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| “ | I loved him. That's why I did those things. After a while, he didn't even have to ask me to do it. I just did. | „ |
| ~ Daria Samsen rationalizing her crimes. |
Daria Samsen is the secondary antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Edge of Winter". She is a surviving victim and accomplice of serial killer Joe Bachner.
She was portrayed by Aasha Davis.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Daria was a medical student at Cornell University who lived with her sister Ellen and worked part-time as a waitress at a diner. There, she met Joe Bachner while serving him coffee, and he charmed her into accepting a ride in his car. Once she was in his power, he knocked her unconscious.
She woke up a prisoner in Bachner's house, where he raped and tortured her for months and conditioned her to become his accomplice. She helped him kidnap and torture women, and dispose of their bodies after he killed them, because she believed that he loved her.
"The Edge of Winter"[]
When Bachner's latest kidnapping victim, Carrie, tries to escape, Daria has a moment of clarity and tries to escape, as well. Bachner shoots and wounds Carrie, but Daria leaves her behind to keep running, until she is hit by a truck. She survives and is taken to a hospital, where she is questioned by Agent Derek Morgan of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), about Bachner. Traumatized by the accident and seeing Carrie get shot, Daria alternates between begging Carrie's forgiveness and screaming that "they" are coming to get her.
Eventually, Daria calms down and tells Morgan that Bachner and a man named Coby Peters kidnapped and tortured her and Carrie, as it is left ambiguous whether she is consciously lying or if she has convinced herself her story is true. She tells him the location of Bachner's house, and the BAU ultimately apprehends Bachner and saves Carrie.
After the BAU finds out that Coby Peters is in fact one of Bachner's clients and has been out of the country for months, Morgan becomes skeptical of Daria's account. He then notices that Daria is obsessively neat and organized, just like how he and his fellow BAU agents had profiled Bachner's submissive killing partner; he then realizes that she is that partner. He asks her about the location of an ice pick that Bachner used to torture his victims, something that only the killer would know. When she supplies him with its location, he confronts her with what she did. She becomes completely detached from reality, and Ellen has her institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital.
Months later, Morgan visits Daria in the hospital, ostensibly to prepare her to testify against Bachner. She sticks to her story of being Bachner's prisoner, but Morgan once again confronts her with the reality of what she did. He says that Bachner must have coerced her into being his accomplice, but she calmly admits that she helped Bachner willingly, to the point that he didn't even have to ask, because she believed that he loved her.
After she takes her medication, however, she relapses into her delusions, and asks Morgan if the BAU has found Bachner's accomplice. Morgan sadly replies that they have not, and then tells Ellen that Daria will have to be institutionalized for the rest of her life.
External links[]
- Daria Samsen on the Criminal Minds Wiki
