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Maya! Maya! I love you!
Connor as he is arrested by SWAT

Phillip Connor is an abductor, hacker, stalker, and proxy killer-turned-budding serial killer who appeared in the Season Eight episode of Criminal Minds, "#6".

Background[]

As a child, Connor displayed signs of severe piquerism and began cutting himself. His mother, Agatha, presumably out of shame and embarrassment, referred to it as a "disease." In his adult years, Connor acquired computer skills from his job as a freelance computer specialist and also began seeing a woman named Maya, who was already married at the time. The two eventually married, but their marriage soon deteriorated after he began stalking her and became domineering towards her. Maya eventually couldn't stand it anymore and she and Connor separated, although they were not officially divorced. This deterioration in his marriage would later cause him to become enraged and start killing, targeting couples that he was jealous of and forcing them to stab each other at a foreclosed microprocessor plant that he had managed to acquire.

#6[]

After claiming two sets of victims, Connor set his sights on Mary Hammond, who reminded him of Maya. After abducting her, he pretends to be another abduction victim and gains her trust, all the while psychologically torturing her with video recordings of himself. Connor then murders her and authenticates himself by screaming in revulsion at the recording. Simultaneous to that, the BAU is called in to investigate the couple killings. Connor then targets Emma Churchill, abducting her in her car and taking her to his facility. Gaining her trust, he manipulates her into stabbing him using a recording of himself that threatens Churchill's life. Connor then tells her about Maya and asks about her husband; when she gives him an answer, he tells her that she is doing it for her husband and then gets her to stab him again. Later, Churchill patches him up, and he tells her of a secret escape route located in her room.

When Churchill eventually hears footsteps, likely another of Connor's recordings, she takes her chance and flees through a tunnel underneath her bed. Getting into a hallway, she sprints toward a door, only to be attacked by a masked Connor and taken back into her room. He then stabs himself and, when she awakens, he tells her that he can't take the pain anymore and asks her to kill him. However, Churchill worries what the "killer" will do to her when he dies, to which Connor suggests that he kills her and then himself. However, the BAU, having deduced Connor as the unsub and found his facility, break into the building. Churchill overhears them and tries calling out for help, only for Connor to hold her at knifepoint. The BAU and SWAT agents confront him, and Blake pleads to Connor to surrender for Maya's sake. She then allows Maya, whom the BAU requested to come with them, and she convinces Connor to release Churchill. He does so, but when Maya bitterly states that she doesn't want to look at him again and is walked out, a shocked and horrified Connor starts professing his love to her as he is arrested.

About one week later, someone kills the BAU Section Chief Erin Strauss in a style that combines the M.O.'s of Connor and a poisoner the BAU captured. However, the BAU realized that the aspects of Connor's M.O. used in the copycat murder were actually based on a false report Strauss made of the case, apparently as a method to trick the killer.

Modus Operandi[]

822 -6

Connor's masked persona.

Connor initially targeted married Caucasian couples from Grosse Point, presumably as surrogates for Maya and her first husband, that he would find at a jogging track (the same location he stalked Maya at). He would hack into the cars' locking systems so he could enter them and lie in wait for the couples when they got inside. He would also disable the cars' GPS software to ensure the authorities would not find where he was keeping his victims captive. After abducting them (always during a regular date night they took), he would take them into the microprocessor plant. There, he would hold them captive in rooms with beds inside for them to sit and sleep on, but keep them separated by a glass door that needed to be buzzed open with a remote. They were held captive for one week, during which he would make them stab and cut each other in the torso and back nearly 50 times with a knife, watching and recording them with surveillance monitors (the video feed being sent to computers in another room in the plant where he watched them), until they finally died. Afterward, he left behind the couples' bodies in the trunks of their own cars in Detroit.

He then began targeting lone women, presumably using them as surrogates for Maya, as he evolved and, by pretending to be a victim himself, gained their trust. Using video recordings of himself (in which he altered his voice so that these victims would not be able to figure out that it was really him) that he played with a hidden remote, issuing orders whilst wearing a mask, he would manipulate the women into stabbing him repeatedly in the stomach with a knife. Connor would then kill the women by fatally stabbing them once. He would then leave behind their bodies in the trunks of their cars in Detroit, just as he did with the couples.

Profile[]

Based on the ages of the victims, the unsub is probably a 30-to 40-year-old white male from Grosse Point. Up until he killed Mary Hammond, he has been an equal-opportunity, anger-retaliatory sadist. He hates couples, most likely because his own marriage failed in a humiliating way and his wife may have left him for a man she may be engaged or married to. However, a major shift happened with Mary Hammond's abduction: he was unable to abduct the husband, but he needed someone to cut her, so his M.O. was forced to evolve. He has probably abducted a sixth victim, a man who reminded him of his own failed marriage, whom he has been keeping alive so that he can repeat the process with Emma Churchill. The sixth man could be a surrogate for the ex-wife's new husband or could actually be the new husband. Even if the man was forced to kill Mary Hammond, he may find it easier to cross that line with Emma Churchill. He needs space and privacy to hold his victims captive as well as infrastructure and something he could convert.

It was later realized that the sixth man, Connor, was the actual unsub, who was instead living an evolved fantasy. While he was initially profiled as a sadist, that was proven untrue when he abducted Mary Hammond. He abducted his female victims, not because of sex, but only because they validate his obsessive-compulsive disorder while being held captive, turning it into a shared bonding experience. This allowed him to play two roles: the unsub who tortures, and the sympathetic prisoner.

Known Victims[]

Victims by Proxy[]

The following were abducted and forced to kill each other by Connor

  • 2013:
    • April 13-20: Brian and Melissa Cain (were forced to stab and cut each other a total of 50 times)
    • April 28-May 5: Paul and Elizabeth Garrett (were forced to stab and cut each other a total of 52 times)
      • Paul Garrett (was killed instantly)
      • Elizabeth Garrett (survived, but later died of subsequent exsanguination)

Personal Victims[]

  • Unspecified date: Maya Connor (his wife; stalked only)
  • 2013:
    • May 9-12: Mary Hammond (tortured and fatally stabbed once in the chest)
    • May 12-13: Emma Churchill (abducted, tortured, assaulted, and held at knifepoint; was rescued)

Notes[]

  • Adam J. Harrington, the actor who portrays Connor, previously portrayed Ronald Basderic, a budding serial killer on the crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
  • In the season finale, "The Replicator", Garcia referred to Connor as "The Cutter", which was presumably a general reference to his tendency of cutting himself, not a nickname.
  • The scenario of Connor having couples kill one another seems to be loosely based on the premise of an episode of the crime drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent, in which a serial killer indiscriminately abducts couples and randomly chooses one partner to shoot and kill the other, otherwise die by their own hand. If the chosen partner agreed to do so, out of fear of being murdered, they would be released, a scenario that applied to all but one of the targeted couples.

Appearances[]

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