Phillip Connor

"Maya! Maya! I love you!"

Phillip Connor is a budding serial killer (originally a serial killer by proxy) who appeared in #6.

Background
As a child, Connor started displaying signs of severe piquerism and began cutting himself, and his mother Agatha, presumably out of shame and embarrassment, referred to it as "a disease". In his adult years, Connor acquired computer skills from his job as a freelance computer specialist and also began seeing a woman named Maya, who was already married at the time. The two eventually married, but their marriage soon deteriorated after he began stalking her and became domineering towards her. Connor would tell his mother "if she cheated with me, she'll cheat on me". Maya eventually couldn't stand it anymore and Connor and her separated, however, they haven't been officially divorced yet. This deterioration in his marriage would later cause him to become enraged and start killing, targeting couples that he was jealous of and forcing them to stab each other at a foreclosed microprocessor plant that he managed to acquire.

#6
In #6, Connor had already claimed two sets of victims by the time he set his sights on Mary Hammond, who reminded him of Maya. Abducting her, he gains her trust, all the while psychologically torturing her with video recordings of himself. Connor then murders her and authenticates himself by screaming in revulsion at the recording. Simultaneous to that, the BAU is called in to investigate the couple killings. Connor then targets Emma Churchill, abducting her in her car and taking her to his facility. Gaining her trust, he manipulates her into stabbing him using a recording of himself that threatens Emma's life. Connor then tells Emma about Maya and asks about her husband; when she gives him an answer, he tells her that she is doing it for her husband and then gets her to stab him again. Later, Emma patches him up, and he tells her of a secret escape route located in her room.

When Emma eventually hears footsteps, likely another of Connor's recordings, she takes her chance and flees through a tunnel underneath her bed. Getting into a hallway, she sprints toward a door, only to be attacked by a masked Connor and taken back into her room. He then stabs himself and, when she awakens, he tells her that he can't take the pain anymore and asks her to kill him. However, Emma worries what the "killer" will do to her when he dies to which Connor suggests that he kill her and then himself. However, the BAU, having deduced Connor as the unsub and found his facility, break into the building. Emma overhears them and tries calling out for help, only for Connor to hold her at knifepoint. The BAU and SWAT agents confront him, and Blake pleads with Connor to surrender for Maya's sake. She then allows Maya, whom the BAU requested to come with them, and she convinces Connor to release Emma. He does so, but when Maya bitterly states that she doesn't want to look at him again and is walked out, a shocked and horrified Connor starts professing his love to her as he is arrested.

About two weeks later, someone kills the BAU Section Chief Erin Strauss in a style that combines the M.O.'s of Connor and a poisoner the BAU captured. However, the BAU realized that the aspects of Connor's M.O. used in the copycat murder were actually based on a false report Strauss made of the case, apparently as a method to trick the killer.

Modus Operandi
Connor initially targeted married Caucasian couples from Grosse Point that he would find at a jogging track. He would hack into the cars' locking systems so he could enter them and lie in wait for the couples when they got inside. He would also disable the cars' GPS software to ensure the authorities would not find where he was keeping his victims captive. After abducting them (always during a regular date night they took), he would take them into the microprocessor plant, where he would hold them captive for one week, during which he would make them stab each other nearly 50 times, watching and recording them with surveillance monitors, until they finally died. Afterwards, he left behind the couples' bodies in the trunks of their own cars in.

He then began targeting lone women as he evolved and, by pretending to be a victim himself, gained their trust. Using video recordings of himself that he played with a hidden remote, issuing orders whilst wearing a mask, he would manipulate the women into stabbing him repeatedly in the stomach. Connor would then kill the women by fatally stabbing them once. He would then leave behind their bodies in the trunks of their cars, just as he did with the couples.

Profile
Based on the ages of the victims, the unsub is probably a 30- to 40-year-old white male from Grosse Point. Up until he killed Mary Hammond, he has been an equal-opportunity, anger-retaliatory sadist. He hates couples, most likely because his own marriage failed in a humiliating way and his wife may have left him for a man she may be engaged or married to. However, a major shift happened with Mary Hammond's abduction: he was unable to abduct the husband, but he needed someone to cut her, so his M.O. was forced to evolve. He has probably abducted a sixth victim, a man who reminded him of his own failed marriage, whom he has been keeping alive so that he can repeat the process with Emma Churchill. The sixth man could be a surrogate for the ex-wife's new husband or could actually be the new husband. Even if the man was forced to kill Mary Hammond, he may find it easier to cross that line with Emma Churchill. He needs space and privacy to hold his victims captive as well as infrastructure and something he could convert.

It was later realized that the sixth man, Connor, was the actual unsub, who was instead living an evolved fantasy. While he was initially profiled as a sadist, that was proven untrue when he abducted Mary Hammond. He abducted his female victims not because of sex, but only because they validate his obsessive-compulsive disorder while being held captive, turning it into a shared bonding experience. This allowed him to play two roles: the unsub who tortures, and the sympathetic prisoner.

Victims by Proxy
The following were forced to kill themselves by Connor
 * 2013:
 * April 13-20: Brian and Melissa Cain
 * April 28-May 5: Paul and Elizabeth Garrett
 * Paul Garrett
 * Elizabeth Garrett

Personal Victims

 * Unspecified date: Maya Connor
 * 2013:
 * May 9-12: Mary Hammond
 * May 12-13: Emma Churchill

Appearances

 * Season Eight
 * #6
 * The Replicator