Ted Bryar

"One hour, you have one hour to remove it, or I swear to God I'll kill every agent on this train."

Doctor Theodore "Ted" Bryar appears in Derailed.

History
Ted has presumably suffered from paranoid schizophrenia his whole life. As a result of the voices in his head, he spent his childhood and adolescent years studying. He later became one of the world's top physicists, studying in particular the M-theory and writing hundreds of essays about it. He also worked for the government for several years in the 1980s, and was placed in the Stokes Mental Health Center in El Paso in 1996, presumably due to his schizophrenia growing more pronounced. His mental illness was treated by Linda Deaton, a psychiatrist. In Derailed, she was bringing him to Dallas, Texas for a conference, as an example of the progress being made to relieve severe psychosis. During the train ride on the way there, a passenger committed suicide, forcing the train to stop. This, coupled with him noticing Elle, who was reading FBI files, in a nearby seat, caused Ted to have a breakdown and, spurred by his imaginary friend Leo, he took a gun from a train security guard, shot him, handcuffed Elle to her seat, took her gun as well, and took the passengers, including Deaton, hostage.

After two hours of trying to reason with him, the local authorities managed to convince Ted to let them place a telephone in the train car. Ted refused to speak to anyone but an operative of "the Higher Authority", a part of his schizophrenic delusions. Gideon called him and pretended to be as such. Ted then gave him an hour to send in a technician to remove "it", which the BAU later realized was an imaginary microchip that Ted believed caused the voices in his head. Reid suggested that he'd do a sleight of hand, hiding a regular chip in his hand, making a small cut in Ted's arm, and pretending to remove the chip. When Reid did so, however, Ted ordered him to "turn it on". Improvising, Reid and Elle claimed that the chip was powered by tiny electric impulses fired between neurons and had to be implanted to work. Since Ted's voices, logically, didn't go away, he held Reid on the train. Reid recognized Ted's behavior, having a schizophrenic mother, and managed to distract him long enough for Elle to drop kick him, after which another passenger who had a concealed gun shot him in the stomach. He was then taken away by paramedics, repeating "I'm sorry", presumably survived, and put into a mental institution.

Profile


The BAU instantly realized Ted was a psychotic, due to the fact that he appeared to suffer from tardive dyskinesia, a condition that causes uncontrollable facial tics, and which stems from years of antipsychotic usage. Extremely paranoid, Ted believed the government or some other clandestine group was monitoring him, and as delusions are often shaped by personal experience, his years of work for the government were presumably what caused his fantasies. Ted's delusions manifested in the form of hallucinations, voices, and burning and buzzing sensations, which he believed were caused by chips implanted in his body, as his rants and the scars present on his arms indicated. Though he was suffering from a psychotic break, Ted's speech was still lucid, and showed no signs of neologisms, word salads or loosening of associations, meaning his thinking was still relatively organized. Ted's delusion were an important factor in diffusing the situation, and had to be played to, which the BAU did through several means, such as denying him information about who they were, making themselves appear more mysterious, and thus higher in authority to him.

Modus Operandi
Ted threatened, beat and shot his hostages with a pair of handguns, one stolen from a train security guard and the other taken from Elle.

Known Victims

 * Unnamed train security guard
 * Held five people hostage on the passenger train; intended to kill them. They are:
 * Elle Greenaway
 * Josh Patel
 * Elaine Curtis
 * Harry Anderson
 * Doctor Linda Deaton
 * Spencer Reid
 * Himself

Real-Life Comparison
Ted was presumably loosely based on Ralph Tortorici, a paranoid schizophrenic who held a university classroom hostage for several hours, claiming to have done so due to his belief that the government was monitoring him via implants under his skin.

Appearances

 * Season One
 * "Derailed"
 * Season Four
 * "Memoriam"