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| “ | I upped the volts on the charger. I think that helped. | „ |
| ~ Colby helping his father torture and murder a woman. |
Colby Bachner is the secondary antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Remembrance of Things Past". He is the son and submissive killing partner of serial killer Lee Mullens who helps his father kidnap, torture, and murder women.
He was portrayed by Josh Braaten.
Early life[]
Colby was the son of Lee Mullens, a serial killer known as "The Butcher", and his wife Karen Bachner, who did not know what her husband had done. In 1982, Karen discovered a series of audio recordings Mullens had made of himself raping, torturing, and killing his victims, all while forcing them to say that they enjoyed what he was doing to them. Horrified, Karen tried to run from Mullens, but he caught her and put a burlap sack over her head, as he did with his victims before he began torturing them. Five-year-old Colby, who did not know that the strange woman with a bag on her head was his mother, knocked her down in the belief that he was helping his father. Mullens then raped, tortured, and murdered her right in front of Colby, and afterward told the boy that his mother had abandoned them.
By 1993, Mullens had begun showing signs of Alzheimer's Disease and could no longer troll for victims himself, instead forcing Colby to kidnap them and bring them back to their home so Mullens could rape, torture, and kill them. Colby, who like his father worked as an electrician, also assisted in the torture by hooking the victims up to car batteries and subjecting them to painful electrical shocks. He did all of this without question, having been brainwashed by his father to believe that it was his duty as a loving son to help him commit murder. He also takes Mullens' frequent verbal and physical abuse without complaint and had no life outside of being his father's accomplice and whipping boy.
In "Remembrance of Things Past"[]
When Mullens' Alzheimer's worsens, Colby decides to help him begin a new wave of murders similar to the ones he committed as "The Butcher" in order to help him preserve what memories he has left.
To that end, he and Mullens stake out a public park until Mullens sees a woman he would like to kill named Heather Langley. Colby approaches Langley, says that his father has just had a heart attack, and begs her to help get him to a hospital. When she obliges and follows Colby to his van, he and Mullens blitz attack her from behind and kidnap her. They take her into the basement of their house, where Colby tortures her with electrical shocks while Mullens rapes and murders her, all while forcing her to say that she liked it. They then dump her body in the same location that Mullens had left his last victim, Susan Cole.
Mullens complains to Colby that he did not enjoy killing Langley as much as he had his previous victims, and then blames him for "screwing up" the murder. He demands that they go looking for another victim, and Colby obediently shows him photographs of women in the neighborhood that he had spied on as potential victims. Mullens mentions their neighbor Anna as a possible victim, but Colby, who has a crush on her, talks him out of it, saying that she could too easily be connected to them. Mullens then decides to go after a woman named Shelley. They kidnap and torture her, but she refuses to say that she enjoys it. Enraged, Mullens stabs her to death and orders Colby to bury the body, all while screaming that they wouldn't have had a problem if they had gone after Anna.
The next day, Mullens forgets about killing Shelley and tells Colby to bring him another victim, believing that he has not killed anyone in three weeks. When Colby shows him Shelley's body, Mullens flies into a rage, screaming that the murder was "too sloppy", and goes into his room to sulk. Desperate to win back his father's approval, Colby promises him that they can kill Anna next.
Meanwhile, Supervisory Agent David Rossi of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, who had investigated the original murders, works with the rest of the BAU team to solve Langley's murder. At first, they profile the killers as copycats of "The Butcher", but they eventually realize that "The Butcher" himself is the dominant killing partner, as the murders resemble the previous killings exactly, including details that were never released to the media. They deduce that the submissive partner is a close male relative, most likely a son, and that the dominant partner eliminated any female influence in his son's life to make sure that the boy would grow up to hate women as much as he did. Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia cross-references the suspects in Rossi's original investigation with records of their biological children and sudden, violent deaths of female partners, and finds Mullens, whom Rossi had questioned ye4ars earlier, and Colby.
Colby kidnaps Anna from her workplace and brings her back to his and Mullens' house, only to find the BAU team in the midst of arresting his father, who seems oblivious to what is going on. He panics and drives away, taking Anna to an abandoned psychiatric hospital where Mullens had once performed electrical work. He straps Anna to a table, but he is so agitated by her pleas for mercy that he cannot bring himself to torture her.
At that moment, the BAU team bursts in, having found out where Colby was going after talking to Mullens in a rare moment of lucidity. Rossi tells Colby to think back to the last time he saw his mother, and Colby suddenly realizes that he saw Mullens kill her and unwittingly helped him do it. Stricken with horror and remorse, Colby slumps against a wall and cries inconsolably while Rossi arrests him and takes Anna to safety. He and his father are then imprisoned.
External links[]
- Colby Bachner on the Criminal Minds Wiki
