Mark Gregory

"How does that feel? ...Shut up! I'm gonna kill you!"

Mark Gregory was a serial-turned-spree killer and abductor who appeared in Season One of Criminal Minds.

Background
"This is all your fault. I saw you every week with that man! You think I don't know what was going on?!"

Mark was born in Sarasota, Florida. When he was young, he was caught peeping at his neighbors through their window. His mother, Elizabeth Gregory, who cheated on her husband, would often meet her lover in a motel and let Mark play in the motel pool. When Mark was ten years old, he and his mother were in a car crash, which was presumably caused by himself. Mark received a whiplash injury and used the opportunity to drown his mother in the car by holding her head under some water that had leaked into the car. His father, who knew about his wife's affair but didn't dare stand up to her, became very protective of him after that. When he was eighteen years old, he committed statutory rape, the victim being his fifteen-year-old girlfriend. He went to different high schools in four different states, since he and his father moved around a lot. He got married when he was in his early twenties, but the marriage only lasted for 23 days; Mark mistakenly believed his wife was constantly cheating on him. He stalked her for three years after the divorce, forcing her to erase her past and move away.

Mark later graduated from Florida State University. Afterwards, he raced cars and worked as a chef at a French restaurant. He also worked as a staff photographer for several magazines before switching to photographing models in Miami. Five years prior to the events of Charm and Harm, he formed a real estate agency with his best friend, Hank Bloomberg. He frequently traveled in his line of work, sometimes even abroad. He somehow managed to obtain the following during his travels:


 * Ca 20 different suits of different make, color and quality, as well as a mechanic's overall,
 * Ca 20 different pairs of shoes,
 * Catalogues for uniforms for law enforcement, construction workers, janitorial, etc.,
 * A wide assortment of watches, wallets and ID cards, and
 * A hand-drawn picture of himself pasted into a pamphlet with see-through plastic pages with different hairstyles and beard styles

Having access to all of these items, combined with his mastery of disguise and skills of manipulation, made it possible for him to adapt to every situation when buying and selling property. Sometime prior to Charm and Harm, in Tampa, Florida, Mark snapped and tortured his girlfriend, Stephanie Seagraves, who was married to another man and kept it a secret from him, before killing her. After he tortured and killed three other Tampa women, two of which were old business contacts and the third an old workmate, Sarasota FBI was able to connect him to the murders with DNA evidence. He was then somehow able to evade capture and abduct Nicole Wegener, presumably torturing her all the while. Nicole's abduction led to the BAU being called in.

Charm and Harm
Mark is first seen having dinner and talking to Nicole, who is tied up and helpless. The two of them are currently located in Atlanta, Georgia. He later drown Nicole and when room service comes to his room and notice that Nicole's plate is still full of food, Mark tells him that she became sick before dinner even started and is taking a hot bath. He even calls her to ask how it is going and then saying that the bath must have felt pretty good when she doesn't reply. The man falls for the ruse, takes the dinner plates, and leaves the room. Mark later dresses up as a suitcase handler and helps a woman with her luggage. Meanwhile, the BAU manage to find and interrogate his ex-wife Jenna Alban thanks to Garcia, who has manage to uncover the woman's current whereabouts. At the same time, Mark has now finished torturing the woman in a bedroom somewhere in South Carolina. He pours water over her face, waking her up, before he takes her to the bathroom. The faucet is then heard being turned on, foreshadowing the woman's immediate murder. Mark later dresses up and acts as a handicapped shopper at a supermarket and pretends to drop some of his shopping bags, gaining the attention of a female supermarket worker, Allyson Glennon, who asks for help. Mark politely accepts.

He then abducts Allyson and takes her to a motel in Copperhill, Tennessee, Mark attempts to drown her in a swimming pool, but when a clerk spots him, he states that Allyson is his wife and manages to fall into the pool, and that she also can't swim. As the worker applies CPR to Allyson, Mark contemplates on whether he should kill the clerk as well, but decides to flee when the clerk tells him to call 911. Allyson is revived once Mark leaves. Enraged at this development, Mark immediately approaches Kelly Dalton as she prepares to get inside her car. He grabs her and orders her to drive. Through directions given by Mark, Kelly arrives at Rock Creek, where the car crash occurred. When Mark becomes distracted, Kelly intentionally crashes the car into a fallen log and manages to escape. However, Mark recovers quickly and approaches her, overpowering her after a brief struggle. He then drags her to a small pond and attempts to drown her there, but she is able to grab a rusty pipe and hit Mark in the head with it. Another small struggle ensues, and Mark eventually manages to take her weapon from her and raises it to kill Kelly. Luckily, Morgan and Elle, supported by local police officers, arrives and Morgan attempts to get Mark to surrender but when Mark intends to use the weapon he snatched from Kelly, Morgan is forced to shoot him dead, saving Kelly's life.

Profile
Mark is a "narcissist with a split personality" and a "chameleon" who could easily adapt to any situation. He is able to gain his victims' trust before inflicting pain upon them, something that is most likely derived from an incredible amount of self-awareness; evidence at his house indicates that he acclimates well to different surroundings. It is certain he has left Tampa and will not return. Since he killed multiple victims with very short time-intervals between each murder, he is classified as a spree killer. They usually go through two different phases: guided, then random. In the guided phase, they operate within a small area and usually have a final destination. When the random phase begins, his murders will be without design and the cooling-off periods will become increasingly shorter. At that point, he will lose total control of himself, and as he devolves, he will kill more victims and become less noticeable. In Gregory's case, his M,O. is to torture, meaning that as he devolves, he will torture less and spend more time on the method that gives him sexual release: drowning. At first, he was thought to have saved his most meaningful murder till last, like Edmund Kemper and Andrew Cunanan, but later on, it is realized he killed his most important first. When spree killers reach the random phase, they kill more frequently and seemingly without planning ahead. As Mark devolves, he would spend less time on the torture and spend more time on the drowning.

Modus Operandi
When he killed his mother, Mark presumably caused her car to crash into a ravine, and then drowned her by forcing her head under the water that leaked in. During his serial killer period, Mark targeted Caucasian women he was previously associated with in some way, who he also believed to be adulteresses. He would usually approach his victims in a social and friendly manner and use some kind of ruse, such as a job offer, to draw them close to him. He would then take them to an expensive hotel, checking in either by using an alias or the names of his victims. After taking them into his room, he would torture them for two days in some varied way, such as choking, burning, and suspension. His signature was killing his victims by drowning them in a bathtub.

After he evaded capture and began his spree killing period, he devolved more and more until he finally stopped luring his victims (by this point random women) entirely. Instead, he simply abducted them from one state and drowned them in another without torturing them.

Real-Life Comparison
Mark has some similarities to both serial killer Ted Bundy and spree killer Andrew Cunanan, as stated by the BAU. Both killers were masters of disguise and manipulation who killed in multiple states. Like Bundy, Mark's crimes had something to do with his ex-girlfriend, devolved, and became sloppier towards the end. Much like Cunanan, Mark's first victim(s) were people he had sexual relationships with. Also, like both killers, Mark ended his killing spree in Florida.

Mark may have also been directly inspired by Christopher Wilder, a.k.a. The Beauty Queen Killer, a serial/spree killer who was also connected to his first few victims and abducted, tortured, and murdered women in several states despite the fact that the authorities knew who he was.

Known Victims

 * May 7, 1978, Rock Creek, Copperhill, Tennessee: Elizabeth Gregory
 * Unspecified date in 1989, Sarasota, Florida: His unnamed fifteen-year-old girlfriend
 * Unspecified dates from 1991 to 1994, unspecified location in Florida: Jenna Alban
 * 2006:
 * Tampa, Florida:
 * February: Stephanie Seagraves
 * February-April:
 * Unnamed victim
 * Unnamed victim
 * Elaine Carol
 * April 16-18, Atlanta, Georgia: Nicole Wegener
 * April 18-19, unspecified location in South Carolina: Unnamed victim
 * April 19, Copperhill, Tennessee:
 * Allyson Glennon
 * Unnamed motel clerk
 * Kelly Dalton
 * Gideon mentions in the following episode, Secrets and Lies, that Mark killed a total of eight women, although Charm and Harm only shows seven murders and two attempted murders.
 * One possibility is that Allyson or Kelly died later on after being rescued, their death being connected with their near-drowning experience. Indeed, secondary drowning can cause death days after the initial drowning experience, up to approximately 72 hours.
 * Another possibility to this is that there was another victim during Mark's serial killing phase who wasn't connected to him until after his death.

Appearances

 * Season One
 * Charm and Harm
 * Secrets and Lies