To A Better Place
Someone is chopping up women and stuffing them in suitcases which he leaves in public places. It is the only way he can stop them from leaving him the way his mother left him when he was little. Ironically, this is how his mother left him when he was little, he just doesn't remember it.Tropes
- Call-Back: The BAU returns from their bureau-dictated vacation to find a connection between the victims before the killer takes another life.
- Offing the Offspring: It turns out the UnSub's mother did leave him: his grandmother struck her daughter over the head with a vodka bottle during an argument, inadvertently killing her.
- Parental Abandonment: The UnSub's motivation is that after his mother "left" him when he was little, and he was raised by his abusive grandmother (which probably was a contributing factor), he fears that all women will leave him, so he kills them first.
- Shout-Out:
- Emily spends her vacation binge-watching The Amazing Race.
- It turns out the UnSub's grandmother is dead and he's just hallucinating her egging him on to kill his dates before they can leave him.
