The Andersons

Alan and Judith Anderson are a couple responsible for several murders together in Mr. & Mrs. Anderson.

Background
See sections on the Alan and Judith Anderson articles

Mr. & Mrs. Anderson
In the episode, 48 hours after killing their first mutual victim in four years, Alan picks up a hitchhiker from California, named Maya Taylor, at a gas station and takes her to a motel where he and Judith are staying at. There, Judith welcomes her inside the room and has her take a shower; after she finishes, Alan kills her before having sex with Judith. The two then visit Kathleen Benedict, their marriage counselor, the next day. They tell her that they had found a new process that has caused a spark to reemerge in their relationship, which pleases Benedict, who then asks if they plan on committing to this process again, to which they respond, "Absolutely." The following night, they visit Benedict again, and she proposes that Alan give more attention to Judith's needs. They return home and dance, during which Alan allows Judith to choose a victim. Later that night, Judith brings a male prostitute to another motel, gets him to take a shower, and then, Alan ambushes him from behind when he emerges from the room. The man puts up a fight, but eventually dies, to which a satisfied Judith replies that she "told him [she]'d pick a good one". The next morning, the two visit Benedict once again and proclaim their wish to make their process part of their regular routine again. The next night, Alan returns home and presents Judith with a necklace, surprising her. He then watches TV before receiving a text that states he was approved for another job as a tow-truck driver, prompting him to leave; he promises Judith that he will return home in time to take her to the movies.

However, Alan fails to show up, and Judith leaves the house, sending him a voice message. Seconds later, she is arrested by the BAU, who had discerned her as one of the unsubs after interrogating a survivor. Blake later interrogates Judith, who requests to make a phone call to Alan, but Blake denies the request and asks about Alan's sexually-transmitted disease, to which she replies that she knew about it and that they no longer kept secrets. Blake then shows her photos of women that Alan killed alone, but she continues to protect him and asks for a lawyer. Meanwhile, Alan hears Judith's voice message, which also included shouts from the BAU as they arrested her; he promptly decides to go after Benedict, whom he felt further emasculated by. Approaching her at her office, he says that he and Judith were going on vacation and asked for a session between them only before complimenting her hair. Once inside Benedict's office, she receives a phone call from Reid, who warns her of Alan as he is wanted for several murders. However, Alan cuts the phone line and attacks her, but she stabs him in the arm with a letter opener and tries to escape, but is caught again by Alan. However, before he can rape her, the BAU arrest him. Later, Blake tells Judith that Alan tried to rape and kill Benedict before promising her that if she is cooperative, she will move to get her sentence reduced. When Judith refuses to take up the offer, Blake tells her that the necklace Alan gave her earlier was stolen from a victim that he killed alone the same night he gave her the necklace. This enrages her, and when she sees him as he is being taken into the police station, she angrily slaps him and declares that she hates him.

Modus Operandi
Alan and Judith usually targeted young female hitchhikers or drifters for their killings, with the exception of their sole male victim, Johnny Matthews, who was chosen by Judith instead of Alan. Alan would find their victims at rest stops or gas stations, offer them a ride, and take them to a motel he and Judith were staying at. They would then lure the victims inside their motel room and have them take a shower. Once the victims finished their showers, Alan would then ambush them from behind, strangling them with a belt as Judith watched. He would allow them to breathe intermittently before finally killing them. Afterwards, the two of them would have sex. Before dumping the bodies of the women off the sides of highways, Judith would groom their nails and also wrap the bodies in a shower curtain from the motels.

Profile
The unsubs are a married couple who have been killing since 1994. The man is a sexual sadist and the woman is a scopophiliac (a Greek word for "love of looking"), which means that she gets off on watching her husband kill. This couple's homicidal tendencies most likely surfaced once they met. It is possible that the use of a shower curtain is a sign of remorse on the part of the female unsub. Most of the victims were females until the murder of a male prostitute, so it is possible that the change in victimology could be the husband's way of subjugating his own needs to his wife's happiness, but a sexual sadist doesn't typically subjugate. He may have committed crimes on the side that have gotten him arrested. Without his female partner's influence, the male partner's M.O. should be presented differently. Now that the wife has gotten a taste of that control, she will crave that feeling again, and if the husband sublimated his needs for the last kill, his desire to fulfill his own will be what is driving him now.

Real-Life Comparison
The Anderson seem similar to Ray and Faye Copeland, an elderly killer couple who also targeted hitchhikers and drifters, with Ray committing all of the murders and Faye being his accomplice. In addition, the scene of Judith covering for Alan despite the fact that she would receive a lesser sentence due to her cooperation seems almost identical to Faye's actions to cover for Ray. The only differences between the two couples is that the Andersons usually targeted women and killed them by strangling them to death with a belt, while the Copelands' victims were all male and killed them by shooting them with a rifle; and Alan killed some of his victims alone without Judith's knowledge, while Faye assisted Ray in all of his murders.

Mutual Victims

 * Unspecified dates from 1994 to 2010:
 * Unspecified date in 1994: Cheryl
 * Unspecified date in 1995: Unnamed woman
 * Unspecified years: Eight unnamed women
 * 2014:
 * February 9: Unnamed woman
 * February 11: Maya Taylor
 * February 12: James Cantor

Appearances

 * Season Nine
 * Mr. & Mrs. Anderson