Floyd Feylinn Ferell

Floyd Feylinn Ferell, a.k.a. "Lucky", is a psychotic, prolific, cannibalistic serial killer and abductor who first appeared in Season Three of Criminal Minds.

Background
Most of Floyd's past is not revealed in detail. It is, however, revealed from a psychiatrist's notes that he was admitted to the Hazelwood Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Florida at the age of seven after biting a large piece of flesh from his nine-month-old sister, Lori. He also believes himself to be possessed by a flesh-eating demon. He was put on medication, subjected to art therapy using Francisco Goya's Black Paintings (or at least one of the collection's works, Saturn Devouring His Son), and allowed to read books about Satanism. Though the doctors still considered him a threat to others, when Ferell reached the age of eighteen, the local law required the hospital to release him. Soon after that, he stopped taking his delusion-inhibiting medications since they caused him to gain a large amount of weight. At some point, he dropped "Ferell" from his name, opened a BBQ restaurant called "Feylinn's Fine Bar-B-Q" in Bridgewater, Florida, and began killing.

Lucky
The BAU are called in to investigate Floyd's killings after the body of Abby Kelton is discovered. After her stomach contents are analyzed, they find a number of fingers among them, and when they check their fingerprints, they find that they all belong to missing prostitutes. Later, Floyd abducts Tracey Lambert from a public restroom. A search party is formed to find her, but during the search, one of the participants, Sheryl Timmons, is also abducted by Floyd. Sometime later, he dumps the body of another prostitute he killed, named Maria Lopez, inside a local church; the body is discovered by Morgan when the agent goes there to apologize to a local priest, Father Marks. By then, the BAU has tracked down the Hazelwood institution and find what remains of Floyd's records, the rest having been destroyed in a random fire that also killed his personal doctor. When they raid his house, they find a collection of cooking equipment, a walk-in freezer containing his victims and Sheryl in captivity.

Floyd is found in a basement room with walls covered in writing and pentagrams containing books about Satanism and images of the Black Paintings, apparently in the middle of some sort of prayer. The BAU also find a homemade cookbook containing cannibalistic recipes like "Skewered She" and "Kobe Girl Steak". When they question him, he refuses to talk to anyone but Father Marks. When he arrives, Floyd said like he felt abandoned by God, to which Marks replies, "God is in all of us." At that moment, Rossi, who had looked at the list of search party volunteers, which has Floyd's name on it, rushes in to stop the interview. Floyd does, however, have the time to reply "So is Tracey Lambert". He had served stew containing her flesh to searchers, thereby destroying all of the evidence. Floyd then starts laughing maniacally, and is attacked by an outraged Marks, who is restrained and dragged out of the room by Morgan as Floyd continues laughing, relishing the priest's rage and despair. Floyd is institutionalized a second time after this, and his BBQ restaurant is last seen being sealed off in order to be searched.

Lucky Strikes
"You think you can have God without the Devil, you can't."

Floyd reappeared in this episode, in which he has been released from the institution and moves in with his sister, Lori, before again becoming the subject of a BAU investigation.

Profile
There are two types of violent Satanic offenders: teenagers who assume the Satanic identity to rebel and who rarely cause fatalities; and adaptive serial killers who rationalize their fantasies and urges by blaming outside forces, and use Satanic imagery as a means of causing fear and panic. Those of the latter do not kill because they truly believe in Satan; they only believe in Satan because it gives them an opportunity to kill. There is no evidence suggesting Abby Kelton's killer is a teenager, or that there were multiple attackers, so the unsub is of the latter kind, whose ritualizing of Abby's murder means he will kill again soon, if he has not already. The killer is not a sadist, because his victims lacked any sign of torture or mutilation. Abby being force-fed human fingers was simply a message ("she's not my first"). Geographical profiling indicates the unsub's safety zone (his home and where he avoided killing to escape detection) is Bridgewater, and he has started killing inside it, not because he wants to get caught, but because he wants to draw attention to himself, and thus give himself a sense of power over the police, which also means he will likely try to insert himself into the investigation.

Organizing the books Tracey Lambert dropped while being attacked indicates the unsub may have been institutionalized at some point in his past. The severely mentally ill have chaos all around them, but once they are put into an institution, they are given order and taught to keep their rooms and possessions clean and tidy. When discharged, they stop taking their medication, and their minds revert to a chaotic state, but due to their conditioning, they can compulsively try to keep some semblance of order, hence Abby's books being arranged according to size.

Maria Lopez's body being frozen, the victims not being sexually assaulted, and the unsub keeping portions of them indicated cannibalism, as did the fingers Abbey was force fed (it was a dual message: "She's not my first" and "I'm eating them"). The greatest taboo, cannibalism (and apparent vorarephilia) explains the unsub's drive to blame things on outside forces. The unsub does not take too many precautions, as he believes Satan will protect him. He targets athletic women because he is attracted to them, and because they were meatier than the emaciated prostitutes he started out killing. Blaming the devil for his urges and cannibalism was not enough to lessen his guilt, so he tricked others into participating to make them as guilty as he was.

According to Doctor Jim Lorenz's old notes, Floyd's "symptoms go far beyond normal psychosexual oral biting fixation of a typical seven-year-old boy" and he "believes he is possessed by a flesh-eating demon".

Modus Operandi
Floyd initially killed prostitutes since he had easy access to them. Because some of them were regular drug-users, they were very skinny (which, according to Floyd, made them "taste funny"). He switched to athletic Caucasian women, both because he was attracted to them and he needed the healthy flesh of their legs as ingredients in various cannibalistic dishes. The way he killed the prostitutes is not specified, but Abby Kelton had her throat slashed, as did the prostitutes found in Floyd's freezer, after being held captive in a cage and restrained to a mattress in the basement of his restaurant for several days. In the case of Tracey Lambert, he painted an inverted pentagram at the location of where he abducted her and apparently killed her by butchering and flaying her, so her flesh could be served to the very people who were searching for her.

After killing his victims, he carved inverted pentagrams on their bodies post-mortem, wrapped them in plastic (with the exception of Tracey Lambert), and preserved what was left of their bodies in his restaurant's industrial freezer. He also force-fed fingers to Abby Kelton taken from previous victims in order to send the authorities two messages: he had killed before, and he was eating his victims. He would abduct his victims using a blitz-attack and use their flesh for cooking after killing them, the only exceptions to the latter fact being Abby Kelton and Maria Lopez (who were disposed to send messages to the authorities).

Real-Life Comparison
Floyd seems heavily based on real-life suspected serial killer and cannibal Nathaniel Bar-Jonah. The numerous similarities include:


 * A fascination with cannibalism since they were children, culminating when they attacked a younger girl when they were seven years old.
 * Being committed to a mental hospital and having their previous record covered in some way (as an offending minor's expunged record in Floyd's case; by changing state and not being obliged to register as a sexual offender, in Bar-Jonah's).
 * Prone to gain weight.
 * Worked as cooks in restaurants.
 * Went to church despite claiming to be of a different religion (Satanism in Floyd's case, Judaism in Bar-Jonah's).
 * Owned cooking equipment that had been apparently used to cook human flesh.
 * Wrote their own cookbooks with cannibalistic recipes. The page from Floyd's cookbook seen in the episode is even composed in a similar style to Bar-Jonah's prison recipes, with childish-looking, hand-drawn images of smiling faces and pasted cutouts of photos accompanying the text (no images of Bar-Jonah's actual cannibalistic recipes have been released).
 * Were suspected of cooking and serving a victim to other people while the victim was being searched for (only confirmed in Floyd's case).
 * Their restaurants were closed down based on the latter suspicions.

Similar suspicions were raised about several other confirmed cannibals like Karl Denke, Fritz Haarmann, Carl Großmann, and Nikolai Dzhumagaliev (who also had a history of mental illness and tendency to kill and cannibalize women); and also about serial killers who were involved in the meat-producing industry, like Großmann himself, Robert Pickton, and Joe Metheny.

Floyd's belief that he is talking to, and is being protected by a demon is similar to Richard Ramirez, who, according to forensic psychologist Rex Beaber, believed himself to be in the service of Satan, and left pentagrams on some of his crime scenes; and David Berkowitz, a.k.a. "The Son of Sam", who claimed to have committed the murders at the orders of a demon possessing Berkowitz's neighbor's dog, named Sam. The scene where Floyd is pulled over while having a victim, yet released, alludes to Jeffrey Dahmer, a cannibal who, while having the remains of one of his victims in the car, was able to convince a police officer who pulled him over to let him go.

Floyd interpreting cannibalism as a way to satisfy a flesh-eating demon is also somewhat similar to some explanations given by Brazilian serial killer Francisco de Assis Pereira for his crimes. Incidentally, Pereira was also attributed seemingly "supernatural" abilities to manipulate women and evade capture. Floyd also has some similarities with Venezuelan murderer Dorángel Vargas; both were serial killers and cannibals, with body counts in the double-digits, who targeted healthy victims with the belief that their flesh would taste better (although Floyd's initial victims were drug users), and committed crimes prior to their murders that sent them to psychiatric facilities. Vargas was also theorized to have committed murders as part of Satanic rituals by the Venezuelan police.

Known Victims

 * Unspecified date in 1977 or 1978: Lori Ferell
 * Unspecified year-c. February 2007: Ten prostitutes, all of them abducted, killed, and used for his cooking prior to Lucky. They are:
 * Keira Eckman
 * Jill Quader
 * Megan Gettler
 * Samantha Naris
 * April Yorkers
 * Cecilla Baquerizo
 * Flora Marcias
 * Delia Gamarra
 * Jada de Aguirre
 * Rita Tayamo
 * 2007:
 * February: Maria Lopez
 * November 9: Abby Kelton
 * November 11-12: Tracey Lambert
 * November 12: Sheryl Timmons
 * November 1, 2017: David Rossi

Appearances

 * Season Three
 * Lucky
 * Season Thirteen
 * Lucky Strikes