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| “ | The soil will heal you. | „ |
| ~ Emma Kerrigan as she buries her daughter alive. |
Emma Kerrigan is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Good Earth". She is a delusional, hypochondriac serial killer who kidnaps and murders physically healthy men in order to turn them into fertilizer that she believes will cure the diseases she suffers from.
She was portrayed by Anne Dudek, who also portrayed Dawn Lin in NCIS: New Orleans, Dr. Amber Volakis in House MD, and Danielle McCaskin in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Emma suffered from the skin disease scleroderma, and was also a severe hypochondriac who was convinced that all food that she did not grow herself was poisonous. She and her husband, John, had a daughter, Lexy, and owned a large farm on which Emma grew fruits and vegetables. When John was killed in a car accident, she had his body cremated and scattered his ashes on her tomato garden.
John's death worsened her hypochondria to the point that she began hallucinating and harboring delusional thoughts about her scleroderma, which had healed years earlier. She began seeing red blotches on her skin that were not actually there, and became convinced that only John's ashes, spread on her skin, could heal her. She went to the hospital repeatedly to ask for treatment, only to be sent away, with doctors telling her to seek counseling.
Upon running out of John's ashes, Emma decided to start killing and cremating physically fit men and using their ashes to "cure" her imaginary illness.
"The Good Earth"[]
Emma kidnaps four men, Terry Rodgers, Gary Ellard, Barry Deaver, and Paul Hicks, by drugging them with overdoses of melatonin, and then keeps them bound and gagged under her house. Upon realizing that Rodgers has cancer, however, she kills him and dumps the body, reasoning that his cancerous ashes would not help her get better. She also kills Deaver and turns his body into fertilizer for her tomato garden.
Desperate to heal her imaginary lesions, she kidnaps a pregnant woman, Cheryl Winslow, and performs a crude C-section so she can take the placenta, which she then consumes. After leaving Winslow and her baby at a nearby hospital, she looks in a mirror and sees that her scleroderma has "healed", which is part of her delusion. She tries, unsuccessfully, to make Lexie eat the placenta, only to hallucinate that her daughter's face is covered in scleroderma lesions. She drugs Lexie with melatonin, and then buries her up to her neck in soil mixed witrh her victim's ashes, convinced it will "cure" her.
Meanwhile, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) investigates the murders, at first believing that the killer is a woman who had lost her family, and is targeting men based on their reproductive fitness so she can replace the children she lost. After learning of Winslow's assault and that Rodgers had been forced to consume biosolids, however, Agent Spencer Reid theorizes that she is targeting her victims so she eat the parts of them she believes will makes her healthier and turn the rest into fertilizer. The BAU revises the profile to include the killer's severe hypochondria.
Reasoning that melatonin could be easily mixed into a health drink sold at a farmer's market, the BAU investigates such businesses in the area, and finds that there is a health food co-op and farmer's market near where Rodgers was last seen. Technical analyst Penelope Garcia researches the co-op's employees, and finds out that Kerrigan had recently lost her husband, suffered from scleroderma, made several unneeded hospital visits, and owned an isolated farm, fitting the profile perfectly.
When the BAU arrives at Kerrigan's farm, they find her about to kill Hicks. Agent Alex Blake plays along with her delusion by telling her that Lexie is too sick to be healed with Hicks' blood, and that she has a portion of John's ashes, which are actually ashes from her fireplace, with which she can cure the girl. Believing that Lexie is saved, Emma surrenders, and allows the BAU agents to unearth her daughter and rescue Hicks and Ellard. She is then presumably institutionalized.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Emma is inspired by multiple real-life serial killers:
- Sheila LaBarre, a serial killer of men she held csptive on her farm to torture and murder out of paranoia delusions.
- Estibaliz Carranza, a.k.a. "The Ice Lady", a Mexican-Spanish black widow killer of men in Eastern Europe whom she tried to get pregnant from, keeping their remains in her industrial freezer.
- Jeffrey Dahmer, “The Milwaukee Cannibal”, a serial killer of men he lured to his home to torture, then ate their remains after they were killed.
- Gary Heidnik, a murderer and serial rapist of multiple women all held captive together, tortured, even used to force-feed the other women once dead. Heidnik know reportedly want to conceive children with the women in question.
- Richard Chase, a.k.a. "The Vampire of Sacramento", a serial killer of numerous people in California for the purpose of drinking their blood and harvesting their viscerae, believing vampirism and cannibalism was medicinal to placate his paranoid delusions of sickness.
- At least one case of women responsible for fetal abduction, whether or not they kill the mothers after cutting their children out of their wombs.
External links[]
- Emma Kerrigan on the Criminal Minds Wiki
