| “ | I brought you an angel... | ” |
— Eddie
| ||
Eddie Mays is a delusional and cannibalistic spree killer, one-time abductor, and one-time robber who appeared in Season One episode "Blood Hungry".
Background
Described as a generally pleasant boy in his youth, Eddie was born in the small town of Harringtonville, Tennessee, the son of a doctor and a woman named Mary Mays, who was descended from one of the oldest families in the state, a fact in which she took great pride. Eddie's father died in 2003, and sometime later, Eddie moved to Boston to attend college, where his major was Comparative Religions. Despite the distance, Mary continually tried to exert control over her son's life, calling him at least three times a day, and, at one point, traveling to the campus in order to break Eddie up with a girlfriend of whom she disapproved. In an attempt to rebel against his mother, Eddie began partying rather excessively, regularly using drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. Eddie's drug use caused him to suffer a psychotic break, which resulted in him being placed in a mental institution in 2005. Held for six months, Eddie checked himself out later that year and called his mother, who had never visited or contacted him during his stay in the facility, to pick him up, but the call was ignored. Somehow, Eddie made his way back home, where he, still unbalanced, grew fixated with Wally Brisbane, a neighborhood boy who Eddie began to see as a messianic figure, presumably due to his exceptional singing voice. On December 12, Eddie's delusions caused him to murder a man named Paul Thompson, whom Eddie stabbed to death in his yard and stole a shotgun from him.
Blood Hungry
The next day, Eddie tracks down Wally to the home of Annie Stuart, the boy's music teacher. Briefly spotted outside by Domino Thacker, a local drug addict, Eddie enters the house after Wally and Annie's son, Charlie, leave, and bashes Annie's head in with Paul Thompson's shotgun. After killing her, Eddie cuts Annie open and takes her liver and stomach, putting them in food containers (which left bloody circles on the floor) and taking them to his mother's house, where he places them in a refrigerator. The following night, Eddie goes to the home of Lynette Giles, Wally's grandmother. While Wally is watching TV, Eddie breaks inside and slashes Lynette's throat, removes her heart with bolt cutters, and forcibly abducts Wally, taking him to the Mays house, where he informs his mother the boy was an angel. Though horrified by her son's actions, Mary cleans up after him and hides Wally in a storage shed, hoping to protect him and her family name. By this point, in rare moments of lucidity, Eddie begins to feel remorse for his crimes and leaves Annie's stomach in a container on the porch of her house. A short time later, Eddie drives to a local church, presumably to ask for forgiveness, and is arrested by Elle and Morgan, who had been staking out the building and had seen Eddie approaching, carrying a wet sack, which presumably contained Lynette's heart. While being subdued, Eddie briefly hallucinates a statue of the Virgin Mary is the mutilated Lynette and starts screaming as he is being dragged away.
Placed in a cell at the police station, Eddie is unresponsive and for the first few minutes, he is screaming and shaking a lot. Reid points out to the local sheriff that Eddie is mentally ill and could use the insanity plea in a court of law. To find out where Wally is taken, Eddie is given anti-psychotics after his mother, who feigns obliviousness, signs the medical release forms. Somewhat lucid now, Eddie is interviewed by Hotch and Reid, who attempt to find where Wally is. Over the course of the interrogation, Eddie grows increasingly agitated, especially after being shown pictures of his victims, and begins talking to himself, loudly screaming "I just wanna know... when will you leave me alone!" to the ceiling as Hotch and Reid, realizing that they will be unable to get anywhere with Eddie, leave. Shortly after the agents exit the cell, Eddie tries to commit suicide by hanging himself but is spotted in the midst of doing so by a Deputy, who yells for help. Rushing into the cell, Hotch and Sheriff Hall manage to save Eddie, who is sent to a hospital, and then presumably an institution. After Eddie's hospitalization, Wally is found by Hotch and Elle, who discern Mary's involvement in the crimes.
Profile
The unsub is a twenty-to thirty-year-old disorganized, psychotic white male, due to the use of blitz attacks, the level of violence present in the murders, the differing M.O.'s, and the killer making no attempt to move the bodies or clean up evidence. He engages in anthropophagi (cannibalism), a psychotic addiction where he must drink human blood and possibly even consume human flesh. Anthropophagi suggests an extreme level of psychosis and disorganization, meaning that he couldn't have ventured very far from home to commit the crimes. He lives or has lived in Harringtonville; he knows the territory. He has been seen before, possibly at the ballpark or riding his bike home from the grocery store. He wasn't always a threat; he might have been someone's neighbor or friend. Something about his delusion is keeping him in town. Medication stolen from Annie Stuart's house indicated a drug addiction (while this turned out to be true, it was later discovered that the medication was actually taken by Domino Thacker, not the unsub). Unlike organized killers, most disorganized ones are driven to murder by delusions and do not follow the patterns when it comes to killing, making them unpredictable, but usually easier to find, as they make no real effort to hide or cover their tracks, and also do not stray far from home.
The unsub's fixation with Wally Brisbane, who was present at two crime scenes and abducted, plus the organs he took having major significance as the place of the soul in different societies, also implicates his delusions are religious in origin. He views Wally as something akin to a messianic figure, which he may feel compelled to sacrifice, and by eating his victims' organs and drinking their blood, he believes he is encountering the divine. Psychotics are usually nonviolent, but when they do get aggressive, by the nature of the psychotic delusions, they are excessively brutal. If caught, the unsub may not be able to properly recall his crimes, and like most psychotic killers, he could return body parts to the scene of the crime during moments of lucidity, either as a sign of remorse or simply as a means to manipulate the body further.
Modus Operandi
A disorganized killer, Eddie's victims were apparently chosen at random (though his victims were coincidentally Caucasian and middle-aged or older). They were all blitz-attacked and murdered through excessively violent means, which included stabbing, bludgeoning, and throat slashing. After he killed Annie Stuart and Lynette Giles, Eddie eviscerated them, posing the latter's body to look like an angel, and took organs that he believed contained the soul, such as Annie's liver and stomach, and Lynette's heart, placing them in food containers and bringing them to his home. In the case of Paul Thompson, his blood was collected from his stab wounds and put in containers. He would ingest his victims' blood and organs, believing he would see God if he did. Eddie used bolt cutters to crack open Lynette's rib cage, then posed her body to look like an angel, and presumably used a knife or some other bladed instrument to cut Annie open.
Real-Life Comparisons
"For Richard Trenton Chase, the Vampire Killer, he drank his victims' blood because he believed that aliens had invaded his body and were slowly drinking his blood.
And if he didn't get the blood he needed... He'd die.
-Reid and Hotch while profiling Eddie
Eddie was possibly based off Richard Chase - Both were spree killers and cannibals who were severely delusional and former drug addicts with a strained relationship with their mothers. Like Chase, Eddie also stored the blood and body parts he took from his victims in food containers, which left bloody rings at the crime scenes. Both also attempted suicide following interviews with FBI agents (although Chase was successful while Eddie survived after being rescued).
Eddie may have also had some inspiration from Marc Sappington - Both were disorganized, mentally ill spree killers and cannibals with a history of drug abuse, targeted random victims, and stabbed them.
Known Victims
- 2005:
- December 12: Paul Thompson (stabbed eighteen times in the chest and neck with an unknown instrument; also took some of his blood and stole his shotgun)
- December 13: Annie Stuart (Wally's music teacher; bludgeoned with Paul Thompson's shotgun; cut her open with a sharp instrument, removed her stomach and liver post-mortem, and took both organs)
- December 14: The attack at Lynette Giles's home:
- Lynette Giles (Wally's grandmother; slashed her throat with her own knife; opened her up with bolt cutters, removed her heart and took it, and posed post-mortem)
- Wally Brisbane (abducted from his grandmother's home; was rescued the next day)