Arthur Rykov

"You made choices. The wrong choices."

Arthur Rykov is a serial killer and family annihilator who appeared in Through the Looking Glass.

Background
After his mother died, Arthur was sent to live with his strict Russian Orthodox father, who regarded Arthur as little more than an obstacle for his faith. As a result, the family dynamic was dysfunctional in some unspecified way, most likely through neglect and/or abuse. Arthur would watch the family across the street, fantasizing that they were the "perfect" family and that he was one of them. However, at school he caught the father having an affair with one of his teachers. His image shattered, Arthur attacked the teacher, but the crime went uncharged due to a lack of evidence. As an adult, Arthur eventually went into business and founded A.R. Electrical, making a lot of money for himself and enabling him to build a house where he could live out his fantasy of punishing dysfunctional families. He would use his job to infiltrate houses and plant cameras and microphones, watching the families to learn about their sins. Upon learning that the Yamada family, whom he was particularly interested in, were planning to send the daughter Kristen to a boarding school, Arthur enacted his plan, abducting the family and eventually killing them. He then dumped all of their bodies (except for that of the son Scott) alongside a highway, making it look like a murder-suicide committed by the father John. The bodies were soon discovered by a drifter named Nathan Eades.

Through the Looking Glass
At the beginning of the episode, the BAU is called to investigate because Scott Yamada was still missing and the suspicious circumstances of the murder-suicide. As they are briefed on the case, Hotch gets a call which confirms the abduction of the entire Acklin family by Arthur, and this prompts the team to go to Kansas. Meanwhile, Arthur puts the father Mike, the mother Debra, and the daughter Mackenzie in the basement of his house. They remove their blindfolds and bonds before trying to escape. As for the son Braden, he talks with Arthur, who gives him three guesses to what his motives are, and states that if he gets all three guesses wrong, his family will die. Throughout the scene, Arthur is seen painting small wooden samurai figures, and at one point, he explains what they were to Braden. Soon, Arthur communicates with the rest of the Acklin family via intercom, taunting them. He then shows them a bound Vanessa Hall, Braden's tutor for his Asperger's syndrome, in another room and asks Mike who she is. When he replies that she is Braden's tutor, Arthur shoots and kills her in front of the family. Arthur asks Mike who she is again, and the father admits that he had slept with her twice, enraging Debra and invoking an argument between the parents. Later, he shows the family a bottle of pills Debra takes for her depression, which were initially assumed to be stolen until Mackenzie admits that they were her first drugs, as she is a closet junkie. Again, Debra is enraged and the family argues.

When Arthur leaves Braden alone to abduct Darren Smith, Mackenzie's boyfriend who introduced her to drugs, the boy manages to pick the lock of a door open and is able to escape. Arthur returns with Darren and presents his beaten form to the Acklin family, alongside several wads of money. He asks Debra to make a choice: spare Darren and lose the money, or get the money in exchange for the loss of Darren's life. Being extremely greedy for money and also angry at Darren for ruining her daughter's life, Debra chooses to take the money, not even caring the slightest when Arthur warns her that Darren is someone's son. However, instead of killing Darren, he spares his life, unbeknownst to the family. Arthur then leaves the house to recapture Braden before he could reach a nearby house, presenting the boy before the family. After giving Mike instructions to find a gun, he then gives him a choice: he kills Debra and Mackenzie, then himself, with the gun and Braden is spared, but if he refuses, Braden dies. Mike and Mackenzie are reluctant, but Debra begs Mike to do it. Mike reluctantly agrees and points the gun at Debra, but then refuses at the last second and hugs Debra and Mackenzie, to which Arthur angrily warns the family that the Yamada family made the same exact decision and were met with the consequences. This prompts Debra to grab the gun from Mike's hands and shoot herself in the chest. At the same time, the BAU, having deduced Arthur to be the killer after Scott Yamada's body was discovered near his workplace, burst into the house and arrest him, while it is revealed that the gun he gave to the Acklins was loaded with blanks, and Debra wasn't shot at all. Relieved, Mike and Mackenzie embrace her. By the end of the episode, the Acklin family, plus Darren, are safely recovered from the house, while Arthur is arrested.

Modus Operandi
Arthur would use his job to plant microphones and cameras inside the houses of families who were viewed as perfect by others, enabling him to watch them and learn about their private sins. Another thing the families would have in common is that the sons were, in some way, antisocial (Scott Yamada was reported by his teacher to be withdrawn and quiet; Braden Acklin was recently diagnosed with Asperger's), as well as the fact that they attended the same family camp. Once he had learned enough, he abducted them by threatening the son and making the family put on blindfolds and bindings, then took them to a special house that had a sealed room in the basement, keeping them hostage. Once the family was in place (keeping the son separate as a bargaining chip), he would leave them to stew for some time before revealing their sins, one at a time, to drive the families to their breaking point. Once all of the sins have been revealed to the family, he would give them a gun loaded with blanks and tell them that to save their son, they had to kill each other. If they refused, he would kill them by shooting them with a 9mm pistol and stage it to look like the father had killed them all. It is possible that if the families had done as he asked, he would've killed them anyway to further hide his tracks.

Known Victims

 * Unspecified date: Cooper Lupton
 * 2012:
 * The Yamada family :
 * John Yamada
 * Tricia Yamada
 * Kristen Yamada
 * Scott Yamada
 * The Acklin family
 * Mike Acklin
 * Debra Acklin
 * Mackenzie Acklin
 * Braden Acklin
 * Vanessa Hall
 * Darren Smith
 * Note: Arthur is at one point seen watching secret video recordings of other families, suggesting that he planned to abduct them as well.

Appearances

 * Season Eight
 * "Through the Looking Glass"