Miranda Dracar was a traumatized, prolific, and international family annihilator and robber, and serial-turned-spree killer who appeared in the Season Five episode of Criminal Minds, "Outfoxed".
Background[]
Dracar was born in Sarajevo, Socialist Yugoslavia, in 1982. She was orphaned at a young age and adopted by a family in Srebrenica. When she was still a child, the Yugoslav Wars broke out, and Dracar was caught in the middle of the fighting, bearing witness to the Srebrenica massacre. She would later move to Italy and England. The trauma Dracar sustained combined with her psychotic tendencies caused her to have psychological breaks that drove her to kill whenever she was reminded of the war, resulting in the deaths of a total of seven people, three of them children. In 2007 or 2008, she moved to Virginia in the U.S., where she was employed by the website PhotoBug. In 2008, she had another psychological break brought on by the sound of military planes practicing for the Langley air show, resulting in her killing of the Williams family. On November 15, 2009, airplanes practicing for Langley's fiftieth-anniversary air show drove her to kill the Downey family.
Outfoxed[]
Three days after the latest familicide, the BAU arrives to aid in the investigation. They find out that a family annihilator that they had caught four years ago, Karl Arnold, had received several envelopes containing newspaper clippings about the murders along with a note reading: "Look at what I've done." The note was signed by "an admirer". Hotch and Prentiss travel to the Red Onion State Prison where Arnold is incarcerated, to interview him and ask for advice regarding the current killings. The same day, the airplanes, crowds, and military vehicles drive Dracar to kill again. This gives the BAU several clues that help them. They realize that Dracar's "admirer" had nothing to do with the murder spree and is a woman. At her residence, Dracar undergoes a psychotic break, hearing gunfire. She shouts in Croatian, waving her gun around. Turning to a mirror, she sees a hallucination of a young Serbian child. The image soothes her momentarily, but she shortly gets agitated and shouts as she shoots the mirror four times.
After narrowing down the suspect list and using Interpol's database, they learn that Dracar's fingerprints are found on three other crime scenes in different countries. Garcia eventually notices that all of the U.S. victims used the same website, PhotoBug, to communicate. When she applies the BAU's profile to the list of employees, she finds Dracar's name and history. When the team goes to her residence, they find the name of her next victims, the Youngs. They hurry over to their house, which Dracar had already infiltrated. When Morgan searches the rooms and finds the family being held captive, Dracar flies out of the doorway and tackles him to the ground. They wrestle over her sidearm, hers going off several times, but missing him. Noticing his sidearm lying out of his reach, Morgan overpowers her, and forces her own gun into her abdomen, firing once. After Morgan frees himself, he sees a now-dead Dracar with her blank eyes staring at him as blood is oozing from her nose and mouth. It is shortly revealed afterward that Arnold's "admirer" is really George Foyet, who is actually Hotch's "admirer" and was using Arnold to carry out his message to Hotch.
Profile[]
The unsub is a Caucasian woman aged in her late 20s, who is armed, suffering a major psychological break, and will not hesitate to kill again. Based on the burial sites of her victims resembling mass graves, she was most likely born into conflict. She committed her first murders in Croatia, where between 1991 and 1995 locals fought a battle for independence and Serbian forces tried to ethnically cleanse over 40,000 Bosnian Muslims. Having lived in a city full of military families and vehicles, she is reenacting her life experiences onto the victims. The only mass graves reminiscent of the ones the unsub has created were found all over Bosnia after the war, but none of them rivaled the mass graves of Srebrenica, which was surrounded by Bosnian-Serb forces in 1995 and subsequently created the massacre. This traumatized her and caused her to suffer a very severe psychotic breakdown. She came to the U.S. a few years ago, is likely on foot, likely of Eastern European descent, likely speaks little-to-no English, and will attempt to fight her way out if she is cornered.
Modus Operandi[]
Dracar killed whenever she had a psychological break after being reminded of the Srebrenica massacre in some way. Her initial victims were apparently chosen at random, varying in age, race, and gender. They were all killed in different countries in Eastern Europe, with the first victims (a woman and her baby) being stabbed to death with an unknown bladed instrument, while the rest were shot with an unspecified firearm.
When she killed in the U.S., she targeted Caucasian military families she found through her job, whose fathers were serving overseas. The families she killed in the U.S. always consisted of a mother, an older teenage daughter (who was roughly the same age as her when she witnessed the Srebrenica massacre), and at least one younger son. She usually waited at least a month so that the families had gotten used to the fathers not being there. She would then infiltrate the houses, take one of the children hostage to make the others compliant and shoot the mothers and son(s). Her signature was suffocating the teenage daughters using pillows from their rooms (though Lucy Downey was drowned in a swimming pool instead, since she was using it while her family was being killed). After that, she took jewelry, the mother's wedding ring, and cash from the bodies and the house. Then, she would bury the bodies in a single shallow grave in the backyard, the graves being similar to the mass graves that were found in the wake of the Srebrenica massacre. She would also shoot a photograph specifically showing the fathers and leave her fingerprints on another part of it that specifically showed the daughter. She would print and keep photos of the families in her residence, with the faces of the fathers being drawn on or ripped off.
Real-Life Comparison[]
Dracar appears to have been based on Anatoly Onoprienko - Both were prolific serial killers, family annihilators, mass murderers, and robbers from European countries, had histories of war (Onoprienko's father served in World War II, while Dracar witnessed the Srebrenica massacre during the Yugoslav wars), were orphaned at young ages, and as killers they had a very wide victimology (men, women, and children), killed their victims primarily in their homes (though Onoprienko deviated from this several times) with firearms, bladed weapons, and at least one other method (bludgeoning and dismemberment in Onoprienko's case, asphyxiation in Dracar's), stole valuables from them afterwards, buried them in shallow graves (sometimes in Onoprienko's case), their first murder was a double homicide with years of cool-off time before their next attack, they were active in at least two European countries, their crimes were investigated by elite law enforcement agencies, and at least one other man was interrogated for their crimes while they were still at large. Also, Dracar's psychosis could be a slight nod to Onoprienko supposedly having delusions involving aliens and hearing voices telling him to kill.
Known Victims[]
- November 11, 1998, Zagreb, Croatia: An unnamed woman and her eight-month-old child (both stabbed with an unknown instrument)
- September 3, 2000, Modena, Italy: An unnamed family (all shot)
- The unnamed mother
- Two unnamed children
- October 26, 2007, London, England: An unnamed couple (both were shot like the previous victims)
- November 22, 2008, Newport News, Virginia, U.S.: The Williams family
- Susan Williams (mother; also stole her wedding ring)
- Karen Williams (daughter)
- Kyle Williams (son)
- 2009, Hampton, Virginia, U.S.:
- November 15: The Downey family
- Laura Downey (mother; also stole her wedding ring)
- Lucy Downey (daughter; was drowned instead of being suffocated)
- Paul Downey (eldest son)
- Ronny Downey (youngest son)
- November 18:
- The Forester family
- Samantha Forester (mother; also stole her wedding ring)
- Dani Forester (daughter)
- Nick Forester (son)
- The standoff at the Young home:
- The Young family (held hostage and intended to kill)
- Jane Young (mother)
- Stacy Young (daughter)
- Billy Young (son)
- Derek Morgan (assaulted and attempted to shoot)
- The Young family (held hostage and intended to kill)
- The Forester family
- November 15: The Downey family
Notes[]
- Dracar appears to be partly inspired by the main antagonist of book and later film adaptations Red Dragon, a serial family annihilator named Francis Dolarhyde - Both are traumatized serial-turned-spree killers and family annihilators who targeted families of married couples with children, specifically focused on a female member of each family (the daughters in Dracar's case, the mothers and wives Dolarhyde's), killed all their victims by shooting, and posed them in the same site at each house (the yards in Dracar's case, the bedrooms in Dolarhyde's). Also, Dracar shooting pictures of the families could be a reference to Dolarhyde breaking mirrors in each of the houses of the victims.
- Dracar is somewhat similar to Roy Woodridge ("Distress") - Both were spree killers who experienced traumatizing war-related events (a mission in Mogadishu for Woodridge, the Srebrenica massacre for Dracar), both started killing every time they encountered incidents that reminded them of military battles (Dracar triggered by the sound of airplanes that reminded her of the Srebrenica massacre, while Woodridge was triggered by the rumblings of construction), and were ultimately shot and killed at the end of their sprees.