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McKenna

Margaret McKenna is a serial killer and one-time enucleator who appears in the Season One episode of Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, "See No Evil".

Background[]

McKenna suffered from Münchhausen by proxy; she would cause harm to others in order to get attention and recognition by treating them. Working as a nurse, she would induce staphylococcal ("staph" for short) infections in patients, causing a statistical spike for the hospital. She would then write an anonymous letter to the hospital management about the increase in staph infections, planning to come forward once the information became publicly known and get recognized for "saving" the infected and preventing it from happening to more people. Though she worked at a total of five different hospitals across the U.S. and one in the Philippines over the years, enacting the plan at every one of them, it never went beyond her alerting the hospital managements. While she worked at her final job as a nurse at the Hope Memorial Hospital in Tucson, Arizona, she attempted to pull off her usual scheme, but failed even more that time when one of the people she infected, Stephen Lawford, was killed by his staph infection. While she sent her usual letter, Lawford's wife, Evelyn, pursued legal action against the hospital. While the management wouldn't admit to any wrongdoing, Evelyn, having to raise their children alone, had to settle. Angered that her plan had failed again, even more so than usually, McKenna quit her job at the hospital and began killing people connected to the hospital according to the saying "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" in an attempt to raise awareness.

See No Evil[]

"I have a skill. I have a skill. I have a purpose on this earth. I give comfort to people in their time of sickness. I've saved lives."

In the beginning of the episode, McKenna has parked her car outside a shopping mall in the pouring rain, having already selected Kenneth Richards, who had knee problems and is due for surgery under McKenna's former boss, Dr. Vincent Florio, at Hope Memorial Hospital, as her victim. When he sees her having trouble starting her car (due to having sabotaged it herself in advance) he gets out of his and walks to her, offering his help. When she accepts and gets an umbrella, he quickly finds and fixes the problem. When she compliments him on spotting the problem, he replies that he has "good eyes". She asks "Do you?" and injects fentanyl into his carotid artery, making him completely controllable. She puts him at the trunk of his car, closes her car hood, gently leads him into the driver's seat of his car and tapes his head to the head end of the seat. Brandishing a scalpel, she says "You know what? You're right. You do have good eyes." and begins removing his eyeballs, leaving him for dead inside the car when she is done and taking the eyes with her. Because of the strange circumstances of Dr. Richards' death, the Red Cell team are brought in. McKenna, in the meantime, cleans the eyeballs and leaves them covered with a plastic bag inside a newspaper in a dispenser, where they are found when a man buys a paper.

McKenna's next victim is Karen Martin, a nurse working for Dr. Florio, whom McKenna had told about the increase in staph infections. She books a meeting with her, claiming to have knee problems. When Martin examines her knee and finds that it's fine, McKenna injects her with fentanyl and lays her down on the examination table. After turning Martin's head to the side, she then thrusts an icepick into her ear, killing her based on "hear no evil". When later seeing a TV interview with a lead detective, who says "if this person had something to say, we wish they'd say it already", McKenna becomes further enraged and attacks her next target, based on "speak no evil": Allison Gilroy, Hope Memorial's lawyer, who had handled the settlement with Mrs. Lawford. She books a meeting with her and confesses to sending the anonymous letter about the staph infections. After sedating Gilroy, McKenna angrily recounts her actions leading up to that moment and voices her anger about how the hospital handled the Lawford situation. She then places a kind of medical braces inside Gilroy's mouth to hold it open and cuts her tongue. Remarking that it will heal up very quickly, McKenna prepares to sever the tongue completely as the FBI charges into the room and holds her at gunpoint. Cooper convinces her to follow her duty as a nurse and help Gilroy and surrender. In interrogation, Cooper confronts her with her causing infections and committing murder in order to get recognized. McKenna defends her actions with the fact that she was the one who sounded the alarm. Cooper says that she will, after all, be recognized, though not as a savior, but as "a cold, heartless woman who tried to play God". McKenna says he is wrong and is left to ponder over her actions.

Modus Operandi[]

Exactly how McKenna induced staph infections in her patients is unspecified. When she killed intentionally, she would approach her victims out of presented opportunity after stalking them or using some ruse and inject fentanyl into their carotid arteries while they were somehow distracted. She would then kill them in some way fitting into their involvement in the hospital staph infection incident and the saying "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil", an allusion to the Three Wise Monkeys and as a statement against the hospital's refusal to accept her reports. While controlling her victims while they were drugged, McKenna had a habit of talking to them and instructing them the same way a nurse would talk to a patient, even apologizing for her hands being cold.

Profile[]

The unsub is female, either Caucasian or Hispanic, based on local demographics. She is probably a local, based on her familiarity with the area. The fact that she left the eyes in a newspaper rather than post a picture of them online suggests that she is more comfortable with print. Because of this, she is most likely older, 40-60 years old. Using a newspaper to make a statement suggests that she is politically motivated. She has been trying to give a message to the authorities, but they haven't figured it out yet, and she will not stop until she has successfully made her point.

Real-Life Comparison[]

McKenna appears to be primarily inspired by Kristen Gilbert - Both are female "angel of death"-type serial killers with factitious disorder by proxy who poisoned patients at the hospitals where they worked as nurses, resulting in at least one murder, to get attention for recognizing the crisis, were fired from their places of employment once caught, their crimes were covered up by the respective hospitals, and they committed additional crimes to create scandals at the respective hospitals as retaliation for being fired (McKenna killed and attacked patients and staff at the hospital, Gilbert called in bomb threats at the hospital).

Known Victims[]

  • Unspecified dates and locations: Numerous unnamed patients (all non-fatally infected)
  • 2011, Tucson, Arizona:
    • February 9: Stephen Lawford (unintentionally; died of his staph infection)
    • February 27: Kenneth Richards (killed by a fentanyl overdose and his eyes removed post-mortem; represents "see no evil")
    • March 2:
      • Karen Martin (killed by inserting an icepick through her ear; represents "hear no evil")
      • Allison Gilroy (attempted to remove her tongue; represents "speak no evil"; didn't intend to kill her)
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