In this week’s Criminal Minds episode, “The Fallen” the BAU heads to Santa Monica to track down a killer who is burning his victims body’s beyond recognition.
They are able to trace the last victim through dental records and discover she was a 19-year-old girl named Lindsay. Lindsay had moved to Santa Monica from Minnesota and in order to spare her mother any grief, did not tell her that she had been living on the streets.
When Hotchner and Rossi go to the homeless shelter Lindsay was occasionally staying at, Rossi bumps into his marine sergeant from Vietnam. Special guest Meshach Taylor stars as Sergeant Harrison Scott, who has apparently fallen on hard times as he is now frequenting the same homeless shelter.
But when Rossi turns away to find his card to give to him, the sergeant disappears back onto the streets. While he tries to figure out exactly what happened to his old friend, our killer grabs his next victim. An unwitting street artist chooses the wrong portrait subject and winds up dead, his body tossed at the front doors of the shelter.
This time instead of burning the victim with fire, the killer drowns the man in bleach. This leads the team to suspect that their UnSub is literally trying to clean up the streets.
Sergeant Scott knows the identity of the victim and begins helping the FBI track down the killer. Can Rossi and Scott figure out who is murdering Santa Monica’s homeless before Scott becomes the next victim?
Tonight’s episode of Criminal Minds , “The Fallen” gave us a deeper look into Rossi’s past, while serving as a reminder that far too many of our veterans are living on the streets.
Photo: CBS © 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
