Emma Kerrigan

"The soil will heal you."

Emma Kerrigan is a delusional serial killer (and, at one point, a cannibal) who appeared in The Good Earth.

History
Emma was married to John Kerrigan, who owned a large farm, and the two of them had a daughter together named Lexy. She was a firm believer in natural, holistic medicine, right to the point of fanaticism. At some point, she developed scleroderma, a severe skin disease. This turned her into a hypochondriac (although it is possible she was one her whole life) who wouldn't eat anything unless she grew it herself. A year and a half prior to "The Good Earth", John died in a car accident, and his body was cremated and his ashes spread in Emma's tomato garden. Emma healed soon after, making her believe that her husband's ashes were what healed her. However, she would often hallucinate of having scabs on her arms and face, causing her to visit the hospital thirty times in six months. She started abducting fit young males to use as fertilizer due to the now-delusion that her husband's ashes were what cured her disease, and possibly because she had used up all of her husband's ashes.

In The Good Earth, Emma is first seen abducting Terry Rodgers after he drives off the road due to a melatonin overdose. She takes him to her farm and tends to him and three other men she abducted (Gary Ellard, Barry Deaver, and Paul Hicks), feeding them a cocktail of soil additives and animal feed. After some time, she realizes Terry had cancer and dumps his body in the river. She is later seen chopping firewood, likely testing her ax's sharpness when Lexy surprises her. After hurriedly shutting the door and telling Lexy to go back inside, she starts up the wood chipper and kills Gary Ellard. Afterwards, she washes the ax and the wood chipper clean. She and Lexy begin digging in the tomato garden and Emma hallucinates scabs and itches on her arms. When she visits her doctor, he insists she is fine. She quickly leaves when he suggests that this is a mental problem and asks her if she contacted a therapist. Later that day, she still itches the imaginary scabs when she looks in the mirror and sees the disease on her face. Emma then began waiting outside a baby shower for Cheryl Winslow, who is due in three weeks. She abducts her and does a C-section, taking the placenta and dropping her and the surviving newborn baby off at the hospital.

After consuming the placenta, Emma looks in the mirror and sees her face has healed, much to her relief. Later, Lexy tries to investigate the barn, but Emma stops her. She then tries to feed her daughter the placenta, but the bowl is accidentally spilled, angering Emma. She then hallucinates severe scabs and pustules on Lexy's face. Panicking, Emma feeds Barry Deaver the sawdust cocktail and kills him for the fertilizer. That night, she drugs Lexy with the melatonin and buries her up to her neck in the soil. Believing that her daughter would be healed by the soil and Paul Hicks's blood, she drags him to her and starts cutting his wrist. The BAU arrives and attempt to convince Emma to drop the knife. She refuses, claiming that it is all she had left. Alex Blake tries to convince her that the blood would not help her, then gives Emma a bag of ashes she found at a fireplace, which she claims are her husband's. Convinced that the ashes would heal Lexy, Emma drops the knife and spreads them over Lexy. She is then taken into custody, while Lexy and Paul are saved, although judging by Paul's condition when he was last seen and the fact that the BAU did not comment on whether or not he survived, it is possible he later died of the injuries he sustained from the torture.

Modus Operandi
Emma targeted healthy men and found them at farmers' markets. After abducting them by drugging them with melatonin, she would take them to the barn on her farm, strip them nude, and hold them captive, force-feeding them a cocktail of soil additives such as gypsum and animal feed such as cotton and flax through a tube inserted into their throats and injecting it with a liquid syringe. After killing them with an ax, she would dismember the bodies and grind the parts with a wood chipper. Afterwards, she would use the chopped flesh as fertilizer. Her first fatal victim, Terry Rodgers, was drowned instead when she found him undesirable. When she attempted to cure Lexy from her alleged scleroderma, she drugged her with the melatonin and buried her up to the neck in soil, then cut Paul Hicks's wrist and neck in an attempt to pour it all over the aforementioned soil.

Profile
The unsub is a woman who is highly organized, thorough and patient. Based on the complexity and sophistication of the abductions, she is most likely between the ages of 30 and 40 and is familiar with the rural area surrounding La Grande, being either a native or someone who had lived there for a while. She is keeping her victims in isolation in the countryside, which means she has access to land or a structure that is remote, hidden, and private. She is abducting exceptionally health conscious men, who represent ideal specimens for fertilizer (originally thought for breeding). The ability to father children was something the BAU at first thought the unsub was looking for in her victims, as they are all age appropriate and all of them are fathers. She killed her first victim because she saw him as flawed, being the least physically fit of the four and making him undesirable. It was initially thought the victims could be surrogates for a man that she wanted but could not have. Because she killed the last victim, it is possible the unsub is engaged in some sort of elimination process: pre-selecting a handful of prime candidates and then whittling them down one by one until she has her ideal human fertilizer.

Known Victims

 * Abducted four men, held them captive, tortured, and killed at least three of them. They are, in order of abduction:
 * Gary Ellard
 * Barry Deaver
 * Paul Hicks
 * Terry Rodgers
 * Cheryl Winslow
 * Lexy Kerrigan

Appearances

 * Season Eight
 * "The Good Earth"