Joe Bachner

"Let you go? Let you go?! Do you think I brought you all the way up here just to let you go?!"

Joe Bachner is a serial killer, rapist, and abductor who appeared through flashbacks in Season Nine of Criminal Minds. He is the dominant partner of a two-person killing team also consisting of Daria Samsen.

History
Born on July 13, 1974, and raised in Pennsylvania, Joe lost his parents in a car accident when he was six years old. As a result, he was sent to live with his aunt, Julianna Hartig, a nurse who lived in Hamilton, New York. Julianna was an abusive alcoholic who once locked him up in a shed and starved him for days. Whenever she got mad, she unleashed bees on him, and Joe subsequently suffered from hundreds of bee-stings. Social Services eventually found out about the abuse after Joe arrived to school covered in bee-stings and apparently arrested the aunt. In his adult life, Joe came to work as an electrician for a company called Conway Electric and also worked several random construction jobs; he was also apparently an avid gun owner. He also developed a small rap-sheet of battery charges and also an incident in 2010, where he abducted a woman, but she survived and then dropped the charges against him. In February 2012, Julianna died from cardiac arrest, depriving Joe of any chance of getting his revenge. A month later, he set his sights on a woman named Daria Samsen, who was a medical student and therefore reminded him of Julianna. He managed to abduct from her workplace after charming her, before holding her captive for several months, raping and torturing her until she was subjugated into complete obedience towards him. Joe eventually decided to let the town know about the abuse he suffered as a child, abducting random people and torturing them with Daria's forced assistance before murdering them. By January 2013, he killed three victims and had a fourth, a woman named Carrie, held in captivity alongside Daria.

One night, Carrie managed to smuggle the key to the tool-shed she and Daria were being kept in, and the two women managed to escape. However, Joe was awakened and wounded Carrie with a shot from a rifle, but Daria, apparently having a brief moment of clarity, continued running and successfully escaped. Enraged by this newest development, Joe relocated himself and Carrie to the unoccupied house of a client of his before abducting another woman, Melissa Coleman, and killing her. He then abducted a stranded motorist named Lionel the following day and took him to the house, where he tried to get Carrie to assist him in the torture, but apparently failed. During the night, the BAU, having identified Joe as the unsub with Daria's assistance and also pinpointing where he was, stormed the house. Joe quickly stabbed Carrie with an icepick and fled, but he was pursued by Rossi. He tried to shoot him, but he was shot and injured in return. Afterwards, Joe was arrested. In "The Edge of Winter", his trial was coming up, and Morgan interrogated Daria, whom he had deduced as being Joe's partner, in hopes of establishing her as a sympathetic witness. However, Daria confessed that she helped Joe because she "loved him", undermining her credibility.

Modus Operandi
Joe targeted random victims, initially luring them from bars by charming them into coming with him, but after Daria's escape, his method of obtaining victims became more unplanned and disorganized. He would then hold them captive in a tool-shed for long periods of time (with the exception of Daria, who was allowed into his house after she became submissive towards him) and torture them in a variety of ways, including brutalizing them, tying them to a radiator, stabbing them with an icepick, and (in the case of the female victims) rape them. He initially forced Daria to assist in the torture, but as she succumbed to Stockholm syndrome, her actions became more willing. After he finished them off, Joe would then dispose of their bodies with Daria's help. The first two fatal victims were dumped in isolated public areas, but as Joe evolved, he began leaving them in locations where they would be easily seen, posing them in order to maximize shock value.

Known Victims

 * Unspecified dates: Unspecified charges of battery
 * July 12, 2010: Unnamed woman
 * March 2012-January 2013: Daria Samsen
 * 2013:
 * December 11-January 1: Marlene Godfrey
 * December 25-January 6: Chloe Reynolds
 * January 2-January 9: Ben Wilson
 * January 9-11: Carrie
 * January 10: Melissa Coleman
 * January 10-11: Lionel
 * January 11: David Rossi

Appearances

 * Season Nine
 * The Edge of Winter