| “ | Mas... Mason always says I get mad too hard. | ” |
— Lucas to Kelly Shane in "To Hell and Back, part 2"
| ||
Lucas Turner was an international and prolific serial killer, robber, and abductor who was the submissive partner of a two-person killing team with his brother Mason. They both appeared in the two-part finale of Season Four on Criminal Minds.
Background[]
Lucas waits as Kelly pretends to urinate in the woods.
"I take...I take care of him. It's all right. I just made a mistake."
- Lucas struggling to talk about attacking Mason
Lucas was the developmentally disabled son of a pig farmer in rural Ontario. As a child, Lucas' father would take him and Mason hunting, and together the three built an underground fort in the forest, where Lucas would spend most of his time when he was away from the farm. Lucas had grown up his entire life on the farm and was angered when Mason wanted to sell the family farm following his graduation from medical school in 2002. In a rage, Lucas pushed Mason from the loft of the barn, paralyzing him. Lucas then waited on Mason hand and foot, while his brother laid helpless in his bed. Lucas slept in the same loft since he was a child, decorating it with child-like crayon drawings. His brother often ordered him to steal specific medical supplies from pharmacies, labs, and medical supply stores. The supplies were used to keep Mason alive, and to serve his twisted experiments, which involved stem cell harvesting, made in hopes that he could find a spinal regeneration cure for his paralysis. Mason eventually made Lucas escalate to murdering high-risk people, kidnapping them from Detroit and possibly other large cities, transporting them across the border by boat, and harvesting biological specimens from them before they were fed to the farm's pigs to dispose of evidence.
To Hell and Back[]
Part 1[]
Lucas is first seen picking up a homeless man on the streets in Detroit. He had been posing as a drug dealer outside a sleazy motel in order to kidnap transients and other poverty stricken people who cash their welfare checks there. Lucas is then seen carrying the young man back to his farm in Canada, where he kills him and extracts a white fluid from the victim's neck. The victim is later slaughtered and fed to the pigs. Lucas is then seen abducting another person, a prostitute named Kelly Shane. After dumping his car in the usual place near the U.S.-Canada border, he throws her into a skiff and takes her across the river into Canada. Meanwhile, the BAU has theorized that the unsub may be using the old Underground Railroad to take his victims across the border. After identifying the unsub's car as belonging to Mason, the team drives to the farm house. Lucas is then seen holding Kelly in front of a window to the house where Kelly sees Mason lying in the bed, surrounded by mirrors. Lucas is presenting her to him to find out if she is suitable. Just as Kelly sees Mason, Lucas sees the team pull up and runs off, carrying Kelly over his shoulder.
Part 2[]
"I...I pushed him off the barn. It was me. I did it. Sometimes I get so mad I get bad mad."
- Lucas confessing to attacking and paralyzing Mason
Lucas is then seen running through the woods, carrying Kelly over the shoulder. He then stops at the top of his underground cellar and drops Kelly. While Lucas is searching for the entrance, Kelly sneaks and runs off in an effort to escape but trips and falls, causing Lucas to hear and retrieve her. Lucas enters the cellar as Kelly falls asleep. Kelly wakes up in a cellar built by Lucas, Mason, and their father, to find Lucas writhing in pain (or mental anguish) near her. She looks around and sees that she is in a room decorated with crayon drawings and white Christmas lights. She begs Lucas to take her to the hospital, but Lucas says that she has to stay. He is apparently in pain because he is waiting for a phone call from his brother (unknown to Kelly). She explains that since they are underground, there would be no cell phone reception. Lucas becomes angry, backhands and lunges to hit her, but is surprised and terrified when she screams, "Mommy, please!", causing Lucas to stop. He calms down and tells Kelly his name after she introduces herself. She asks if she can have some food. Lucas goes out for a moment, leaving Kelly behind. She has convinced him not to tie her up, saying they are friends. Kelly tries to escape but the cellar door is blocked. She does, however, find his cellphone. After a minute, Lucas returns with some berries, smiling. After a short conversation, Lucas denies that he pushed his brother from the loft and "hurt" him.
Kelly then convinces him to let her go to the bathroom outside, where he can't see. She kisses him on the cheek and goes off into the bushes. She tries to use the phone to call for help but finds that it is restricted to call only one number: Mason. She calls the number. Garcia, who had been tracking the cell phone on Mason's laptop nearby, answers[1]. Garcia tells her that help is on the way and the GPS locator triangulates the signal. The team is dispatched to find her. Meanwhile, Lucas hears her talking and rushes to retrieve Kelly, dragging her back to the cellar. Lucas angrily drags Kelly back into the cellar until Kelly shouts Let me go you freak! Within a few minutes, Reid manages to locate the cellar by way of triangulating several eyes carved on the nearby trees. Hotch opens the cellar door and rushes to put himself between Kelly and Lucas. Lucas falls to the floor crying and admits that he pushed Mason off the loft, consumed with guilt. As Kelly changes to consoling him, Hotch takes Kelly away as armed agents rush in. Despite Kelly emotionally insisting Lucas surrender with his hands in the air, Lucas doesn't comprehend that, instead standing and charging the police while crying. The RCMP team opens fire, fatally riddling him with bullets, as Morgan yells at them to stop. Meanwhile, William Hightower, the brother of a previous victim, grabs an abandoned FBI-issue shotgun, enters Mason's home, and shoots him in revenge for his sister and the other victims, knowing that Mason's disability would most likely exonerate him of any of his crimes.
Profile[]
"Mommy, don't! [...] Mason says everyone always lies! Always! You lied, always!"
Lucas while attacking Kelly when she tried to call for help
The unsub was originally profiled as an intelligent and organized sexual sadist who achieves sexual gratification out of torturing others, regardless of gender, race, or age (hence why the victims had little in common besides being poor), and has managed to abduct his victims without any witnesses. Medical equipment, such as sterilizing agents and anesthesia, being stolen around the same as the abductions indicated the unsub could be performing experiments and surgeries on his captives, and was keeping them alive for as long as possible in order to prolong their suffering. The choice of items he has stolen is extremely specific, so he may have a medical background and might be working in a hospital, medical school, or community health organization. The unsub's coworkers would undoubtedly notice his odd behavior, such as enthusiastically volunteering to perform painful procedures, during which he would spend extra time on such as probing a broken hand or a distend abdomen. At the end of the day, while his coworkers would be emotionally drained from the process of dealing with the sick and dying, the unsub would appear unfazed, suggesting things like going out for drinks and talking about the day.
The profile was revealed much later to have fit the unsub's accomplice and the mastermind of the crimes, but not the unsub himself. After looking through the unsub's room, it is believed that he most likely has autism or an intellectual disability, as evidenced by the child-like crayon drawings scattered throughout the barn. Disembodied eyes being present in all of the drawings indicates that the unsub is being watched over by someone, and if caught, he will be scared and confused, and may lash out. Merely doing what his brother told him out of guilt over what he had done to him, the unsub probably does not fully understand the acts he has committed, as his brother had manipulated him into viewing his victims as mere objects by forbidding him from speaking to or having any extended interaction with them, and told him that people always lied to him.
Modus Operandi[]
Lucas' M1911, seen in part 1.
Shortly after welfare checks were issued in Detroit, Lucas would park outside a seedy motel in the Cass Corridor, where prostitutes, vagrants, etc. would cash the checks. Lucas would lure the victims into the car by pretending to be a drug dealer or prospective john. Once the victims were in his grasp, he would hold them at gunpoint with an M1911 to control them, shove their hands behind their backs, cover their mouths with duct tape, and forcibly take them across the border via a small raft, leaving his car nearby.
Once he arrived at the farm, Lucas would show the victims to Mason through a window, and draw a red "X" with a marker on their necks. After Mason showed his approval, Lucas would then bash a hammer on the "X" repeatedly until they were dead. Afterwards, he would sterilize their bodies and take pictures of their faces with a Polaroid camera. He would then extract viable material from the bodies with a syringe, which he would use (along with medical equipment he stole on the same days as when he abducted some of his victims) in Mason's experiments. He would dismember the bodies using a buzz saw and feed the pieces to the pigs, who Lucas in turn would subsequently kill and eventually eat. He would then place his victims' shoes in a large bin near the pig pen.
Real-Life Comparisons[]
Lucas Turner in particular seems to have been based on Ed Gein - Both were mentally-challenged killers who lived on a farm with a brother and abusive parental figure (who they were dependent on), their older and mentally sound brothers both suffered an accident when they tried to leave the farm years before their killings began (interestingly enough likely at their hands: Lucas paralyzed Mason by pushing him off the loft of their father's farm, while Gein's brother Henry died from head-trauma after a fire at their farm), primarily targeted women (though Turner also targeted men) and dismembered them.
The case of the Turner Brothers was apparently inspired by Robert Pickton - Both Lucas and Pickton were prolific (possibly in Pickton's case) serial killers and (presumably in Pickton's case) abductors active in Canada who worked as pig farmers, targeted the 'unwanted'/high-risk victims like drug addicts and prostitutes (Pickton only killed prostitutes) in poor neighborhoods, fed them to pigs after killing them, and both went undiscovered for years due to poor Canadian investigations at the time of their crimes. Both also interestingly enough had brothers.
Lucas is also very similar to Karl Denke - Both were prolific serial killers who had brothers, were problematic children, lived on family farms that were inherited by their brothers, which their brothers then tried to sell (though only Denke's brother was successful), refused to leave their residences where their killings happened, targeted high-risk victims of both genders, killed their victims by bludgeoning, dismembered their bodies post-mortem, kept samples and clothes of their victims after murdering them, and had one surviving victim who escaped. Also, Lucas eating the pigs he fed his victims' remains to could be a reference to Denke's cannibalism and suspected selling of human remains at markets.
Known Victims[]
- Unspecified date in 2002: Mason Turner (attempted, but survived; pushed off a barn loft and left paralyzed from the neck down)
- Unspecified year-2009:
- Presumably committed numerous victimless robberies
- 78 unnamed victims
- 2009:
- April 2: Lee Hightower (a prostitute)
- April 8:
- A victimless robbery at HD&L Medcial Supplies (stole a dry heat sterilizer, two cases of bandages, and four boxes of silk sutures)
- Alana
- April 16: Jared
- April 18: Colby Van Kirk
- April 23:
- A victimless robbery at Penday General Hospital (stole a volumetric infusion pump, an infusion pump stand, a chest drainage system, and test tubes)
- Claire Osenbaugh
- April 26: Faith
- April 29:
- A victimless robbery at Detroit Community Blood Center (stole five units of O-negative blood and boxes of IV tubes)
- Ivy
- May 3: Sheldon Abernathy
- May 5: Louis
- May 9:
- A victimless robbery (stole numerous medical supplies)
- Celeste Evercroft
- May 16: Charles Porter (a drug addict)
- May 19: Kelly Shane (a prostitute; abducted, attempted to kill, and held captive in a cellar; was rescued the next day)
Notes[]
- Lucas seems to have been partially inspired by Charles Holcombe ("Legacy") - Both were prolific serial killers with dozens of victims, targeted the 'unwanted' and 'useless' of society (high-risk victims like prostitutes, vagrants, and drug addicts), dismembered them, kept their shoes, and had a partner, and both attempted to kill a prostitute before being shot and killed by the police.
Appearances[]
- Season Four
- Season Five
- "Nameless, Faceless" (mentioned)
References[]
- ↑ Hotch had requested that Garcia come to Canada in person to hack into Mason's computer