Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network

Show Name: Real Cases, Fictional Minds

Episode Title: Richard Ramirez, the Prince of Darkness

You are listening to Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host Jaylli Kushi.

In this episode of Real Cases, Fictional Minds, we discuss Season 5, Episode 23, titled “Our darkest hour,” and Season 6, Episode 1, titled “The Longest Night,” and how they mirror the life of Richard Ramirez.

This episode ends on a cliffhanger and continues into the next season. The BAU is called to Los Angeles to investigate a string of home invasions escalating into homicides. The city is in the middle of a heatwave and rolling blackouts. The killer uses darkness to get his advantage, and security systems go down, making it easy for him to get inside homes. It starts with him murdering a couple during a blackout, leaving their son alive to witness it. That's part of his MO, meaning method of operating. The BAU works with LAPD Detectives Matt Spicer and Adam Kurzbard and realizes that the killings are a part of a decades-long killing spree. The UnSub always strikes during blackouts and leaves a child witness behind. Garcia digs through crime data and finds similar murders years ago across multiple states, proving he was active long ago, stopped, and now returned. They focus on the first recorded blackout murders 25 years earlier. To stop him, local authorities cancel the remaining rolling blackouts, but it backfires, overriding the grid and causing a massive citywide outage. While digging into old cases, Garcia discovers that the UnSubs' first La victims were Joe and Sylvia Spicer, the parents of Detective Matt Spicer. Matt was the child left behind during that invasion. He has a sister, Kristin, and a daughter, Ellie. The BAU realizes the UnSub is tainting Spicer; he sees himself as the “creator” who made Spicer who he is. Now he's targeting Spicer's daughter and sister. When he learns this, Spicer returns to his childhood home with Agent Morgan, but things go horribly wrong. They find Kristin and Ellie tied up and the homeowners dead. The UnSub ambushes Morgon, knocks him out, and when he wakes up, he's tied with duct tape, forced to watch, just like the kids the UnSub leaves behind. Spicer enters and sees the UnSub pointing a gun at Ellie. Morgan pleads for him not to drop his weapon, but Spicer surrenders to protect his daughter. On his knees, he begs for their lives. The UnSub says, “Your sister grew up very pretty.” Spicer asks Morgan to promise Ellie will be okay. Morgan promises. The UnSub confirms it, then shoots Spicer point-blank. Kristin screams as the UnSub drags Ellie away, saying, “I don't usually take kids. This one's just special.” The episode ends with Morgan tied up, Spicer dead, Ellie abducted, and the rest of the BAU cut off by the blackout. The next episode, “The Longest Night,” picks up immediately. The BAE is still chasing the UnSub, who escaped from Spicer's childhood home with his daughter, Ellie. When the team arrives at the house, Morgan refuses medical help and focuses on finding the UNSUB. During her interview with the team, Kristin tells Prentiss the UnSub’s name, Billy Flynn, and that he drives an old, filthy RV. Garcia digs into his past and learns he's been killing for over 25 years. His mother, Nora Flynn, was a sex worker. As a kid, Billy hid in her closet and watched her with clients. When he was 13 years old, he murdered one of the men that his mother was working with. He was sent to juvenile detention and released at 18. His crimes ever since have mirrored his childhood trauma- leaving children alive to relive what he once saw. Flynn forces Ellie to help him with break-ins. When she tries to get help from a homeowner, warning him that she is being kidnapped, Flynn realizes she is trying to tip them off, and he kills the man for not letting her in. Ellie proves smart and...

Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network

Show Name: Real Cases, Fictional Minds

Episode Title: Episode 2: Dinner is Served

You are listening to Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host(s) Jaylli Kushi.

In this episode of Real Cases, Fictional Minds, we discuss: Criminal Minds Season 3 Episode 8, Lucky, and how it is based on the true crime killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

In this dark and disturbing episode, the BAU travels to Bridgewater, Florida, after being called in after the torso of a college student, Abby Kelton, is found in the Everglades, a swamp in Florida. The lower half of her body had been eaten by alligators, and there seems to be an inverted pentagram carved into her chest, along with her throat being slit. The BAU turns the body over to the coroner, and the autopsy reveals Abby was force-fed ten severed fingers. The forensics team determines the fingers belonged to 10 different women, none of whom were Abby, hinting at a signature or message from the unsub. This evidence leads the team to think the killer has been active for years. Since each finger belonged to a different woman, the forensics team was able to obtain fingerprints. Garcia, who is their technical analyst, used those fingerprints to identify the women as 10 missing sex workers from the area. This led the BAU to confirm that Ferrel had been killing for some time without being noticed. The number of fingers proved that the unsubs' crimes were not a recent occurrence. The team profiles the killer as a white male in his 30s, socially isolated, and likely previously institutionalized for mental health issues, and is no longer taking medications because of the brutality of his crimes. They called him an “adaptive satanist”, someone who twists religious passion to justify his twisted fantasies, and who's now deliberately trying to get noticed after years of flying under the radar. The unsub's actions suggested an obsession with false Satanic rituals, which are not based on real beliefs but delusions. Rossi, one of the seniors on the team, had expertise on Satanic cults, which was crucial to the case; he believes true ritualistic killings are rare and that the symbolism is often a cover for other violent urges. Agent Prentiss and Rossi go to examine a crime scene where another victim, Tracey Lambert, was abducted. Inside the public restroom stall, they discovered a small stack of books nearly piled on top of the toilet, which is super weird and has very odd placement and is completely out of place for a public bathroom, which immediately drew Rossi’s attention. He explains to Prentiss that this meticulous act of how he ordered the book is something that severely mentally ill individuals often do, because they have chaos in every aspect of their lives, and they are trained to create a sense of order, such as keeping their belongings clean and neat. Prentiss then calls Garcia to have her research local institutions, which directs the team's focus to a psychiatric facility in Bridgewater. Hotch and Reid, the other agents on the team, ask Garcia to cross-reference records of local institutions, looking for patients who had been committed for violent acts, especially with a history of arson. Why? Because the records they needed were believed to have been destroyed in a fire in Hazelwood Hospital for the Criminally Insane, which suffered a fire years earlier that destroyed most of its files. Hotch and Reid visited the burned-out hospital and found out that one staff member, Dr. Lorenz, they needed to talk to, had died in the fire while trying to save a patient's file. Luckily for the team, Dr. Lorenz’s salvaged notes and journal provided the information the team needed. Reid was able to read the doctor’s journal, which documented the institutionalization of a 7-year-old boy named Floyd Feylinn Ferell. The journal said he had been institutionalized for attacking

Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network

Show Name: Real Cases Fictional Minds

Episode Title: Episode 1: Jack The Ripper Returns

You are listening to Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host Jaylli Kushi.

In this episode of Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the Podcast, we discuss: Season 2 Episode 18 of Criminal Minds titled 'Jones' and the real case of the famous serial killer of London, Jack the Ripper.

In this episode of Criminal Minds, the BAU is called to New Orleans after a chilling letter arrives, signed by a supposed serial killer who had gone silent for over a year. Back in 2005, before Hurricane Katrina, 3 victims were murdered, their throats slit and organs carefully avoided while being mutilated, suggesting medical experience. Then suddenly… the murders stopped. But in 2007, another body appeared, and with it, a letter to Detective William LaMontagne, taunting the police, just like Jack the Ripper did in 1888. All four murders happened in a tight, 10-block radius, and the victims, all men between 22 and 35, were lured away at night, in public places, then killed with precision. The team quickly realizes this is a copycat killer, mimicking the infamous Ripper, down to the letters addressed to “Boss” and even promising to cut off an earlobe, just like the real Ripper did before his double murder. The profile for a possible unsub? Someone organized, charming, and calculated, but there's one twist. After linking a similar murder in Galveston, Texas, they realize the unsub is actually a woman, the only explanation for how she could lure men away from bars unnoticed. And she's not just a killer… She sees herself as a vigilante, sending a message to wipe away the entire race of men. It turns out, the unsub is Sarah Danlin, a woman who was raped in 1988 at a bar called Jones, and now she's hunting down men who remind her of her attackers. For her, each murder is revenge… justice… and reclaiming control. In the end, the case becomes more than just about a killer copying Jack the Ripper. It's about how trauma, identity, and rage can twist into something just terrifying. This episode demonstrates how Criminal Minds frequently draws inspiration from real-life horrors, such as the Jack the Ripper murders, and transforms them into modern psychological stories.

• Serial killer and New Orleans who killed 3 victims before Hurricane Katrina
• Taking place in 2007
• A year later, another victim came up and sent a letter to William Lamontagne claiming to be the killer from a year ago
• Killed 3 times then stopped for 18 months before another
• Ages ranging from 22 to 45
• All 4 murders occurred within a 10-block radius
• The unsub seems to have experience with the slaughter because he cut around all organs without severing any of them
• All 4 victims were found with their throats slit
• The unsub wants the police to think he is the modern-day Jack the Ripper lost in New Orleans
• “The murders were perpetrated in semi-public places after dark. Investigators taunted with letters addressed to ‘boss.’ The only difference is that the case was 100 years ago and the murders took place in London."
• The unsub profile was: agile, friendly, somewhere between 30-35, allure with charm and kill with rage. Believed to be murdering men to gain power. Organized, calculating, might be stalking the victims days before the murder. He is mimicking Jack the Ripper because he has lost his own identity, maybe through years of child abuse or a traumatic event, holds a powerful position at his job, and also might have medical training so considering doctors and EMT's.
• Their technical analysis found a similar case in...

Real Cases, Fictional Minds is a student-run Podcast that researches different episodes of Criminal Minds that were based on real-life crime cases. Join podcast host Jaylli Kushi as she breaks down many episodes of Criminal Minds and tells you which real-life cases they were based on. These episodes have been tweaked in their own way to focus more on the criminal profiling aspect of the show, so she will also compare the episodes to see how different they are from the real-life cases.