Miranda Jakar was a traumatized, prolific serial-turned-spree killer, family annihilator, and robber who appeared in Outfoxed.
Background
Miranda was born in Sarajevo, Socialist Yugoslavia, in 1982. She was orphaned at a young age and adopted by a family in Srebrenica. When she was still a child, the Yugoslav Wars broke out and Miranda was caught in the middle of the fighting, bearing witness to the Srebrenica massacre. She would later move around the world to Italy and England. The trauma she sustained combined with her psychotic tendencies caused her to to have psychological breaks that drove her to kill whenever she was reminded of the war, resulting in the deaths of a total of seven people, three of them children. In 2007 or 2008, she moved to Virginia in the U.S., where she got a job as an employee for the website PhotoBug. In 2008, she had another psychological break brought on by the sound of military planes practicing for the Langley air show, resulting in her killing of the Williams family. On November 15, 2009, airplanes practicing for Langley's fiftieth anniversary air show drove her to kill the Downey family.
Outfoxed
Three days after the latest familicide, the BAU arrive to aid in the investigation. They find out that a family annihilator that they had caught four years ago, Karl Arnold, a.k.a. "The Fox", had received several envelopes containing newspaper clippings about the murders along with a note reading: "Look at what I've done." The note was signed by "an admirer". Hotch and Prentiss travel to the Red Onion State Prison where Karl is incarcerated, to interview him and ask for advice regarding the current killings. The same day, the airplanes, crowds, and military vehicles drive Miranda to kill again. This gives the BAU several clues that help them. They realize that Karl's "admirer" had nothing to do with the murder spree and is a woman. At her residence, Jakar undergoes a psychotic break, hearing gunfire. She shouts in Croatian, waving her gun around. Turning to a mirror, she sees a hallucination of a young Serbian child. The image soothes her momentarily, but she shortly gets agitated and shouts as she shoots the mirror three times.
After narrowing down the suspect list and using Interpol's database, they learn that Miranda's fingerprints are found on three other crime scenes in different countries. Garcia eventually notices that all of the U.S. victims used the same website, PhotoBug, to communicate. When she applies the BAU's profile to the list of employees, she finds Miranda's name and history. When the team goes to her residence, they find the name of her next victims, the Youngs. They hurry over to their house, which Miranda had already infiltrated. When Morgan searches the rooms and finds the family being held captive, Miranda flies out of the doorway and tackles him to the ground. They wrestle over her sidearm, hers going off several times, but missing him. Noticing his sidearm lying out of his reach, Morgan overpowers her, and forces her own gun into her abdomen, firing once. After Morgan frees himself, he sees a now-dead Miranda with her blank eyes staring at him as blood is oozing from her nose and mouth. It is shortly revealed afterwards that Karl's "admirer" is actually George Foyet, who is actually Hotch's "admirer" and was using Karl to carry out his message to Hotch.
Profile
The unsub is a Caucasian woman aged in her late 20s, who is armed, suffering a major psychological break, and will not hesitate to kill again. Based on the burial sites of her victims resembling mass graves, she was most likely born into conflict. She committed her first murders in Croatia, where in between 1991 and 1995, locals fought a battle for independence and Serbian forces tried to ethnically cleanse over 40,000 Bosnian Muslims. Having lived in a city full of military families and vehicles, she is reenacting her life experiences onto the victims. The only mass graves reminiscent of the ones the unsub has created were found all over Bosnia after the war, but none of them rivaled the mass graves of Srebrenica, which was surrounded by Bosnian-Serb forces in 1995 and subsequently created the massacre. This traumatized her and caused her to suffer a very severe psychotic breakdown. She came to the U.S. a few years ago, is likely on foot, likely of eastern-European descent, and likely speaks little-to-no English, and will attempt to fight her way out if she is cornered.
Modus Operandi
Miranda killed whenever she had a psychological break after being reminded of the Srebrenica massacre in some way. Her first victims were apparently chosen at random, varying in age, race, and gender. They were all killed in different countries in eastern Europe, with the first victims (a woman and her baby) being stabbed to death with an unknown bladed instrument, while the rest were shot with an unspecified firearm.
When she killed in the U.S., she targeted Caucasian military families she found through her job, whose fathers were serving overseas. The families she killed in the U.S. always consisted of a mother, a older teenage daughter (who was roughly the same age as her when she witnessed the Srebrenica massacre), and at least one younger son. She usually waited at least a month so that the families had gotten used to the fathers not being there. She would then infiltrate the houses, take one of the children hostage to make the others compliant and shoot the mothers and son(s). Her signature was suffocating the teenage daughters using pillows from their rooms (though Lucy Downey was drowned in a swimming pool instead since she was using it while her family was being killed). After that, she took jewelry, the mother's wedding ring, and cash from the bodies and the house. Then, she would bury the bodies in a single shallow grave in the backyard (the graves being similar to the mass graves that were found in the wake of the Srebrenica massacre). She would also shoot a photograph specifically showing the fathers and leave her fingerprints on another part of it that specifically showed the daughter. She would print and keep photos of the families in her residence, with the faces of the fathers being drawn on or ripped off.
Known Victims
- November 11, 1998, Zagreb, Croatia: An unnamed woman and her eight-month-old child (both stabbed with an unknown instrument)
- September 3, 2000, Modena, Italy: An unnamed family (all shot)
- The unnamed mother
- Two unnamed children
- October 26, 2007, London, England: An unnamed couple (both were shot like the previous victims)
- November 22, 2008, Hampton, Virginia, U.S.: The Williams family
- Susan Williams (mother; also stole her wedding ring)
- Karen Williams (daughter)
- Kyle Williams (son)
- 2009, Hampton, Virginia, U.S.:
- November 15: The Downey family
- Laura Downey (mother; also stole her wedding ring)
- Lucy Downey (daughter; was drowned instead of being suffocated)
- Paul Downey (eldest son)
- Ronny Downey (youngest son)
- November 18:
- The Forester family
- Samantha Forester (mother; also stole her wedding ring)
- Dani Forester (daughter)
- Nick Forester (son)
- The standoff at the Young home:
- The Young family (held hostage and intended to kill)
- Jane Young (mother)
- Stacy Young (daughter)
- Billy Young (son)
- Derek Morgan (assaulted and attempted to shoot)
- The Young family (held hostage and intended to kill)
- The Forester family
- November 15: The Downey family
Notes
- Jakar is somewhat similar to Season Two spree killer Roy Woodridge in the sense that both started killing every time they encountered incidents that reminded them of military battles. For Jakar, she was triggered by the sound of airplanes, which reminded her of the Srebrenica massacre; for Woodridge, it was brought forth by the rumblings of construction, notably the implosion of buildings and the sound of jackhammers, that reminded him of enemy soldiers' gunfire.