Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network
Show Name: Real Cases, Fictional Minds
Episode Title: Teenage Killing Spree
You are listening to Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host(s) Jaylli Kushi.
In this episode of Real Cases, Fictional Minds the Podcast we discuss: Season 6 Episode 13 of Criminal Minds titled “The Thirteenth Step” and how it's based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate who were a duo of teenagers on a killing spree.
Today, we are going to start with something different. I went to a fellow Criminal Minds fan and asked them a couple of questions about their favorite show. I have Paola here, who has been watching Criminal Minds since it first came out in 2005, and I'm just going to ask her a couple of questions.
Question: Who is your favorite serial killer in the show? And why?
Answer: The serial killer with the split personality, where one personality didn't know that the other was killing people.
Question: What is your opinion on some of the fictional serial killers being based on real-life ones?
Answer: I think it is really interesting that some killers are based on real-life ones, and I think about all the research the writers have to do in order to make those specific episodes.
Question: Which one of the agents do you think has the biggest impact on solving the crimes?
Answer: I would have to go with Agents Reid and Garcia because of the great attributes they bring to the team.
The episode starts in Montana. A couple gets triggered while shopping at a gas station and decides to kill eight people in the store, and when leaving, they blow up the store. The team goes over the case and decides that there was no robbery or motive, and that spree killers often repeat themselves, so it’s bound to happen again soon. When they arrive at the crime scene, they learn that this couple has been killing for a little longer than they realized, and they are now up to fourteen victims. Agents Reid and Prentiss learn that the killers used guns and a crowbar to kill their victims. Meanwhile, Agents Morgan and Hotch are at the crime scene and they find rice all over the ground but no rice bags in the gas station, and this leads them to believe that they were just freshly married because throwing rice is a tradition to do after you get married, and this leads them to conclude that this killing spree is a part of their honeymoon. Agent Garcia finds thirty-one couples who have records and are freshly married, and she also finds out that they have been killed in gas stations before and took most of their anger out on the store clerk. The scene switches to the unsubs but the girl is alone in the car while her husband sits in an AA meeting to talk about his alcoholism, and while in the meeting the husband gets triggered by questions being asked in the group and he decides to kill everyone there, and while the wife is out in the car a man approaches her and triggers her enough to kill him, and after she kills him she joins her husband in the meeting and finishes killing everyone, and the couple flees into the night after another killing spree. The team arrives at the crime scene and guesses that the unsubs met at an AA meeting, and they think that they are really struggling with sobriety, and they are on their final steps, which are seven, eight, and nine, which are acknowledging your shortcomings, accepting responsibility, and making amends, but these unsubs are taking all these steps too literally. The scene switches to the unsub and the wife is trying to convince her husband that they need to go through with the next steps, and the watchers learn that the husband has trauma from his father and might be the reason because of all this, so the wife is implying that they go...
