Ben Bradstone

"I like to hear them scream. It reminds me of the rollercoaster! I like rollercoasters. Hey, especially in the summertime!"

Ben "Cy" Bradstone is a mentally-challenged serial killer who appeared in Season Seven of Criminal Minds.

Background
Ben, who later started calling himself "Cy", was born with a lack of oxygen in his brain and a damaged frontal lobe, rendering him developmentally disabled when he grew up. Throughout his life, he had a very poor sense of hygiene and was often bullied. He displayed some sociopathic traits when he was young, hitting a dog he owned just for fun. One night when he was a teenager, he attended a homecoming party together with a girl named Lyla Smith, who would later marry his brother, Matt, years later and have two children with him, named Tammy and Jason. At the party, the kids played spin the bottle. When it was Lyla's turn, it landed on Ben. They went into a closet together, where Ben felt her up. Having fallen in love with her, he started following her around at school, but stopped doing so when he overheard her telling a friend how gross she thought he was. At some point, he spent time in a halfway house for some unspecified crime. After that, he began travelling around the area in an RV, occasionally working part-time jobs to get by and crashing at his brother's home now and again. In 2011, he learned that Matt and Lyla were having some marital problems and became a serial killer, targeting women who resembled Lyla when she was young.

Proof
Ben comes back to the shed where he keeps his victims, all the while describing his life (from his point of view) to his camera. He then proceeds to use sulfuric acid to burn the eyes of Beth Westerly. After killing Beth, he returns to Matt and Lyla's house, where the latter gives him some clothing, shampoo, and toothpaste. Matt then invites Ben in, and before he follows the couple into the house, he looks into the camera and says, "Every story has a beginning. But the part I like best, is the end." While staying at Matt and Lyla's, Ben plays with Jason before Matt asks him to permanently move in with them. Ben replies that he'd rather not, for he wants to be free, and he adds that he had a date with twins. However, Matt doesn't believe him, just like he didn't believe him as a child when Ben stated he felt up Lyla. Tammy returns home, and Matt announces that she is about to attend a homecoming party tomorrow night. Ben offers to videotape with party, but Lyla kindly turns down the offer, resulting in her and Matt having a slight scuffle that goes unnoticed by the children. Ben snaps because of this and later abducts a girl named Sarah at another bus station. At the shed, he burns Sarah's mouth and claps at the still-recording camera with child-like pleasure.

At Matt and Lyla's bedroom, Ben begins kissing photos of Lyla and sniffing a piece of Lyla's clothing before hallucinating about a teenage Lyla preparing to have sex with him before a hallucination of a teenage Matt interrupts them. The adult Lyla then returns home, interrupting his hallucinations, and he manages to hide from her when she comes into the bedroom. During the following night, Matt asks Ben to stay for the night, but Ben refuses. He then tells him and Lyla about Sarah, but doesn't reveal that he killed her, instead saying, "She's dead to me." Tammy then comes into the room, wearing the same dress Lyla wore during her homecoming party, attracting Ben's attention. Ben then follows Tammy to her party and waits for her to come out alone. When she does, he approaches her and offers to take her home, but she turns down the offer. However, she then changes her mind and goes with him.

The next day, Ben explains to his camera why he kills women before going back into his shed, where Tammy has just recovered. He then takes her at knifepoint and explains the time of how he felt up her mother to Tammy. Tammy is shocked and began telling him of what Lyla told to her, that he took advantage of her while she was drunk. She then makes an attempt to escape, kicking him in the crotch, but she is unsuccessful. Snapping, Ben ties her back to the same chair he ties all of his victims to and begins laughing at his camera. Meanwhile, the BAU, having discerned Ben as the unsub, convinces Lyla to get Ben back to the house under the pretense that Matt has been arrested for hurting Tammy. The ruse works, and Ben arrives at the house, hugging Lyla while hallucinating her in her homecoming dress. Rossi and Morgan then burst out of their hiding places and arrest Ben, causing him to yell out angrily at Lyla as Matt watches painfully.

With Tammy still missing, Rossi and Hotch convince Ben to disclose Tammy's location, but as long as he speaks to Matt only. When Matt was in the room, Ben began going off-topic, talking about Tammy rather than where she is. He then tells Matt, Rossi, and Hotch of Tammy's location, that he burned Tammy's hands with his sulfuric acid, and that he was always meaning to attack Matt by using the information to figuratively take away his sense of hearing. Enraged, Matt tries to attack Ben, but Rossi and Hotch hold him back as he laughs maniacally. Morgan and Prentiss then arrive at the shed, where they find Tammy still alive, as well as pieces of clothing and/or belongings from his previous victims and boxes filled with tapes of his murders, suggesting that he may have killed more. Later, Matt watches one of the aforementioned tapes, and covers his ears as he views Ben burning Tammy's hands.

Modus Operandi
"What, you don't like the way I taste?" "No!" "Well, I can help you with that!"

Ben targeted blue-eyed blonde girls in their late teens who resembled Lyla when she was their age. He would approach them at a bus station using a simple ruse (his mental state made him appear more trustworthy), force them at knifepoint to an old shed where he and Matt had hung out when they were younger, dress them in 1980s style clothes, strap them to a chair, rape them and torture them by stabbing them in the genitalia, chest and neck. Initially, he targeted high-risk victims, such as prostitutes and runaways, and killed them without any usage of sulfuric acid, instead stabbing their eyes repeatedly. He then switched to low-risk victims; while they were still alive, Ben would drip a sulfuric acid solution onto their face in such a way that it would destroy one of their five senses. He blinded both Abby Alcott and Beth Westerly, taking away their sense of sight; the latter also had her nostrils burnt to take away her sense of smell. His murder of Sarah had only her mouth burnt to take away her sense of taste. During his attempted murder of Tammy, he managed to burn her hands to take away her sense of touch. The bodies of his victims were dumped in alleys.

Profile
"I see on the news, on the TV, that people question. They question why-why people do this. It's the same reason people do anything, 'cause, 'cause they feel like it, they like the way it feels. When I was a kid, my dog, Poppy, running across the grass. When I hit her, I liked that feeling. That has not changed."

The UnSub is a white male in his 40s who is reacting to a rejection of him done by a woman when he was a teenager in the 1980s and is getting his revenge by torturing his victims by taking away their five senses. He may have worked part-time as a janitor or a mechanic, where he could have gotten hold of the sulfuric acid he uses to torture his victims. Because he dumps his victims on the streets, he is probably homeless. He is fixated on the woman who rejected him all those years ago and believes she holds the key to his happiness. The fact that she still rejects him furthers his rage and he will eventually spiral to such a degree that he will stop killing surrogates and attack the real source of his anger.

Known Victims

 * Presumably killed numerous other unnamed women prior to Proof
 * 2012:
 * September 16: Unnamed prostitute
 * September 19: Unnamed runaway
 * September 22: Abby Elcott
 * September 24: Beth Westerly
 * September 26: Sarah
 * September 27-28: Tammy Bradstone

Appearances

 * Season Seven
 * "Proof"