Norman Hill

"I tried to tell you but you wouldn't listen."

Norman Hill is a disgruntled, white-collar office worker, appearing in Season Four of Criminal Minds, who began committing a series of "road rage" murders with a modified shotgun.

Background
A quiet, all-around average man with affinity for cars, Norman lived in the suburb with his family and worked at an insurance company in Orange County, California, being in charge of travel expenses. In mid-2008, tragedy struck the Hill household when Norman's youngest daughter, Jenny, was hit and killed by a car on the freeway, having wandered away while Norman was busy changing a flat tire. Norman never got over Jenny's death and came to believe everyone secretly blamed him for the tragedy, adding to his already considerable disenchantment with life, which stemmed from his dead-end job, his emasculating wife Vanessa and his other, teenaged daughters Sasha and Britney.

Normal
Six months after Jenny's death, Norman, on his way to work and to drop off a shotgun as a gift, is cut off in traffic by a woman named Judy Hannity, who resembles his wife. Norman pulls up next to Judy, presumably to ask for an apology, but is blown off and insulted. Angered by the woman's attitude, Norman pulls up to her again, pulls the shotgun out of its gift box and opens fire, causing Judy to crash, paralyzing and nearly killing her. Something inside him having changed, Norman arrives at an office party, where his wife and co-workers notice that he is unusually happy and confident.

Later that night, Norman is shown contemplating the unknown as he stares at each of his childrens' bedroom doors. He then goes to the garage and begins sawing the barrel off of his shotgun, which he uses to kill his entire family while they sleep. Norman's psychosis causes him to block out the murders of his wife and daughters, who he hallucinates are still alive. Killing another two women in drive-bys in an attempt to achieve the same high he got attacking Judy Hannity, Norman finds he is unable to achieve as much satisfaction from shooting as he did before, so he begins modifying his shotgun and starts roleplaying, dressing as 1950's style punk after the media dubs him The Road Warrior.

Going a week without killing anyone, Norman begins becoming more and more unstable and, while at the office, briefly contemplates committing a massacre when he envisions his fellow employees are mocking him. Regaining his senses just as he begins reaching for his concealed shotgun, Norman spots Jordan Todd on a television in the lounge, releasing the BAU's profile of The Road Warrior to the public. Rushing to his car after the seeing the broadcast, Norman, on his way home, has a psychotic fit and, when two men pull up and ask him if he is alright, Norman hallucinates they are laughing at him and, instantly calming down, murders both of them, shooting the two an excessive number of times.

Arriving home, Norman watches another news broadcast, in which Jordan pleads with The Road Warrior, who the BAU had discerned had a family, to turn himself in peacefully. Seemingly moved by Jordan's speech, Norman tells hallucinations of his dead family that he is The Road Warrior, but is mocked by the visions. Changing his mind about giving up, Norman forces his "family" into the SUV, ranting about how he can fix everything and that he can longer bare living in that house after what happened to Jenny, who he accuses his murdered family of forgetting about.

Norman's erratic driving attracts the attention of the police and a chase ensues, with Norman alternating between firing shots and bickering with his hallucinations, who begin blaming him for Jenny's death, saying they can never be a family again. Reaching the highway, Norman jerks the steering wheel to the left (thinking Vanessa had grabbed it) and crashes into the concrete barrier, causing the SUV to flip over. Crawling out of the wrecked SUV, Norman is surrounded by Morgan, Prentiss, Reid and several officers, who he begins begging to help him save his family. When Morgan, who had gotten a call regarding the fate of the Hills from Rossi, shows him the SUV is empty and tells him his family is gone, Norman, remembering what he had done, suffers a complete breakdown and can do nothing but sob as Morgan arrests him.

Profile
The unsub was profiled as an intelligent white male, aged forty-five to fifty-five, who had experienced some tragic event a short time ago which, coupled with other underlying factors, caused him to snap and begin lashing out. The unsub's victims, blonde women, represented someone oppressive in his life, probably a current or former girlfriend or wife, who was the scapegoat for his personal failures. Killing his oppressor would cause the unsub to lose the scapegoat, so he murdered people who reminded him of her, though as his psychosis grew and his new and old lives started to become unable to coexist, it would only be a matter of time before surrogates stopped being enough and he would kill the real deal. The hyper-masculine disguise the unsub adopted while killing, his victim preference and his emasculating trigger implicated someone going through a masculine identity crisis, meaning the killer felt like a complete failure in his normal life, thinking his family does not need or respect him, which makes him feel useless and emasculated. This persecution, real or imagined, has destroyed the unsub's self-image, which The Road Warrior persona has rectified, giving the unsub a sense of power and purpose. This new identity has become the single most important thing in the killer's life, so much so that the unsub will die before giving it up.

Impersonal killers like The Road Warrior, once triggered, go out of their way to release their bottled up anger and resentment, usually killing close to home, where the source of their rage likely originates. The killer winds up becoming like a drug addict, always chasing the high their first murder gave them, incapable of understanding the rush will never return. Believing they are doing something wrong when they do not get the desired results, the unsub is prompted into obsessively honing their skills and MO, thinking that if the circumstances are just right, they will be able to re-experience the rush they crave. Murder eventually becomes all the unsub thinks about and they will never stop killing, ultimately chasing the high "to the gates of insanity and death".

It is difficult to officially classify Norman as either a spree or serial killer, as he seems to have characteristics of both. While his motives and profile fit the description of a spree killer, his actual killings more closely resemble serial killings; there was a slight cooling off period between incidents.

Modus Operandi
While Norman's first freeway murder was spontaneous, his next two were planned in advance, taking place at night (when there would be fewer witnesses) and being committed with company cars. Cruising alternate merge sites on the freeway, Norman drove extra slow and, when a blonde women who reminded him of his wife inevitably cut him off, he pulled up next to them and opened fire with a pump shotgun, which he continually modified in order to create a "perfect" weapon. Norman first shortened the barrel of the gun to increase the shots' spread, then attached a hook of sorts to the pump handle, allowing him to hook the gun onto his car door when the window was rolled down and chamber new shots without having to take both hands off of the wheel.

As he grew more unstable, Norman fully embraced The Road Warrior persona and began dressing as a stereotypical tough guy on his outings, wearing a leather jacket and mirrored sunglasses.

Known Victims

 * Judy Hannity
 * Vanessa Hill
 * Sasha Hill
 * Britney Hill
 * Linda Sicher
 * Marilyn Cohen
 * Joe Karem
 * Timothy Calvert

Appearances

 * Season Four
 * "Normal"