John Vincent Bell

"To the death, or Jane dies."

John Vincent Bell was a serial killer who appeared in Season Five of Criminal Minds.

Background
Not much is revealed about John's early days, other than that he was born on February 6, 1967, in San Mateo, California. He had a wife and a daughter, Mandy. They eventually divorced, leaving the custody of Mandy, or at least some of it, with the ex-wife. When she died, John was declared an unfit parent due to his numerous mental problems. On May 5, 2002, when Social Services arrived to take Mandy away, he went into a frenzy and attacked two social workers, beating one of them to death, with a metal baseball bat. After that, he was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter and evading arrest. At some point while he was serving this time at San Quentin, Mandy was in a serious car accident and died after being on life support for three days. As a result of that, John began working out and took up boxing, challenging other inmates at the yard and saying he would fight them to the death. One day, his obsession overcame him and he ended up picking a fight with the guards. After that, he was placed in solitary confinement for the rest of his sentence. When he was released, John began serial killing the following year, murdering a father-daughter duo and four homeless men around the anniversary of his daughter's death. He then repeated this process the next year.

The Fight
In the beginning of the episode, John has already killed a homeless man as the start of his cycle. Next, Ben and Jane McBride are seen walking up a hill in a heated discussion. They are approached by John, who forces them to come along quietly at gunpoint. He is then seen with them, having chained them to a pillar in his family's abandoned gym, and offers to take Jane with him in exchange for letting them both live. Ben tells him to go to hell and John leaves, saying "If that's your answer..." Meanwhile, the homeless man's murder, as well as John's prior murders, has led to the summoning of the BAU and the private investigating of Sam Cooper's team. John then removes Ben's shackles and places him in an empty pool along with a transient, makes him release him and tells him to fight the man, on the condition that he and Jane will both live if he wins. Ben is able to win and John kills the transient, chains Ben to the pillar again and dumps the body in Presidio Park. Prentiss and Rawson investigate the scene and figure out how John operates. Rossi and Simms then visit San Quentin and give the profile to an old friend of Simms.

Back at the gym, John takes photos of himself and Jane using a polaroid camera in order to taunt Ben. He is then forced by John to fight another vagrant and this time beat him to death or Jane will die. Ben beats his opponent to death, apologizing after each strike. Simms and Rossi go back to San Quentin, where Simms's friend tells them about John. At the McBride residence, LaSalle and Morgan find a private diary kept by Jane. Even though the thoughts are private in nature, it is placed where anyone can read it. They learn the family was seeing a family counselor, who had instructed her to keep some kind of journal. The same office also counseled John and his family. Back at the gym, Jane tricks John into taking her with him in order to keep Ben safe. John does so, leaving him behind. Outside, both BAU teams and SWAT arrive at the scene and take care of Ben. As John tries to leave with Jane, he spots the police cars and flees. He drags Jane with him through a parking building to the roof, followed by Prentiss, Morgan, and LaSalle. He holds Jane hostage at gunpoint, but is talked into letting her go and gets up on a wall. He jumps down from it, pretending to kill himself, but lands on a construction platform. When Prentiss goes to see if he died, he raises his gun to kill her, but is shot dead by Rawson, using a sniper rifle.

Profile
John would be white, ca. 30 years old, and have served time in prison. Judging from his choice of dump sites, he was probably physically fit. He also had access to some kind of space that was private enough for the neighbors not to hear what was occurring. His ability to control his prisoners suggested that he was a control freak and would have been obsessed with the prison guards's tactics to control the inmates. He probably had a daughter of his own, a brunette about 15 years of age, whom he would often talk about. He chose to abduct fathers and daughters that reminded him of himself and his daughter and would force the fathers to fight other prisoners (which were men who lived on the street) as a way to turn them into surrogates for himself.

Modus Operandi
Around the anniversary of his daughter's death, John would abduct two homeless men by luring them with some kind of ruse and take them to his family's old gym, where he would make them fight each other. He would then videotape himself shooting the loser execution style. Next, John would abduct a father and his teenage daughter at gunpoint, take them to the gym, and restrain them with chains. To stop the wife of the abducted father from filing missing persons reports, John would send her the video of the homeless man's murder, and a note telling her he is watching, and that if she contacts the police, he will kill her husband and daughter. Since he is stated to never keep anyone alive, it is likely John kept the winning vagrant for the father to fight.

John would then go searching for more homeless men and then take them to the gym, where he would force the father and the vagrants to fight, with the loser being shot in the head. Usually, the fathers won a few fights, but when they inevitably lost, John would place blindfolds on them and their daughter (presumably because of remorse for them) before killing them, leaving their bodies in a car. The bodies of the homeless men, including the one killed for the videotape sent to the wives, would be dumped in Presidio Park. While they were in captivity, John would take pictures of himself and the abducted daughters and use them as intimidation against the fathers. Also, he would sometimes use rubber bullets to keep the vagrants under control.

Known Victims

 * 2002: Social Service Agents Knight and Sauls :
 * Agent Knight
 * Agent Sauls
 * 2008:
 * Four unnamed homeless men killed prior to the father and daughter's deaths
 * An unnamed family
 * An unnamed father
 * An unnamed mother
 * An unnamed daughter
 * 2009:
 * Four unnamed homeless men killed prior to the father and daughter's deaths
 * An unnamed family
 * An unnamed father
 * An unnamed mother
 * An unnamed daughter
 * 2010:
 * Unnamed homeless man
 * Ben McBride and his daughter Jane
 * Ben McBride
 * Jane McBride
 * Unnamed homeless man
 * Unnamed homeless man
 * Emily Prentiss

Appearances

 * Season Five
 * "The Fight"