The Silvans

Suzanne and Lawrence Silvan were a husband-and-wife abductor and killer team who appeared in the novel Finishing School.

History
See sections on the Suzanne and Lawrence Silvan articles

Modus Operandi
The couple targeted young girls, all of whom would fill out the spots as their daughters. Lawrence would abduct them, usually three at a time, while Suzanne would raise the girls Larry abducted as her own. She would rename them, school them, and, presumably, bar them from leaving the house. When the girls reached adolescence and began their period, Suzanne, to protect them from any men, including her husband, who would want them sexually, poisoned them with hydrocodone, a barbiturate she was prescribed for her chronic pain and nightmares. After killing the girls, Suzanne would dress them in homemade clothing and wrap them in layers, the first layer being blankets, the second winter clothing and the last plastic tarps; the girls would then be buried in graves Larry dug in the forest he was currently working in.

Profile
The victims appearing well taken care of, lacking any sign of sexual abuse, and the lack of ransom demands caused the BAU to profile the unsub as someone who abducted children due to being unable to have any of their own. The clothes the children were buried in implicated an unsub of a middle-class background and, as the girls were held for years, it meant the unsub either worked from home, kept the girls captive in some secluded location, or had a partner. The girls being killed when they reached adolescence meant the unsub likely loved them as children, but hated them as women, believing they lost control of them when they started growing up. However, when it became apparent that it was a team they were dealing with, probably a married couple, the BAU profiled the husband as the abductor and the wife as the killer; the husband would do the grunt work, be mild mannered, subservient, non-threatening and completely abhorred to violence, while the wife, who probably had an abusive childhood, would be the one in control. Suzanne believed that by killing her girls before they grew up she was keeping them pure, stopping any men (including her husband) from tainting and hurting them, making her a type of Angel of Death.

Known Victims

 * Atlanta, Georgia:
 * 1988: The first set of victims :
 * Ellen
 * Two other unnamed girls
 * 1998: The second set of victims :
 * Abigail Mathis
 * Heather Davison
 * Lee Ann Clark
 * 2008, Bemidji, Minnesota: The third set of victims :
 * Sophie Scheckel
 * Unnamed girl

Appearances

 * Novels
 * ''Finishing School