Wade Hatchett

"The story's not over yet, princess."

Wade Hatchett was a highway serial killer who appeared in Season Five of Criminal Minds.

Background
Wade worked as a trucker and lived in Edgewood, New Mexico. In 2009, his wife Caroline died in a house fire, leaving him as their daughter Jody's sole guardian. Due to his busy schedule and the fact that he mostly lived in his truck, Wade was unable to properly care for Jody and was deemed an unfit parent, with the girl being remanded to the custody of Lynn Clemons until a foster home could be found. The thought of losing his daughter drove Wade to begin seeking out for surrogate mothers, random women he would pick up on his routes and hold them captive in his truck, strangling them if they failed to live up to the expectations and dumping their bodies off the highways he drove through. After killing, Wade would visit Jody, telling her sugar-coated stories of his escapades, where he was a lonely king, she was the princess, and his victims were queens.

Solitary Man
After abducting and killing a bartender named Tanya Hill, Wade makes his way to the Clemons house in the middle of the night, sneaking in and waking Jody up, whom he tells about his latest "adventures". After finishing his story and saying Tanya wasn't the one, Wade says he will continue looking for a queen, and when Jody asks what will happen if he does not find one, Wade says that he will "go to a better place". Sometime later, Wade was eating in a truck stop when he spots a hitchhiker named Bobby Lainsford. His interest drawn when he sees Bobby interacting well with a patron and her child. Wade, after overhearing Bobby ask an employee if she knows anyone heading west, says he is, and offers her a ride. After presumably knocking her out, Wade places Bobby in the back of his truck, and when she wakes up, he communicates with her through a ceiling-mounted intercom, telling her to be quiet when she asks what he wants, also saying he wishes to talk.

Eventually stopping, Wade enters the back of his truck with a water bottle, telling Bobby he has some questions when she asks for some water. After quizzing Bobby, Wade grows dissatisfied with the initial answer she gave him when he asks if she want to have children, and as she desperately starts saying yes, he tells her that he does not believe her, and leaves. A few hours later, after Wade kills and dumps Bobby's body, he spots Nancy Campbell and her daughter Courtney pulling over at a rest stop. Following Nancy into the ladies' room, Wade bashes in the door of the stall she is in and abducts her. As the seemingly claustrophobic Nancy begins panicking in the back of his truck, Wade turns both a light and the intercom on, telling her that if she is quiet, the light will stay on, also saying that he wants her when she asks why he is doing this. As Nancy's anxiety escalates, Wade turns the light off.

At a diner, Wade was having breakfast with Jody and Mrs. Clemons; when Mrs. Clemons leaves to take a call, Jody shows Wade a picture she made; after looking at the picture, Wade tells her how much he misses her and Jody asks for another story. Wade tells Jody he had almost given up hope until he found Nancy, who he claims is the one. Before Wade even finishes the story, Mrs. Clemons reappears, tells Jody it is time to go to school, and gives her some money for candy. After Wade tells Jody they will be a family again soon, Mrs. Clemons tells him to stop telling her that, saying that nothing has changed and that Jody is going to be adopted soon. When Wade becomes distraught, Mrs. Clemons tells him that he has known for months that this was a possibility, and that it is for the best since Wade can barely manage to take care of himself, as he is without any family or home and has been reduced to living in his truck. Refusing to admit Mrs. Clemons was right about this being the best for Jody, Wade, after stating he made a promise that he would always take care of her, says goodbye to Jody, telling her that the story is not over yet when she asks if he is sure the latest queen was the right one.

Entering the back of his truck, Wade gives Nancy water (angrily telling her to take when at first she refuses) and tells her she is not like the others, as she knows how important family is. Wade begins questioning Nancy (referring to Jody as "our daughter") and, after being satisfied with her answers, pours sugar on her clothes to clean her up. He then leaves when Nancy starts talking about Courtney. Later, Wade, gun in hand, forces Nancy out of the truck and kills Mrs. Clemons, dumping her body by a highway, not bothering to pose it like the others he has killed. Making his way to her home afterwards, Wade parks his truck and prepares to get out, only to spot SWAT agents surrounding the house. Getting his gun, Wade enters the back of his truck, unlocking the handcuffs he has Nancy in, and forces her to the front of the vehicle, where he uses her as a shield. When Jody starts communicating with him over his radio, asking him to tell her the rest of his latest story, Wade tells her that he and the queen are at the castle to pick her up, but the guards are in the way. At Prentiss's urging, Jody convinces Wade to let Nancy go.

After Nancy is secured, Jody asks Wade why he isn't getting out too; Wade tells her that his search for a queen is over, and that he is going to live happily ever after, answering positively when Jody asks him if he is going to "the better place". Before anyone can reach him, Wade tells Jody to close her eyes commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. Prentiss shields the girl from seeing her father's death by holding her as Nancy runs towards the house. Later, on the plane ride home, we discover that due to the conflicts, Jody's potential adoptive family backed out, but that another relative agreed to take her. Unfortunately, after the delivery of the ending quote where they are discussing the fact there are still many serial killers out there, we are presented with the scene of a young girl hitchhikng on the side of a darkened street. A truck, similar to the one Wade drove, stops, and the young girl gets in as ominous music plays and the scene fades to black.

Profile
The direction the unsub was heading when he dumped the bodies of his victims indicates his comfort zone, the place where he feels most at home and safe, is Edgewood, New Mexico. Since no effort was made to hide the bodies, which were presumably dumped at night, the unsub either does not care if they are found, or knows they cannot be connected to him. The bodies being posed to make it look like the victims are sleeping indicates either remorse or a simple act of staging. Metal shavings found under the victims' nails, traces of diesel fuel and sugar (which absorbs fuel) on their clothes, and the places the victims were taken from (diners, bars, gas stations, etc.) indicates that the unsub is a trucker, whose preferred victim type is women in their mid- to late-twenties, whom he watches for some time, taking them when he is sure there are no witnesses. Since he would need time to hunt and kill, the unsub is probably not a company trucker since their schedules are too tight.

It was odd for the unsub to take Nancy, a woman older than his usual type, from a rest stop, which is unlike his other abduction sites. While target rich and offender friendly, it could not allow him to blend in or have any extended interaction with a victim, so it must just be a dumping and clean up site. Nancy may have been taken since she was older and more "sophisticated" than the other victims, who it would not take more than a day to discern are not suitable for companionship, which the unsub appears to be after, since he holds the victims for hours, but does not rape or torture them. Delusional, the unsub has a romanticized view of himself, which is amplified by his isolation. He is looking for a wife, someone sweet, outgoing and warm, who, if they fail whatever "test" he puts them through, he strangles in a rage.

Nancy was an anomaly, however; she may have been taken because she was a parent, which the unsub may be also, which would explain why he keeps coming back to Edgewood. He may be involved in some kind of custody dispute, which would be his stressor, and he could be a widower, since he would not want to tear his own child away from the mother.

Modus Operandi
Wade found his victims, almost always women in their twenties who had piqued his interest for one reason or another, in truck stops or similar locations he stopped at along his routes. Watching his targets for a short time, Wade would either blitz them or somehow lure them into his truck, placing them in the trailer, which had a light and intercom attached to the ceiling. Eventually stopping, Wade would enter the trailer and begin questioning his captive, asking things like if they were religious or if they wanted children and, if he received an answer he did not like, Wade would deem them unworthy of being his daughter's new mother and strangle them, dumping the body off the highway at night. Usually, no real effort was made in hiding the bodies, which were posed to look like the victims were sleeping.

Real-Life Comparison
Wade's job as a trucker and his targeting of women across the country for his killings appears to have been based on Bruce Mendenhall, John Wayne Boyer, and Adam Leroy Lane. All of them were also truckers who targeted women and operated in several U.S. states (though the latter fact has yet to be confirmed with Mendenhall).

Known Victims

 * July 2009-March 2010:
 * Lexington, South Carolina: Erika Joy
 * Unspecified location: Amber Hardgode
 * El Paso, Texas: Karen Clay
 * Unspecified location: Benita Gibson
 * Sun Valley, Arizona: Sam Marshall
 * Belen, New Mexico: Michelle Aubrey
 * Castle Rock, Colorado: Julie Marie
 * Henryetta, Oklahoma: Violet Henderson
 * 2010, Edgewood, New Mexico:
 * March 7: Tanya Hill
 * March 9: Bobby Lainsford
 * March 9-10: Nancy Campbell
 * March 10: Lynn Clemons

Appearances

 * Season Five
 * "Solitary Man"