| “ | They said I was sick. Well, they made me sick! | ” |
— Eisworth
| ||
Dustin Eisworth was a visually impaired psychopathic, serial killer, enucleator, and one-time abductor who appeared in the Season Fourteen episode "Night Lights".
Background[]
Eisworth was born on August 22, 1987 in Portland, Oregon to Troy and Patricia Eisworth. As a child, Eisworth's visual impairment caused him to have a fear of the dark, as well as psychopathic tendencies due to his belief that he would never be able to live a normal life. To help cure him of his phobia, his parents took him to see a pediatrician named Dr. William Mendelbaum, who specialized in exposure therapy. Mendelbaum's methods included having Eisworth be in dark environments for long periods of time and using hypnosis while he was blindfolded. His therapy lasted for 14 months before Mendelbaum decided to stop following another one of his patients committing suicide due to being unable to handle the exposure therapy. Eisworth's parents decided to cure him themselves by having him stay in a dark room of their home believing it would "toughen him up", only for his trauma and psychopathy to worsen.
In 2005, Eisworth attended a bonfire party at the local woods of his hometown and he asked a neighbor girl named Christian Russo to go with him to a local overlook, telling her he wanted to see Mars while it was visible in the night sky and describe it to her. In reality, this was really a ruse to be alone with her so he could attack her, duct taping her arms behind her back and blindfolding her with a scarf. He then chased after her, presumably with the intent to rape and/or kill her, but one of her friends came to help her after hearing her scream. Russo reported the incident and this, along with other disciplinary issues Eisworth had in school, resulted in his parents having no choice but to send him to a reform school that same year.
Three years later, Eisworth was sent to prison for assaulting a man with a beer bottle during an argument, leaving the man permanently blind in his left eye. While incarcerated, he was sent to solitary confinement for assaulting multiple inmates. A year into his incarceration, he beat his cellmate to death, which not only added seven years to prison sentence, but also caused him to be put into solitary for four years, causing his vision condition to deteriorate. Three weeks prior to the episode, he was released from prison and went to stay at his parents house. While he was there, he tried to forgive his parents for what they did to him as a child, but all they did was tell him that he was sick. This caused him to snap and kill them both, but not before blinding them both by burning their eyes so they would know what it was like to be him. Eisworth also went to Mendelbaum's house hoping to forgive him, but Mendelbaum gave him the same response that he got from his parents. This triggered him to kill both Mendelbaum and his wife Sarah.
Night Lights[]
After killing the Mendelbaums, Eisworth goes to the house of his attempted rape victim Christian Russo and finds J.P. McCoy and Nikki Pareno, a couple renting the house, and kidnaps them. After taking them to his parent's house, he burns the eye of McCoy and lets him loose in Roxy Heights, where he finds a house and cries for help before Eisworth grabs him and takes back to the house. He then blinds McCoy in the other eye and released inside the house, where he is able to find the front door but Eisworth stabs in the back at the last moment.
After that, he tells Pareno about his time at the reformatory, then lets her go and takes her to the basement to show her the corpses of McCoy and of his parents. As he gloats about killing them, Pareno uses a nearby shelf to cut the binds on her wrists and grab a lamp, blinding Eisworth with it before running away. Eisworth recovers and shuts off power to the house to make it harder for Pareno to find her way. She is able to find a window and see the BAU arrive at Eisworth's house (having identified him as the unsub earlier). She calls for help, but when they fail to notice, she breaks the window and alerts them just as Eisworth finds her and non-fatally stabs her in the back. Eisworth then goes to hide in the attic and attempts to ambush Luke and stab him, but is shot by Simmons, killing him.
Modus Operandi[]
Eisworth targeted victims who were connected to him either directly or indirectly. He would shut off the power in the houses his victims were in by flipping the switches in the homes' fuse boxes. This would cause his victims to roam around the house in complete darkness, touching everything that was around them to avoid injuring themselves. Eisworth had night vision goggles, not only to avoid this problem but to see their victims panicking in confusion. He then subdued them and bound them to tables or chairs by their heads, necks, wrists, and hands with duct tape. He tortured each of his victims by burning their eyes, as well as the areas around them. At one point while holding them captive, he would cut one of his victims free from their restraints and allow them a chance to escape. This was so he could hunt after them and after he caught after them, he stabbed them repeatedly with a hunting knife. In the case of his parents and the Mendelbaums, he killed them in their own homes, but with McCoy and Pareno, he abducted them and took them to his home, not realizing they rented the childhood home of Christian Russo (his intended target) following their engagement to one another.
Profile[]
The unsub is a visually impaired white male in his late 20s to early 30s. Based on eyewitness confirmation, he's wearing electronic sunglasses that help him see in the dark. While he is impaired, he is not fully sightless. With the aid of the glasses and the night-vision goggles, he most likely has close to full vision.
Behind this disability lurks a psychopath incapable of feeling empathy. His rage over his condition is now being externalized on his victims, including anyone who shows him any empathy. It's possible this unsub has learned how to weaponize his disability in order to make himself seem less threatening to his victims.
The unsub also has limited social skills. His disability has kept him withdrawn and isolated, which explains why he's choosing to take his own impairment out on his victims. Bringing them to his level allows him to draw out the torture and engage in cat-and-mouse-type play with them.
Psychopaths get bored easily, causing them to take bigger and bigger risks. That's why the unsub released J.P. and why he will continue to escalate with Nikki. It's possible he's pretending to care about her or pretending to let her go after he blinds her.
Real-Life Comparison[]
Einsworth appears to be partly inspired by Allan Legere - Both were serial killers previously imprisoned for sex crimes and violent assaults, targeted victims in pairs, broke into their homes where they were held captive, tortured them before killing them, left behind at least one survivor during their sprees, and attacked a police officer.
Known Victims[]
- October 21, 2005: Christian Russo (assaulted; bound with duct tape and presumably intended to rape and/or kill)
- July 12, 2008: J. Ehlers (first full name unrevealed; assaulted; beaten with a beer bottle; was permanently blinded in his left eye as a result of the attack)
- 2009:
- February 19: Unnamed inmate (assaulted; broke his nose)
- March 14: Unnamed inmate (assaulted with a fork)
- June 1: Unnamed inmate (beaten to death)
- August 22, 2013: Unnamed inmate (assaulted)
- December 4, 2014: Unnamed inmate (assaulted; kicked in the head)
- June 13, 2015: Unnamed prison guard (assaulted; punched in the face)
- 2018:
- December 15: Troy and Patrica Eisworth (his parents)
- December 28: William and Sarah Mendelbaum
- William Mendelbaum (his childhood pediatrician)
- Sarah Mendelbaum (William's wife)
- 2019:
- January 2:
- Christian Russo (intended to kill; abandoned the plan when he learned she wasn't home)
- J.P. McCoy and Nikki Pareno (incidental; abducted and held captive):
- J.P. McCoy (first full name unrevealed: tortured and killed two days later)
- Nikki Pareno (J.P.'s fiance; attempted, but barely survived; stabbed twice in the back; was rescued three days later)
- January 5: Luke Alvez (attempted to stab)
- January 2: