| “ | How could your wife have ever left someone like you? You're the first man I ever met who didn't let me down. | ” |
— Kane's last words to Hotch
| ||
Megan Kane was a misandristic poisoner, and serial-turned-spree killer who appeared in the Season Four episode of Criminal Minds, "Pleasure Is My Business".
Background[]
Kane was born to Andrew Kane, a wealthy business executive, and an unnamed mother. In 2000, her parents divorced when her father had a six-year affair with Katherine, a call girl, and also possibly due to his strangulation fetish. After he remarried someone else, Andrew refused to pay alimony or child support, despite the fact he had the financial means to do so. Afterward, she studied and traveled internationally. Though Kane blamed Katherine for ruining her parents' marriage, her life, and wanted her to go away, she eventually visited her as she was retiring. During the visit, Kane decided to buy Katherine's client list in order to prevent anyone else from betraying their families like what her father did to her and her mother. Eventually, she herself became a call girl using Katherine's list.
Pleasure Is My Business[]
At some point in her career, Kane snapped and started killing. Her first and second murders were largely covered up by the victims' lawyers and the staff of the hotels where the murders took place. Hotch and the BAU are eventually called in after a third victim, Joseph Fielding is found. Hotch arrives early on the scene, and coincidentally and unknowingly runs into Kane in the hotel elevator as she leaves the crime scene for another client, where she soon did her research on Hotch. Hotch realizes this later on when he sees her picture. Sometime later, Megan meets a man named Trent Rabner, who doesn't fit her victimology. Though she apparently has no intention of killing him, she changes her mind when Rabner says that his lawyers are confident that they have the FBI in their pocket. She holds him at gunpoint in a parked car and calls the BAU, requesting Hotch by name, which she overheard just as he was getting into the elevator.
Kane moments before killing Rabner.
When she gets him on the line, Kane explains that she can trust him, but he tells her that he disappointed her. She questions him about his family life, and he tells her that his wife left him and that he tries to see his son Jack when he can, and that he is nothing like her clients. Kane rants about how Hotch was corrupt and not doing his job. He responds that he only wants to find her and urges her to turn herself in. Kane turns him down, proclaims she won't let him cover the murders up, shoots and kills Rabner, and hangs up. Walking out of the parking lot, She calls a news station and confesses to shooting Rabner in order to keep the murder from staying private.
Then, Kane commences her endgame, confronting her father Andrew at his favorite hotel and confessing to the murders and telling him about what her victims had told her about their lives. When their conversation shifts to Andrew's own infidelity, he becomes enraged and briefly strangles her before regaining his composure. Andrew suggests that she turn herself in, adding that his lawyers will post bail and smuggle her out of the country. Kane is at first inclined to accept but hesitates when Andrew requests the client list, presumably in order to hide it. Remembering his violent reaction just moments before, Kane briefly contemplates killing her father, even taking her gun into her hands but looks down from the hotel balcony to see the BAU arrive. Instead, she hands Andrew the cell phone she kept the list on, and he leaves. Shortly before the BAU break into the room, she ingests poison through her drink. Hotch, who she developed a respect for thanks to his efforts to take care of Jack despite his divorce, sits down next to her and offers to help her expose the men on the list. She reveals that she removed the SIM card from her cell phone before giving it to her father. Giving it to Hotch, she tells him she believes him a better man than his divorce with how he respected her in return. She then requests his promise to stay with her before dying, and he obliges as she succumbs to the effects of the poison. News headlines heard at the end of the episode reveal that Hotch covertly exposed the list. Andrew later resigned, as his reputation was destroyed with his ties to his daughter publicly realized, and other men's reputations were presumably ruined as well.
Profile[]
The unsub is an organized, methodical white female who is between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. She knows how to be discreet (like all call girls), is capable of convincingly disguising herself, is paid $10,000-$15,000 per session with her clients, and is well-versed in the world of wealth and privilege (with the team later discerning she comes from a well-off family, after looking through the contents of her penthouse). Even though she is a call girl, she does not look like one, instead of passing off as a businesswoman or a coworker. Her business expenses have most likely been written off by her client's lawyers as losses, such as shoes, clothing, and jewelry. Her clients pay her in cash, but they may be also paying her in other ways such as taking care of her, giving her a new car and even paying her medical bills. She came from a broken home, and like most prostitutes, she grew up without a father figure, likely due to him abandoning his family, and she is now turning that rage towards clients who walk out on their families.
Prostitutes usually kill for money, drugs, due to post-traumatic stress disorder or due to being coerced into doing something they do not want to do, though the BAU later realized it was the personal lives of her victims that set the unsub off (if it was a sexual act or fetish that drove her to kill her clients she would have snapped long ago and would not be charging $10,000 for sex, as an interviewed madame put it). The unsub is paid ten-thousand a night not only for sex but for secrecy, as she knows all her clients' secrets, which they tell her during "pillow talk" (most call girls are taught to listen, as well as perform). Most of her clients are narcissistic, self-absorbed business-type men who had abandoned their families, similar to her father. Because of this, their complaints about how their wives are cheating them out of their money or how their children are nagging serves as the trigger that drives her to kill them.
The unsub wants her actions to be noticed and validated, hence her staging Joseph Fielding's body, the eyes of which she painted over (a "false signature" put there just for the BAU). If ignored, it is likely she will grow reckless and make a mistake. Being betrayed so many times over the course of her life caused her to be unable to know who to trust, which made her first murder feel all the better. Over time, she is unable to get as much satisfaction from killing and is beginning to devolve, the murders growing more personal, the M.O. and victimology changing, and her entire justification for who is worth killing and who is not is disintegrating, making it likely she could go on a spree and take out anyone she sees as a target.
Modus Operandi[]
With one exception, Kane targeted clients on Katherine's call list who were Caucasian men in their fifties who were just like her father: wealthy business executives who divorced their wives and refused to pay alimony or child support, even though they could afford it . She would poison her victims with tetramethylenedisulfotetramine (also called tetramine), a common rat poison she slipped into their drinks before having sex with them.
Her killing of Trent Rabner, however, was highly out of character for her; she fatally shot him with a .380 Sig Sauer P232 pistol in his car, even though he had stayed faithful to his wife (who died of cancer) and didn't have any children. She then called a news network anonymously so his murder wouldn't be covered up by his lawyers. Her main reason for killing Rabner was his statement about his lawyers having the FBI in their pocket and that the FBI would "play ball"; by saying this, he unknowingly suggested that her crimes would be covered up (in effect making her believe that the powers-that-be were trying to silence her). As such, she killed Rabner because of his arrogance and also possibly because he represented those who had protected and enabled people like her father.
Real-Life Comparisons[]
Kane appears to have been based on Aileen Wuornos, who was mentioned in the episode - Both were serial killers who were abused by a paternal relative (Kane's father and Wuornos' grandfather, respectively), targeted older men (at least some of whom were in their 50s), used a ruse of prostitution to lure their victims (with one exception in Kane's case), killed at least one victim by shooting (though all of Wuornos's victims were shot to death), and performed post-mortem actions on at least one victim (Kane put lipstick on one victim's eyelids, while Wuornos undressed some of her's). Also, Kane committing suicide by poisoning could be a slight nod to how Wuornos was executed by lethal injection.
She may have also been based on Nannie Doss - Both were serial killers and poisoners who hated their fathers, targeted men (though Doss mainly killed females), found most of their male victims through some sort of listing (Kane's were mainly found on a client list, while Doss found victims in lonely heart magazines), had sex with them prior to killing them, and did so with rat poison and other methods.
Known Victims[]
- 2009:
- February 20: Michael Stanton
- February 25: Hoyt Ashford
- February 26: Joseph Fielding (consensually tied to a chair before being killed; painted lipstick on his eyes post-mortem)
- February 27: Trent Rabner (shot in the head instead of being poisoned)
- February 28: Andrew Kane (her father; intended to kill but abandoned the plan when the BAU arrived)