| “ | You've got your perfect hair and your perfect face and your perfect life. Deep down... you and I are the same... | ” |
— Gutierrez
| ||
Desi Gutierrez was a misogynistic "wound collector"-type abductor and later attempted murderer who appeared in the Season Thirteen episode of Criminal Minds, "Dust and Bones".
Background[]
"You said you wished I was never born! That I was an ugly little girl, inside and out! Well, here I am, Mom. You were right. I'm a monster!"
Gutierrez before she changed her appearance.
Desi Gutierrez was born on June 26, 1987, to 15-year-old Lara Gutierrez. Her childhood was an unhappy one as Lara proved to be a poor mother and was emotionally abusive towards her young daughter, bombarding her with devastating statements on a regular basis. She told her daughter that she was "an ugly little girl" and that she wished that Gutierrez had never been born. Both of these claims had a lasting impact on her. She would also lock Gutierrez in the shed in their backyard as punishment almost daily and leave her in the cramped, hot space for long periods of time. The shed was infested with snakes, which initially terrified her. As the hours went by, the snakes would surround Gutierrez, but they never bit her, which she saw as curiosity, attention, and affection she had never received before. This caused her to develop a deep emotional connection and obsession with the species. Eventually, Gutierrez reported the abuse which led to an investigation by Child Protective Services and Lara was ordered to take parenting classes as a result.
On September 2, 1996, Lara gave birth to a second daughter, Tina. By comparison, Tina received ideal parenting from their mother and it was clear that Lara preferred her younger daughter to her elder one. While her mother's poor treatment of her presumably ended, by then, Gutierrez had developed a deep-seeded hatred of Lara and herself as well as sadistic tendencies. She also resented her younger sister for being "the perfect one" and being spared their mother's disdain. As a teenager, Gutierrez committed petty offenses that resulted in her spending time in juvenile detention. At some point, she may have developed a substance abuse problem[1] and became dependent on Tina for money. By 2014, her family kicked Gutierrez out, after which she sought out a local tattoo artist named Ryan Kash, claiming that she liked his work. He hired her as an artist and taught her about scarification and tongue splitting, two popular forms of body modification that he specialized in. Because of her self-loathing and obsession with snakes, Gutierrez went to great lengths to change her appearance in order to erase any trace of Lara from her life. This included wearing reptilian contact lenses, getting numerous tattoos and piercings and even incorporating hissing sounds into her speech. Gutierrez completed her serpent persona by splitting her own tongue so it was forked like a snake's and carved several wounds on her left forearm in the shape of snake scales.
In 2016, Gutierrez left to open her own tattoo parlor. Out of guilt for her past actions, Lara bought Gutierrez a property handled by her company and gave her money to start up the business. Gutierrez also started amassing a collection of pet snakes in the shop, including a boa constrictor. However, the venture ultimately fell through for unknown reasons and the shop, Dust & Bones, never opened. Two weeks prior to the episode, a local newspaper named Lara "Austin Real Estate Person of the Year". In a lengthy interview, Lara spoke about her rise to success and her pride in her daughter Tina but made no mention of her eldest daughter at all. Enraged by this and Lara's popularity from the article, Gutierrez snapped and abducted an accountant named Hannah Accord. Gutierrez disfigured Accord's face before leaving her in her car outside a property being sold by Lara, hoping her mother would take notice of what she had done.
Dust and Bones[]
A few days after attacking Accord, Gutierrez abducts another woman named Liz Meyer and disfigures her face in the same way. After leaving Meyer outside another of Lara's properties, she returns to the tattoo shop and is first seen cleaning the instruments she uses on her victims. She then picks up a mouse from a container and is about to feed it to one of her snakes as the camera focuses on her snake-lensed eye. She waits for her next victim, Tricia Smoots, a nurse, to enter her car and get bitten by the snake Gutierrez left inside earlier. After Smoots is subdued, Gutierrez brings her back to the tattoo shop, where Smoots regains consciousness. Gutierrez grips her tongue with a forceps while using a scalpel to slice it into a forked tongue before disfiguring her face and leaving her outside a residential area where Lara was in charge of selling a house. Smoots later indicates to Reid and JJ that her assailant also had a forked tongue and whispered: "We are now the same" during the torture. Gutierrez is later seen tattooing over her self-inflicted injuries, drawing blood. She runs her gloved fingers through the blood and licks them. She then pets her boa, gently wrapping its body around her neck.
Later, Gutierrez meets Tina in a parking lot, who comments on her changed appearance. Gutierrez tells her that she needs their mother to come with her, to which her sister replies that she can't give her any more money. Gutierrez denies wanting money and when Tina tells her that she has to study for finals, Gutierrez replies "It has to be you. She doesn't want anything to do with me. She'll come if it's you", intending to use Tina to lure Lara to her. She grabs Tina by the wrist, but she breaks free and starts walking back to her car. Gutierrez follows and pushes Tina forward, hitting her head off the car roof, knocking her unconscious. Gutierrez then places Tina in the car and uses her phone to call Lara and tells her to come to Dust & Bones. Back at the shop, as she restrains Tina, Gutierrez asks her if their mother ever sent her "out back for punishment", telling her about the abuse and her connection with snakes. She then asks Tina if she is afraid of her, which she denies. Gutierrez tells her sister that she is a bad liar and that deep down, they are both the same before cutting Tina's arm with a scalpel. Then, Lara enters the room, shocked by her daughter's actions and appearance. As she approaches them, Gutierrez holds the scalpel to Tina's face, forcing Lara to comply and taking her captive. Restraining her in a chair, Gutierrez asks her mother what she thought of "her work". Lara answers that she knows that she didn't do things right and tried to make it up to her by giving her money and the tattoo shop. Gutierrez furiously reminds Lara of what she said when she was a child. She says that Lara was right about her being a monster, which Lara denies. Gutierrez angrily states that Lara put her in the shed every day despite knowing there were snakes inside as she puts on her snake-handling gloves. Taking a snake in her hands, Gutierrez approaches Tina and adds that she was terrified and alone. She tells them that if Tina is like her; if she is worthy and honest, then she won't be bitten while smirking sadistically. Releasing the snake, Gutierrez watches as it bites Tina's neck, much to Lara's dismay.
As the snake's venom has its effect on Tina, Gutierrez sits in front of Lara. She claims that they "have work to do" because, while Gutierrez may be a monster, so is Lara. As she takes the scalpel in her hands, Lara tells her that she is sorry. She tells her mother to say it again. Lara apologizes again, adding that Gutierrez was a child and that she was selfish and angry. She tells her daughter that she would give anything to go back and treat her better. With the forceps, Gutierrez says that there is no going back before she tells Lara to open her mouth. Just as she is about to split Lara's tongue, JJ and Alvez break into the room, having identified Gutierrez as the unsub, and hold her at gunpoint as she holds the scalpel to Lara. They tell her to put it down and that they know about what Lara did. An emotional Gutierrez responds that she was scared and tried to erase Lara from her life, but couldn't stand to see people think she was the perfect mother. Alvez tells her that if she surrenders, then everyone will know what she's done and Lara will have to live with that. Despite JJ's warning, Gutierrez sheds a single tear before pushing her snake habitat off the table, releasing the snakes inside and running out of the room. She escapes through the back door, only to be confronted by Simmons, who tells her to get on her knees. After a moment of hesitation, Gutierrez instead tightens her grip on the scalpel. Simmons orders her to drop the blade, but Desi charges at him, forcing Simmons to shoot her twice in the chest, killing her instantly.
Modus Operandi[]
"We are now the same."
The women attacked by Gutierrez were primarily victims of opportunity. She targeted women with successful careers in their 30s who were well-liked by friends and colleagues and, like Lara, held in high esteem. She would locate women who left their car windows slightly open due to the high temperatures in Texas during the day. When she found a car with a window open wide enough, she would slip an eastern brown snake she owned through the gap and lie in wait for the women to return to their cars. When the women entered their cars, the snake would bite them when it was provoked by their screams. Despite its status as the second most deadliest snake in the world, because a bite from the eastern brown snake produces a low amount of venom, Gutierrez was almost guaranteed that the bite would only incapacitate the victims and not kill them, allowing her to abduct them with ease. She would then use the victims' own cars to transport them back to her tattoo shop. There, she would restrain them until they woke up then use a scalpel to disfigure their faces, slicing away the symbolic masks they wore to hide their true personalities.
Afterward, Gutierrez would again use their cars to transport and leave them at disposition sites[2] next to properties handled by Lara as a way of getting her attention and making her mother notice her as she had dismissed her in the interview. As Gutierrez grew in confidence, she inflicted more serious injuries on her victims. She would leave a white mask on the passenger seat to represent exposing the women's true faces. In the case of Tricia Smoots, Gutierrez not only sliced her face, but also split her tongue in two like she had with her own and whispered "We are now the same" afterward. However, her abduction of her sister Tina was far less organized as she hadn't intended, but was forced to do so when Tina refused to come with her willingly. She subdued Tina by bashing her head into the roof of her car, rendering her unconscious, and then used the vehicle to bring her back to the shop to lure Lara to her. There, Gutierrez restrained Tina and briefly used a scalpel to torture her by cutting her arm. After she took Lara captive, Gutierrez allowed a snake to bite Tina and intended to disfigure her at a later stage like the previous victims. She intended to disfigure Lara in the same manner and attempted to split her tongue, but was interrupted by the arrival of the BAU. When she was cornered by JJ and Alvez, Gutierrez destroyed a snake habitat she kept, releasing them so they would attack the two agents and give her time to escape. When she tried to kill Simmons, Gutierrez attempted to stab him using the same scalpel she used to torture Tina.
Profile[]
The unsub is using his victims to send a message. There is an element of spectacle to these crimes, so the victims serve more as statements than they do to surrogates. The removal of the first dermal layer of tissue is similar to a technique used in scarification, which, like tongue splitting, is a popular form of body modification. The slicing of the tongue could simply be an escalation but, according to the doctors, the cuts are clean with no signs of hesitation so this was not the unsub's first time doing this. This suggests the unsub is, at the very least, familiar with or part of the body modification community. Those who engage in various forms of modification often do so with the intent to reveal an aspect of themselves that they feel has been suppressed. The masks he was leaving behind with each victim is the unsub's way of exposing them for who they really are and peeling away they hide behind. Historically, snakes have been depicted as not just evil, but deceitful. For example, the snake in the Garden of Eden is a liar. The unsub's anger could be directed at what he perceives to be hypocrisy or duplicity. While the women he has targeted are, by all accounts, model citizens, they may represent a specific woman in his life he believes has two faces; a public and a private persona that are at odds with each other. The search for suspects should start with tattoo and body modification artists in Austin and it's likely serpent imagery will play a part in his work.
After Lara was identified as the common link between the crimes, the BAU theorized what kind of stressors would give rise to this kind of offender. People who alter their faces, whether through surgery or alternative means like scarification or tongue splitting, are often battling issues of self-esteem and self-worth and, in fact, sometimes there's even an underlying compulsion to destroy a piece of them that's tied to an early emotional trauma. If Lara is indeed the woman at the center of this threat, then it's likely she's the one the unsub views as wearing a mask; that she's a mother and a successful real estate agent, but perhaps, underneath all of that, there is a side of her that the rest of the world doesn't see. It was then realized that the profile made sense if the unsub was a woman. Female offenders are more likely to attack the physical appearances or the looks of their victims. The venom from the snake bites essentially incapacitated the victims, making them easier to maneuver, especially for somebody of a smaller physical stature. Also, there have been no signs of sexual assault, which is odd given the level of rage on display. The unsub may be displaying a kind of internalized misogyny. A form of self-hatred, this is someone lashing out, destroying the faces of their victims because they can't stand their own. After Desi was identified as the unsub, Reid mentioned that since she had been leaving her victims on her mother's doorstep, it stood to reason that one of Lara's properties would play a part in her endgame.
Real-Life Comparison[]
Gutierrez appears to be partly inspired by Edmund Kemper - Both were victims of abuse by their mothers (which included verbal harassment and locking them in enclosed spaces with animals), had a sister regarded by their mothers as "the good one", spent time in juvenile detention in their youths, both targeted women as surrogates for their mothers, abducted them in cars (though Kemper used his own car, while Gutierrez jacked the cars of her victims), transported them to secondary locations to mutilate them, left their victims to be found in open locations, and attempted to kill their respective mothers and another female victim (Gutierrez's sister and Kemper's mother's friend) at the ends of their sprees (though only Kemper succeeded).
Known Victims[]
- 2017: Austin, Texas: Abducted and non-fatally tortured the following three:
- November 3: Hannah Accord
- November 7: Liz Meyer
- November 7-8: Tricia Smoots (also split her tongue; did not leave a mask in her car)
- November 8:
- Tina Gutierrez (her sister; assaulted, abducted, held captive, tortured by cutting, briefly held at knifepoint, bitten by a snake and intended to disfigure and kill; was rescued and cured)
- Lara Gutierrez (her mother; also held captive, intended to split her tongue and kill her; later held at knifepoint; was rescued)
- Jennifer Jareau and Luke Alvez (attempted; released snakes to attack them)
- Matthew Simmons (attempted to kill with a scalpel)
Notes[]
- Desi seems to have been inspired by at least four unsubs in the show's past:
- Season Three
- Max Poole ("About Face") - Both were abductors who operated in Texas, left almost identical masks at their crime scenes, and were shot dead by a BAU member.
- Season Seven
- Thomas Yates ("Profiling 101" and "Profiling 202") - Both were abductors born to then-teenage mothers, suffered emotional abuse at the hands of a maternal figure and targeted female victims exclusively (although Yates did kill one male victim in his youth). Both also committed suicide by cop with a BAU agent during an attempt to kill a final victim. Yates also appeared in Season Twelve.
- Season Eight
- Mark Jackson ("The Gathering") - Both were misogynists who have a deep hatred for their mothers, and both crimes involve tongues (Gutierrez mutilated the tongues, while Jackson would cut out the tongues of his victims).
- Season Nine
- Joe Bachner ("The Edge of Winter") - Both were abductors who were abused by a female relative who forced them in sheds that contained animals capable of harming people (although in Gutierrez's case, the snakes did not harm her, while the bees in Bachner's case actually did harm him).
- Season Three