Rafael Taveras

Rafael Taveras is a serial killer and stalker who appeared in Cure.

Background
Rafael had disciplinary problems as a minor, which resulted in him being sent to a military boarding school. He later joined the U.S. Army as an electronic warfare officer, but was dishonorably discharged for unspecified reasons. When his mother had cancer, his father felt that she had become a burden in his life. This resulted in Rafael feeling resentment towards father, believing he should have been more sympathetic to her. A few months prior to "Cure", Scott left Julia and began a relationship with a woman named Elena Duran. This resulted in Rafael hating his father and wanting to kill him. However, he knew that if he did kill his father, the police might suspect him, so he decided to go after businessmen who also acted as surrogates for his father and then kill him. His first victim was Marcus Powell, a family services director who worked at the same courthouse as Scott. On January 10, 2018, he killed Powell outside of his home and left a cryptogram with the rod of Asclepius on the back of it in his mailbox to act as forensic countermeasure to throw law enforcement off the true motive of his crimes.

Modus Operandi
Rafael initally targeted businessmen who were surrogates for his father. He would stalk his victims for sometime, taking pictures of them in the parking lots of their workplaces and uploading the photos onto a computer from his home. When he killed his victims, he would repeatedly slash and stab them with a karambit at night while dressed entirely in black wearing a ski mask and googles to act as both camouflage, hide his identity, and avoid leaving DNA evidence at the crime scenes. While he killed Powell and attempted to kill his father outside their homes, he killed Andrew Hirota and Douglas Carmichael in or outside their workplaces. His first signature was leaving cryptograms at the crimes scenes that contained letters from the Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, and Korean alphabets.

After law enforcement failed to find his first cryptogram (which had the Rod of Asclepius on the back of it), he decided paint the symbol at the crime scenes using his victims' blood and pose their bodies so they would be facing it and put the cryptograms in the victims' throats after killing them (knowing they would be found during their autopsies). When he killed Elena Duran, he knocked her unconscious, put her in her car, took her to an underground stockroom in a distribution center he used work at, and stabbed her just as he did his previous victims. Knowing the police might suspect him of the attack on his father and Elena's abduction, he placed himself into the trunk of her car after driving to McKenna industrial park to appear as if he was also a victim and that the offender was someone else.

Known Victims

 * 2018:
 * January 10: Marcus Powell
 * January 24:
 * The attack at the Swilcan Captial Group officer building
 * Andrew Hirota
 * Abigail Fuller
 * January 25: Douglas Carmichael
 * January 26: Scott Taveras
 * January 27: Elena Duran
 * Notes: In addition to these victims, Rafael also stalked two other businessmen, but decided to go after his father instead.

Appearances

 * Season Thirteen
 * Cure