Sarah Danlin

"Stop your bitching. You asked for it."

Sarah Danlin is a serial killer and copycat who appears in the episode Jones.

History
Sarah Danlin was a medical student at Tulane University. One night she was in a bar called "Jones" with some friends during Mardi Gras. A man flirted with her and managed to lure her away from her friends to an empty pool room where he and a friend raped her. She pressed charges, but the detectives investigating the case, William LaMontagne Sr. and J.R. Smith, were in disagreement regarding the credibility of her story. LaMontagne believed her while Smith, who knew one of the offenders, convinced her to drop the charges on the grounds that it most likely wouldn't lead to a conviction. She later dropped out of medical school on February 24, 1998. At some unknown point, she apparently became obsessed with the (in)famous serial killer Jack the Ripper and began killing in a fashion similar to the killer. The BAU suspected she was probably abused, possibly sexually, as a child as well.

Meanwhile, Detective LaMontagne had been transferred from sex-crimes to homicide and investigated Sarah's first three murders. Eventually obsessing over the case, he refused to leave New Orleans, despite the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. One night, while looking over the notes, crime scene photos, and letters regarding the murders, he realized who the unsub was when he noticed a bar stamp on the hand of a victim; the mark of Jones, the bar in which Sarah was raped. Just after he realized it, a tree was flung by the storm through a window, mortally wounding him. He managed to use a piece of broken glass to carve the name "Jones" into the wall before dying. Unfortunately, the storm had washed away the bodies of the first three victims, the autopsy reports, and all of the other evidence. Sarah was transferred to Galveston, Texas during Katrina where she killed another man. Sometime after returning to New Orleans, she began terrorizing the French Quarters, where Jones, now renamed Mon Cherie, was. LaMontagne's son, Detective William LaMontagne Jr., was investigating the crime and called for the BAU. After a long investigation and a number of murders, they were able to track down Sarah to a motel where she was about to mutilate a man. Held at gunpoint, with a knife in her hand, Sarah suggested that the BAU kill her, but was talked into surrendering by William when she found out that his father, whom she deeply respected, was killed in Katrina.

Modus Operandi
Sarah would lure away men from crowds, pubs and the like by seducing them with promises of sex. Once alone with the victim in a semi-public place, she would slash their throats in a manner similar to that of Jack the Ripper. Some victims were mutilated post-mortem the same way the Ripper did to his; one of the victims, for example, had an earlobe cut off. Another had a kidney removed. She would also write letters written in a language similar to the Ripper's and left some of them on the victims.

Profile
Because not many serial killers are women, the killer was assumed to be a man. The killer was originally profiled to be friendly, agile, in the age of 30-35 and suspected of being a homosexual male with low self-esteem, which would be well hidden. He'd kill to reclaim his power and dress impeccably to keep the facade. Because he overcompensates to hide his insecurity, he most likely holds a position of authority at work and probably has some kind of medical training and may thus be a doctor, EMT, veterinarian or such. Unlike Jack the Ripper, an impetuous lust killer, this offender would be organized, calculating and maybe even stalk his victims for days before the murder. He might identify with Jack the Ripper because he'd lost his own identity, maybe through years of child abuse or a single catastrophic event. The profile was mostly correct, except Morgan later realized that the UnSub was a woman because only a woman could make a heterosexual man leave his friends.

Known Victims

 * Unspecified year-2005, New Orleans, Louisiana:
 * Unnamed mechanic
 * Unnamed real estate broker
 * Unnamed cook
 * 2005-2007, Galveston, Texas: Leonard
 * 2007, New Orleans, Louisiana:
 * Unnamed taxi driver
 * Mark
 * The double homicide :
 * Unnamed pedestrian
 * Unnamed partygoer
 * John

Appearances

 * Season Two
 * Jones
 * Season Three
 * In Heat