| “ | Please help my wife. Tell her I love her. Tell her the baby is hungry. | ” |
— Roger during his psychotic break
| ||
Roger Song is a delusional spree killer and abductor who appears in the second season of Criminal Minds: Evolution.
History[]
Roger lived in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife Emma, whom he had a controlling relationship with. As he was infertile, he pestered his wife until she agreed to pursue IVF treatments with a sperm donor in order to conceive a child. The implantation was a success, but this didn't magically make her want the baby, and Roger ended up using his insecurities to blame his wife.
Dr. Maria Moreno, the specialist they saw, warned against taking the baby to term, since Emma was at risk for a late-term miscarriage due to her hypertension, and pleaded for her to do hospital delivery and not a home birth. Roger did not heed her warning and forced Emma to give birth at home when she went into labor.
Roger cared for his newborn son on his own, as Emma had begun suffering postpartum depression after the birth. Around this time, he developed a delusion that the sperm donors involved in his wife's IVF were actually rapists who'd impregnated her. Since the company offered an option for parents to contact their donors after a baby's birth, Roger was able to track them down, sending spam emails accusing them of raping his wife. He then began killing the potential donors by trapping them inside a homemade tank setup and dissolving them with piranha solution. He abducted Alan George and Tony Moon a week apart, followed by Craig Park two days later.
Piranha[]
"Will you be a parent for once?! Please. All I hear from you is no. I can't hear it anymore."
- Roger shouting at the hallucination of his wife
When Craig wakes up inside the tank and sees Roger, he recalls talking to him at a bar and asks if he spiked his drink. Roger ignores this and tells him he has one chance to tell the truth, puzzling him. Roger then presses on a remote that sprays him with piranha solution through a showerhead, burning his arm and scalp. Under threat, Craig confesses to knocking Emma out and raping her. When asked the identity of the other assailants, he names Tony correctly by luck but gives the other two as Darren and David. Disappointed, Roger tells him he only got one chance and dispenses the rest of the piranha solution, dissolving him alive.
Roger falls asleep next to the container and is woken up hours later by his son crying. He drains the tank and leaves to take care of the baby, falling asleep in the nursery where he spends the night. The morning after, he returns to his bedroom and speaks with Emma, who is bed-bound and still suffering from depression. When Roger mentions that he has one more victim to target, Emma asks to be there and promises that after it is done, she will be the best mom ever.
Roger abducts his next victim, Jeremy Moy, by luring him to his vehicle and subduing him by repeatedly slamming his head with his car door. He is placed in the same tank where he interrogated his other victims. When Jeremy comes to in the tank, he pleads to Roger that he has the wrong guy. Roger responds that he isn't the one he has to convince and steps aside, revealing Emma. Jeremy recoils in horror and vomits, which she takes as a confession. She then finds herself unable to kill him. Roger tells her that he can be strong enough for both of them and uses the remote to dispense the piranha solution, killing Jeremy.
Afterwards, Emma asks Roger why she doesn't feel better even though the ordeal is over. Roger starts to drain the tank and excuses himself when the baby starts crying.
Later, while Roger is looking after his son, Emma screams his name. He finds her in the bedroom violently hemorrhaging and tries to take her to the hospital, but she rebuffs this, insisting that he get Dr. Moreno instead. He gives her the baby to take care of and snaps when Emma tries to refuse, yelling at her to be a parent for once. She acquiesces and he leaves.
Roger knocks out and abducts Dr. Moreno, places her within the tank, and pleads for her to help Emma when she awakes. She asks to be let out so she can help her and tells Roger to take Emma to a hospital upon learning that she is hemorrhaging, both of which he refuses to do. She tells him to think about her for once his life and rails against him, telling him that sees husbands like him all the time who hear any disagreement from their wives as an attack and tune out anything that doesn't fit with their personal narrative of what a baby should be.
When Roger calls out to reassure his wife upstairs, Dr. Moreno asks who he is talking to, puzzling him. He then hears his name being called outside by police and the BAU, who have deduced his identity. He asks if Dr. Moreno heard that, which she confirms.
Roger comes out to find SWAT and the BAU waiting in front of his house. He surrenders, pleading for them to help his wife. When the BAU agents enter, they notice a bad smell throughout the home, which Roger doesn't notice.
It is then revealed that Emma had died in childbirth along with her son when she attempted to give birth at home. This caused Roger to have a break from reality, and he continued living in the house with their corpses, believing they were still alive and taking care of them as such. This also triggered his killings of the men, who served as genetic manifestations of himself that he obliterated over and over again.
As he is being placed into a police vehicle, Roger, still under the delusion that his family is alive, asks Alvez to tell his wife that he loves her, and that the baby is hungry.
Profile[]
"I'm not the one that you need to convince."
- Roger while interrogating Jeremy Moy
Roger's profile remains a mystery due to the fact that there are no bodies left to examine to determine cause of death, until they discover a watch with remnants of DNA from one of the victims and are able to find the chemical components of the solution used to dissolve the bodies. Due to the common race of all the victims, it is initially posed that Roger was either racist or identified with them. His cooling off period suggested he was either on a mission or on a spree.
After analyzing the email inboxes of the victims, Garcia was able to find emails accusing them all of sexual assault against Emma. It was then thought that he was searching for his wife's rapist, since one of the victims even had a sexual assault record, but after determining that the sexual assault record was a trumped up charge for public urination, and another victim was gay, they determined that instead of an injustice collector, Roger was instead destroying versions of himself due to trauma, after being unable to impregnate his wife.
When they came to arrest him, it was determined that he was suffering from massive delusions, thinking that Emma and his child were both still alive when they were rotting corpses.
Modus Operandi[]
Roger kidnapped his victims and locked them in a glass case and interrogated them, accusing them of raping and impregnating his wife, Emma, who appears to be suffering from postpartum depression and complications from a home birth. If he didn't get the answers he wanted, which he never did, he would turn on a shower head to rain down a scalding mixture of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide, also known as piranha solution, dissolving their bodies. He is calm and collected with the men, but nervous and fearful with Dr. Moreno, whom he'd abducted to help his wife when he believed Emma's life was in danger.
Real-Life Comparison[]
Roger appears to be heavily inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer - Both are repeat killers who targeted racially discriminated men in their local communities, abducted them to hold them captive in their homes, and dissolved their victims with acid (though Roger did so antemortem, while Dahmer did so postmortem).
Known Victims[]
- 2023, Bethesda, Maryland:
- Alan George
- Tony Moon
- Craig Park (presumably spiked his drink at a bar; later dissolved alive)
- Jeremy Moy (slammed his head repeatedly with a car door; later dissolved alive)
- Dr. Maria Moreno (abducted; was rescued)