Change My Mind ~ Criminal Minds (Aaron Hotchner x OC)

108.0: Negatives Turn Into Positives

A/N: Continuation of 8x10 Perennials 

"If you want truly to understand something, try to change it."
― Kurt Lewin

Crystal looked up when Reid, JJ, and Blake walked over to them. Reid was still on the phone with Garcia, "Garcia's having trouble narrowing it down to our unsub." Reid explained and JJ sighed, "The unsub told Brianna that there was no more important day in one's life than the day you were born, it has to somehow be part of his methodology. There's something important to him when it comes to birthdays."

"How about the birthdays of Russell Smith's earlier victims, the 8 prostitutes?" Blake offered and Reid nodded, "You could be right, anniversary kills. Selecting victims who share the same birthdays as those who went before." Crystal hummed at this logic and noticed Hotch was lost in thought, "Hotch?" He snapped out of his thoughts and she tilted her head, "What's up?" He had a file in his hands and reopened it, "The new wound on the unsub's jaw, it wasn't there when he spoke to the neighbor in Gulfport and there's no evidence that any of the victims put up resistance against him."

JJ shrugged, "Maybe it was an accident, accidents do happen." Reid looked over at her, "Or it was an interim victim we don't know about yet who fought back." Crystal finally understood what Hotch was getting at, "You think he did the scar to himself to make him look like the actual Russell Smith." Hotch nodded and looked at the phone with Garcia still on the line, "Garcia, can you find a file photo of Russell Smith?"

"On it and- uh oh, I'm sending you guys these pictures to your monitors right now."

Mugshots of Russell Smith popped up and the team saw what she meant, there was a scar on his face just like the one their unsub had. "Our unsub's wound was self-inflected." Reid stated and Hotch walked closer towards the screen, "He's not just trying to emulate Russell Smith, he's trying to turn himself into him." Crystal crossed her arms, "Then we're no longer just profiling our unsub, we need to profile Russell Smith and look at how his killings went as well. Maybe we'll see some clues."

Hotch looked back at them, "We're ready to give the profile."

___

"You've all been given copies of the sketch of the suspect, they need to be distributed to all law enforcement officials in the tri-state area." Hotch instructed to the officers in front of them and JJ looked over at them, "All of the unsubs kills so far have been in different cities and different states." Rossi gave a nod before continuing, "Because of this, we won't have to worry about flushing him out. He's operating in the open with confidence that's bordering on arrogance."

Morgan motioned the the board with pictures of the maggots, "We don't know why, but he's been leaving large amounts of insects behind at his crime scenes." Rossi looked over at the board too, "Now normally, that would be a forensic countermeasure, artificially accelerating infestation of the corpse." Blake crossed her arms, "Or symbolically to degrade and humiliate the victim."

"But these larvae are serving some other purpose to the unsub, it's like an obsession. They're an essential component to his kills." Hotch explained and Reid cleared his throat, "We believe he's slowly turning himself into the image of Russell Smith, an Alabama serial killer who's been dead for nearly 25 years. He recently cut himself on the jaw to replicate a similar scar that Smith had." Crystal sipped her lemonade, "And we believe he's become so obsessed with trying to become a copycat that this has driven him to go to extreme lengths to replicate these murders to the point that he even speaks to witnesses on the days he commits the murders."

JJ motioned to the police sketch, "And he may continue to alter his appearance to look more and more like Russell Smith, Russell had several distinctive scorpion tattoos. Parlors in the region should be notified to be on the lookout for customers requesting these tattoos." Reid placed both his hands in his pants pockets, "Curiously, the unsub seems to know precisely who he's looking for, but he refers to his victims by different names."