Joe

"Daddy! Help me!"

Joe (last name unrevealed) is a mentally-challenged double murderer who appeared in Season Three of Criminal Minds.

History
Born with some unspecified mental illness, Joe worked at a traveling carnival run by his father, Landon, doing menial chores and dressing as a clown to try and entertain visitors. Joe, when the carnival passed through Indianapolis, Indiana in 1988, grew attached to young Connie Galen, who he had given a poorly made balloon animal. Wanting to play with her, Joe began to follow Connie around the grounds, worrying Connie's parents, Richard and Diana, who decided to leave early. While his father was busy working on a malfunctioning ride, Joe took off, somehow tracked the Galens down to their home and broke inside, intent on finding Connie in order to play with her. Mistaking the parents' room for the childrens', Joe entered and accidentally woke up Richard, who hit him with an axe. Growing angry after being hurt, Joe took the axe from Richard and used it to kill both him and Diana. Instantly regretting what he had done, Joe placed the couple's bodies back in their bed just before his father found him. Landon, having found out what Joe had done, managed to remove all the evidence Joe had left, except for one fingerprint, which would prove useless to the authorities anyway since Joe wasn't in the system.

To punish Joe for what he had done, Landon would have the carnival pass through Indianapolis around the same time every year, to remind his son of the murders. While in town, Joe would drop some carnival prizes off to the Galen children (with the children assuming the gifts were delivered by Rossi, who by sheer coincidence happened to be one of the first to respond to the Galen residence after the murders).

Back in Indianapolis, twenty years after the murders, Joe drops some presents off to the Galen children once again, though this time he went as far as putting a stuffed animal in Connie's car while she was working. The day after, Joe dropped the presents off as the carnival began to pack up, with Joe helping out by cleaning up trash. When the BAU, who were investigating the Galen murders, arrived at the carnival, Joe ran and hid when he saw Morgan and JJ approaching. Following a trail of garbage Joe had accidentally left behind, Morgan and JJ found him cowering under a large vehicle and pulled him out. While being arrested, Joe began weeping, crying out to his father, who could only look on helplessly as his son was taken away. Due to his mental state, he was undoubtedly placed in a mental institution.

A year later, he was referenced in Omnivore as Rossi comforts Hotch after an unsub commits a mass murder aboard a transit bus.

Profile
Due to the amount of overkill present in the Galen slayings and the fact that an incidental object was used as the murder weapon and witnesses were left behind, the unsub was classified as a disorganized killer by the BAU. Gifts being sent to the family of the victims indicated a killer filled with remorse while the kind of gift (cheap toys such as stuffed animals) indicated the unsub may have had a child-like mentality, also meaning they were likely controlled by and taken care of by an older relative who tried to keep them in line, rationalized what they did, and cleaned up after them.

Modus Operandi
Joe killed the Galens with an axe he took from Richard, scared and angry after being chased and hit with the weapon.

Known Victims

 * Richard and Diana Galen

Appearances

 * Season Three
 * "About Face"
 * "Identity"
 * "Birthright"
 * "Damaged"
 * Season Four
 * Omnivore