‘Criminal Minds’ Recap: 8.19 – Pay It Forward (Spoilers)

Criminal Minds has headless bodies and body-less heads kept the BAU busy in a small Colorado town this week in Pay It Forward.

The Breakdown

This week’s episode started off in 1988 in a small town in Colorado that was named “City of the Future”, Bronson Springs.  The mayor, amongst a crowd of townspeople, helped lower a time capsule into the center town square to be opened 25 years in the future.  The spot where the capsule was lowered into the ground was sealed.

We were then taken to present day in that little town with a new mayor who was ready to open the time capsule.  With the major from 1988 and the townspeople watching, horror struck as one of the bags inside the capsule contained a human head.  The mayor panicked as she opened the bag, dropping the head which rolled off the table onto the ground.

The police were able to establish the identity of the person whose head was found in the time capsule.  It belonged to a young college boy named Wade Burke.  Shortly afterwards, a body without a head was found.  It was a local police officer named Charlie Figg.  At this point the BAU was brought in to help.  It was determined that the same device that decapitated the head in 1988 also decapitated the head of the body recently discovered.  Did they really have a killer who hibernated for 25 years between killings?  That is what the BAU needed to figure out.

Within a few days another headless body was found; this time is was a local newspaper editor/reporter named Wanda Sullivan.  Victim number four, fisherman Todd Backus, soon popped up.  Garcia was looking for a connection between the victims – any connection.  Soon it was discovered that each of the victims was viewed as an upstanding citizen; unfortunately each had something to hide that was anything but upstanding.  This was the connection.

Wade Burke was accused of rape, but the charges were never carried out because his family paid off the alleged victim’s family.  The police officer Charlie Figg was the respondent to the rape call.  Wanda Sullivan was the reporter who kept the incident out of the local paper.  Todd Backus was a witness to the alleged rape who received a job from Burke’s family to keep him quiet. 

In the midst of the investigation, we were shown the UnSub.  Tory Chapman, a husband hiding heads in his freezer.  But this husband had a wife who was suspicious that he was doing more in his “man cave” than he let on.  After the husband left one day, the wife took a look in the freezer and found a head.  Of course, Chapman walked in on her at that exact moment and dragged her to another room in his “man cave” and locked her inside.

The BAU discovered that Tory Chapman had been in the holding cell of the police station and overheard the cover up back in 1988.  AND the girl from the rape case was Chapman’s wife.  The BAU discovered this connection as well and headed to their house.

In the meantime Chapman took his wife in his vehicle and she then confessed that the rape accusation was made-up.  The young boy was actually her boyfriend and she made up the accusation after a fight.  Since Chapman had been trying to continue his payback to those involved in the cover up of the rape case, this infuriated him.  He told his wife that she was guiltier than the others.

He took her to the town hall where he had displayed the heads that he recently acquired in a showcase.  The BAU figured out where to find them and busted into town hall right as Chapman was ready to add his wife’s head to the display.  Chapman released his wife and surrendered.

The Analysis

Pay It Forward was another good episode of Criminal Minds and this one was all about the case.  The concept was good as Chapman was cutting off the heads of all of those involved in his wife’s alleged rape 25 years earlier. 

Unfortunately, there was nothing really special about this episode.  There was no exciting action scene, no real surprise, and no “wow” moment.  So, although I liked the episode and the story behind the case; I found this one to be an average Criminal Minds episode.  It was good, as they all are – but nothing really special.