| “ | I make them pretty like me! | ” |
— Yoo to the IRT
| ||
Su-bin Yoo was a female serial killer and abductor who appeared in the Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders Season Two episode, "Pretty Like Me".
Background[]
Yoo was a real estate agent and one of many women engaged to a wealthy and influential man named Geonwoo Lee. She had met Lee while selling him an office for an unspecified business venture. The misogynistic and domineering Lee had an extreme preference for the facial structure of a Caucasian woman, thus, in 2016, he had Yoo undergo facial surgery so she could resemble his ideal woman. However, Lee was not satisfied with the results, so he broke off their engagement in favor of an American-born K-pop star, Lauren Barrett, who he had also been seeing while he and Yoo were still engaged.
As a result, presumably hoping to seduce Lee back to her, Yoo continued to undergo numerous additional plastic surgeries, despite the fact that the procedures were hideously disfiguring her face. Eventually, she became angered by Lee's rejection of her and horrified at how ugly she had become from all the surgeries. As a result, Yoo dropped off the Internet completely and began planning a scheme of revenge against Lauren, hoping to make Lee suffer in the process. Yoo used Lee's office, which he had taken off the market and left vacant recently and began targeting young blonde Caucasian women, who served as surrogates for both Lauren and the ideal woman Yoo tried to become.
Pretty Like Me[]
After claiming the life of Barbara Walker, Yoo sets her sights on Jessica Townsend when she is attending a nightclub one night. When Jessica leaves the nightclub, Yoo kills her and dumps her body in an alley by a dumpster. Afterwards, Yoo targets Elsa Byquist and kills her as well. The following night, Yoo goes to Lauren's apartment. She knocks on the door and when Lauren opens it, Yoo raises the knife and approaches Lauren. Yoo knocks Lauren unconscious, puts her on the sofa and mutters in Korean. Then, she looks at the picture of Lauren and Geonwoo and in frustration, she throws the picture at the wall. Just as Yoo is about to mutilate Lauren's face, the IRT show up and hold her at gunpoint. Simmons communicates with Yoo in Korean and tells her to drop the knife. Yoo says that she makes her victims prettier like her, over and over, which Simmons translates to Seger. Garrett tells her to drop the knife or she will get shot, which Simmons translates in Korean to Yoo. Simmons tells Yoo that Geonwoo isn't worth it. He tries to tell her that she doesn't need to, but Yoo stabs herself in the stomach and dies.
Modus Operandi[]
Yoo targeted young, beautiful, blonde white women aged in their mid-twenties from various countries, who she would see while watching pedestrians from the window of Lee's former office, treating them as surrogates for Lauren Barrett. She would somehow lure them in to Lee's former office, incapacitated them with an unnamed paralytic drug, and perform crude facial surgeries on them, basing them on her own facial surgery. Once she was done, Yoo would kill them by slashing their throats, before wrapping the bodies in plastic and disposing them in alleyways inside carts. She paralyzed Lauren Barrett but never got the chance to mutilate her as she was stopped by the IRT.
Profile[]
The unsub was originally profiled as a South Korean male (later revealed to be a disorganized female serial killer). Based on the skilled needed to operate on his victims, he is between the ages of 35-45. The use of the self-dissolving stitches and the surgical cuts points to him being a doctor. There are no signs of sexual assault on the victims, which means he may be getting off on altering his victims' faces. He may be a psychosexual sadist who releases his impotence and indulges his desire for control by sculpting his victims' faces, in order to create his version of the perfect woman before disposing of them. It's later revealed the killer is instead destroying beauty, treating the women as surrogates for an intended victim, and committing the murders as acts of revenge and jealousy.
Known Victims[]
- 2016:
- July 8: Barbara Walker
- July 21: Jessica Townsend
- July 22: Elsa Byquist
- July 23: Lauren Barrett (attempted)
Notes[]
- Yoo may have been partially based on an unsub from the original show, Joseph Berzon ("Inner Beauty") - Both were serial killers who had morbid obsessions with beauty, had people who were objects of extreme affection (Yoo's fiancé and Berzon's deformed girlfriend), their killings were triggered when their objects 'left' them in some way (Yoo's fiancé left her for another woman, while Berzon's girlfriend committed suicide), both targeted women who were surrogates for women in their lives, lured them with ruses before incapacitating them with drugs, and performed crude surgery on their victims which left them with deformed faces, and they had exactly four victims (three killed and one survivor).
Appearances[]
Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders[]
Season Two[]
- "Pretty Like Me"
- "The Ripper of Riga" (flashbacks)