terrorized her for four days until the FBI rescued her. Mary told them what Silver did. What he said. She also said that he stole her car. The FBI found out that he was still using it. The car angle helped once they knew how he was choosing his victims. He was picking them out of newspaper clippings. He left them near his “throne” at the abandoned church.
Silver was picking people who had control over life and death. The neurosurgeon was saving people on his time schedule. The colonel wrote a book about how hard it was to send young soldiers to their deaths. Silver’s next target was a judge in a huge trial. Silver truly believed himself to be God because he was a malignant narcissist. He thinks the whole world was there to amuse him. He was killing his victims in a similar manner to how apostles were murdered for defying the will of God.
Silver tried to target the judge. The FBI went on high alert after finding Mary’s car parked a few blocks away from the courthouse. They tried to capture Silver before he could hurt the judge and, while they later protected the judge himself, Silver got away from them in all the chaos. They had to follow him to a cemetery where he got the drop on Maggie. And he tried to use her as a human shield, but she told her people to take the shot and they did. They shot Silver. They captured him and now he will live out his own personal hell.
Scola wasn’t there for the takedown because he had to go to the hospital. Not for himself. It was for Nina. Nina developed an infection. They had to delivery their son a month before his due date and Scola was even asked who to prioritize who to save during the surgery if it went south. He chose Nina. It thankfully didn’t have to come to that and both mother and baby are okay. They also named their newborn boy “Douglas” after Scola’s late brother.
THE END!
