Eddie Mays

"I brought you an angel..."

Eddie Mays is a delusional, cannibalistic spree killer and abductor who appeared in Season One of Criminal Minds.

Background
Described as a generally pleasant boy in his youth, Eddie was born in the small town of Harringtonville, Tennessee, the son of a doctor and a woman named Mary Mays, who was descended from one of the oldest families in the state, a fact in which she took great pride. Eddie's father died in 2003, and sometime later, Eddie moved to Boston to attend college, where his major was Comparative Religions. Despite the distance, Mary continually tried to exert control over her son's life, calling him at least three times a day, and, at one point, traveling to the campus in order to break Eddie up with a girlfriend of whom she disapproved. In an attempt to rebel against his mother, Eddie began partying rather excessively, regularly using drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. Eddie's drug use caused him to suffer a psychotic break, which resulted him being placed in a mental institution in 2005. Held for six months, Eddie checked himself out later that year, and called his mother, who had never visited or contacted him during his stay in the facility, to pick him up, but the call was ignored. Somehow, Eddie made his way back home, where he, still unbalanced, grew fixated with Wally Brisbane, a neighborhood boy who Eddie began to see as a messianic figure, presumably due to his exceptional singing voice. On December 12, Eddie's delusions caused him to murder a man named Paul Thompson, whom Eddie stabbed to death in his yard and stole a shotgun from him.

Blood Hungry
The next day, Eddie tracked Wally down to the home of Annie Stuart, the boy's music teacher. Briefly spotted outside by Domino Thacker, a local drug addict, Eddie entered the house after Wally and Annie's son, Charlie, left, and bashed Annie's head in with Paul Thompson's shotgun. After killing her, Eddie cut Annie open and took her liver and stomach, putting them in food containers (which left bloody circles on the floor) and taking them to his mother's house, where he placed them in a refrigerator. The following night, Eddie went to the home of Lynette Giles, Wally's grandmother. While Wally was watching TV, Eddie broke inside and slit Lynette's throat, removed her heart with bolt cutters and forcibly abducted Wally, taking him to the Mays house, where he told his mother the boy was an angel. Though horrified by her son's actions, Mary cleaned up after him and hid Wally in a storage shed, hoping to protect him and her family name. By this point, in rare moments of lucidity, Eddie had begun to feel remorse for his crimes and left Annie's stomach in a container on the porch of her house. A short time later, Eddie drove to a local church, presumably to ask for forgiveness, and was arrested by Elle and Morgan, who had been staking out the building and had seen Eddie approaching, carrying a wet sack, which presumably contained Lynette's heart. While being subdued, Eddie briefly hallucinates a statue of the Virgin Mary is the mutilated Lynette and starts screaming as he is being dragged away.

Placed in a cell at the police station, Eddie is unresponsive and for the first few minutes, he is screaming and shaking a lot. Reid points out to the local sheriff that Eddie is mentally ill and could use the insanity plea in a court of law. To find out where Wally was taken, Eddie is given anti-psychotics after his mother, who feigns obliviousness, signs the medical release forms. Somewhat lucid now, Eddie is interviewed by Hotch and Reid, who attempt to find where Wally is. Over the course of the interrogation, Eddie grows increasingly agitated, especially after being shown pictures of his victims, and begins talking to himself, loudly screaming "I just wanna know...when will you leave me alone!" to the ceiling as Hotch and Reid, realizing that they will be unable to get anywhere with Eddie, leave. Shortly after the agents exit the cell, Eddie tries to commit suicide by hanging himself, but is spotted in the midst of doing so by a Deputy, who yells for help. Rushing into the cell, Hotch and Sheriff Hall managed to save Eddie, who is sent to a hospital, and then presumably an institution. After Eddie's hospitalization, Wally is found by Hotch and Elle, who discerned Mary's involvement in the crimes.

Profile
The unsub is a twenty- to thirty-year-old disorganized, psychotic white male, due to the use of blitz attacks, the level of violence present in the murders, the differing M.O.'s, and the killer making no attempt to move the bodies or clean up evidence. He engages in anthropophagi (cannibalism), a psychotic addiction where he must drink human blood and possibly even consume human flesh. Anthropophagi suggests an extreme level of psychosis and disorganization, meaning that he couldn't have ventured very far from home to commit the crimes. He lives or has lived in Harringtonville; he knows the territory. He has been seen before, possibly at the ballpark or riding his bike home from the grocery store. He wasn't always a threat; he might have been someone's neighbor or friend. Something about his delusion is keeping him in town. Medication stolen from Annie Stuart's house indicated a drug addiction (while this turned out to be true, it was later discovered that the medication was actually taken by Domino Thacker, not the unsub). Unlike organized killers, most disorganized ones are driven to murder by delusions and do not follow the patterns when it comes to killing, making them unpredictable, but usually easier to find, as they make no real effort to hide or cover their tracks, and also do not stray far from home.

The unsub's fixation with Wally Brisbane, who was present at two crime scenes and abducted, plus the organs he took having major significance as the place of the soul in different societies, also implicates his delusions are religious in origin. He views Wally as something akin to a messianic figure, which he may feel compelled to sacrifice, and by eating his victims' organs and drinking their blood, he believes he is encountering the divine. Psychotics are usually nonviolent, but when they do get aggressive, by the nature of the psychotic delusions, they are excessively brutal. If caught, the unsub may not be able to properly recall his crimes, and like most psychotic killers, he could return body parts to the scene of the crime during moments of lucidity, either as a sign of remorse or simply as a means to manipulate the body further.

Modus Operandi
A disorganized killer, Eddie's victims were apparently chosen at random (though his victims were coincidentally Caucasian and middle-aged or older). They were all blitz-attacked and murdered through excessively violent means, which included stabbing, bludgeoning, and throat slashing. After he killed Annie Stuart and Lynette Giles, Eddie eviscerated them, posing the latter's body to look like an angel, and took organs that he believed contained the soul, such as Annie's liver and stomach, and Lynette's heart, placing them in food containers. In the case of Paul Thompson, his blood was collected from his stab wounds and put in containers. Eddie used bolt cutters to crack open Lynette's rib cage, and presumably used a knife or some other bladed instrument to cut Annie open.

Real-Life Comparison
Eddie was possibly based off Richard Chase, another delusional cannibal with a history of drug abuse who had a somewhat similar relationship with his mother. Both also collected body parts they removed from their victims in food containers, the bottoms of which left bloody rings at the crime scenes.

Known Victims

 * 2005:
 * December 12: Paul Thompson
 * December 13: Annie Stuart
 * December 14: The attack at Lynette Giles's home:
 * Lynette Giles
 * Wally Brisbane

Appearances

 * Season One
 * "Blood Hungry"