Kevin Decker

"I must atone."

Kevin Decker was a delusional, prolific serial killer and abductor who appeared in Scarecrow.

Background
Decker's mother Susan died during childbirth, leaving him to be raised by his religious, devoutly conservative father John, who owned a farming company. John was once a member of a local religious group called True Believers, but cut ties with them after judging that they weren't adherent enough to their faith. He abused Decker regularly as the latter grew up, making him cut his hands while setting up fences of barbed wire, and whipping him hard with rope. Decker received sympathy from a neighboring girl named Wendy Baldwin, and the two fell in love. However, when the misogynistic John found out, he kicked Wendy out, whipped Decker in the back, and then strapped his son to a cross in the middle of a nearby cornfield, like a scarecrow, hung a sign around Decker's neck that said "fornicator", and left him there for the night. Eventually, Decker snapped and killed his father, setting his body up like a scarecrow as well. However, the guilt-wracked and conflicted Decker suffered a psychotic break in the process and killed Wendy as well. With John's dogma about morality in his head, Kevin then turned his rage toward women that he viewed as loose and amoral prostitutes, and started killing them, claiming eleven victims after killing Wendy.

Scarecrow
On December 5, 2016, Decker abducts another victim, Cheryl "Cherry" Rollins, but she somehow manages to escape and flee into a nearby neighborhood later that night. However, despite the presence of neighbors, no one lets her in as they believe her pleas for help to be a ruse for criminals to gain entry into their homes. Eventually, Decker finds her, recaptures her, and takes her to the barn. The next morning, Cheryl regains consciousness and watches him sharpen his shears. He ignores her attempts to get his attention. Later, Decker returns to the barn and Cheryl tries to sweet-talk to him, but Decker rips open Cheryl's shirt with the intention of torturing or sexually assaulting her. Instead, he becomes frustrated and yells "No!" a few times while hitting himself. Cheryl continues to sweet-talk him and tells Decker about her personal life, including her son. However, Decker tells Cheryl that he is not a little boy and has a flashback of John abusing him. Deducing that he was abused, Cheryl tells Decker about the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her uncle and his friends. When she asks Decker about what his father made him do, he yells at Cheryl and has a flashback of John whipping him. Afterwards, Decker goes to a table, puts his hand on the barbed wire on top of it, and squeezes down on the wire.

The following night, Cheryl watches as Decker uses a machine to sharpen his shears. The next morning, Decker reenters the barn, grabs the shears, and is about to kill Cheryl. In another attempt to save herself, Cheryl reminds him about what his father did to him. Decker stops and has a flashback to when his father caught him and Wendy kissing in the barn together. Realizing she is about to die, Cheryl apologizes to her son and prays to God. He drops the shears and removes the burlap sack from his head to reveal his face. Afterwards, Cheryl asks Decker about what his father did to him, and he recounts the time John took him out to the cornfield and set him up like a scarecrow for the night. Cheryl apologizes to him, then tells Decker that he found a way to survive and that sometimes it is all they can do. Then, she convinces him to untie her, telling him that she didn't want the life of a prostitute and was extremely ashamed by it. Convinced, Decker unties her, but when he turns his back on Cheryl to retrieve the barbed wire, she picks the shears up from the ground, stabs Decker in the back with them, and flees into the wilderness. An enraged Decker manages to remove the shears and then goes after Cheryl.

Cheryl runs into the cornfield and stumbles upon John's corpse, which horrifies her, allowing Decker to find her and hold her at knifepoint. Then, the BAU arrive at the farm, having identified Decker as the unsub. As Decker tries to drown Cheryl in a trough filled with water, Rossi and JJ find them and confront Decker. He picks up the shears and flees with Prentiss and Alvez in pursuit, while Cheryl is rescued by Rossi and JJ. Prentiss and Alvez follow Decker into the nearby grain elevator. Inside, they hold Decker at gunpoint as he points the blades of shears to his neck, intending to commit suicide. Prentiss tells Decker to put the shears down, but he asks her if she knows what he did. She replies that they know what his father did to him. Filled with guilt over what he had done, Decker tells them that he needs to atone for his crimes. Alvez interjects, saying that they can help him, and tells Decker to put the shears down. Though Decker complies and drops the shears, he apologizes soon afterward and activates the grain elevator. Grain is poured down on all three of them; Decker willingly allows himself to be buried in it alive, while Rossi manages to get Prentiss and Alvez out in time.

Modus Operandi
Decker's victims were all killed by multiple stab wounds from a pair of shears. He initially targeted people closely associated with him before moving on to apparently random prostitutes. The prostitutes were all lured in by Decker, who would pretend to be a customer. Once they got into his car, he would drive them over to his farm, somehow subdue them, and hold them captive in the barn. There, he would wear a mask made from burlap over his face and torture his victims by making them wear cilices made of burlap and fastened together barbed wire around parts of their bodies. Finally, Decker would kill them, and afterwards, he would dump their bodies in a creek. However, the body of his first victim, John, was instead set up like a scarecrow, mirroring the abuse John inflicted on Decker after he caught him kissing Wendy.

When he tried to kill Cheryl Rollins, Decker did not stab her and instead tried to drown her in a trough filled with water. He also tried to kill Prentiss and Alvez by activating a grain elevator with them still inside, and therefore burying them alive in the grain, but they both escaped.

Profile
The unsub is a white male between the ages of 30 to 40, who is targeting prostitutes and appears to be a mission-oriented moral enforcer. He may be forcing his victims to wear a cilice made of burlap and fastened together with barbed wire. He may be projecting his own sexual desires onto his victims and punishing them; he wants to have sex with them, but because of his upbringing, he either cannot or will not. The use of barbed wire could be the unsub's way of inflicting more punishment on his victims before killing them. His guilt-ridden love map was likely formed during his childhood and adolescence, which was possibly spent growing up in a conservative household in which a parent or teacher was strict and overbearing. He is driving a dark-colored car and cruising the streets in search for victims. Since he was able to dispose of his victims' bodies undetected for years, he most likely lives or works in the area.

Real-Life Comparison
A Twitter post confirmed that the Gilgo Beach Killer and the Eastbound Strangler served as the inspirations for Decker. In all three cases, they were serial killers who targeted women working in the sex trade and the bodies of most of their victims were found in a single location. Like the Gilgo Beach Killer, who Decker was briefly suspected of being in the episode, Decker was a prolific offender who also put his victims' bodies in burlap sacks. In addition, Decker's would-be victim, Cheryl "Cherry" Rollins, had a tattoo of cherries near her cleavage; a suspected victim of the Gilgo Beach Killer, known only as "Cherries", had a near-identical tattoo on the same spot.

Decker also has some similarities to Gary Ridgway, a.k.a. "The Green River Killer", being compared to him by the BAU. Both were serial killers who targeted prostitutes and disposed of their victims' bodies in heavily forested areas, sometimes in or near a body of water.

Known Victims

 * 2011:
 * Unspecified date: John Decker
 * December 15 : Wendy Baldwin
 * 2011-2016: Eleven victims killed and buried prior to Scarecrow. Known ones are:
 * Unspecified dates:
 * Brianna Latsman
 * Jade Glaswell
 * Alicia Haverford
 * Yolanda Barry
 * Clary Alders
 * Paulie Newly
 * Whitney Brynn
 * Melanie Earlson
 * 2016:
 * November 16: Debra McDermott
 * November 27: Allison Carson
 * 2016:
 * December 5: Cheryl Rollins
 * December 7: Emily Prentiss and Luke Alvez

Appearances

 * Season Twelve
 * Scarecrow