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| “ | Do whatever you want with him. | „ |
| ~ Jacobs telling her prisoners to kill Lawrence Coleman after he betrays her |
Irene Jacobs is the secondary antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Bunker". She is a delusional, mentally ill woman who helps cult leader Lawrence Coleman kidnap and imprison people to create a new society after the apocalypse, which they are both convinced is imminent.
She was portrayed by Meagan Fay.
Early life[]
Jacobs worked as a substance abuse counselor at the New Dawn Outreach Center in Culpepper, Virginia, specializing in caring for pregnant teenage girls with histories of substance abuse. While she was intelligent, well-educated, and compassionate, she was also paranoid to the point of delusional, and was convinced that the apocalypse was close at hand.
She joined several Internet chat rooms dedicated to conspiracy theories about the end of the world. On one of these sites, she met Lawrence Coleman, who managed a blog about preparing for the apocalypse; he manipulated her into becoming his acolyte in a "movement" to repopulate the Earth after an extinction level event they were both convinced was only a few years away. When she found an abandoned bunker beneath a plot of land she owned, he talked her into signing it over to him so he could use it to house the survivors of the apocalypse.
Jacobs kidnapped two of her own clients, Chrissy Miller and Kylie Pritchard, and brought them down to the bunker. She also kidnapped Dr. Roberta Childs, an obstetrician who worked in her clinic, to tend to the girls' medical needs. Jacobs acted as a maternal figure to the girls, while also proselytizing to them with Coleman's survivalist philosophy until they were all brainwashed into believing that the outside world no longer existed. Childs attempted to escape once and tried to kill herself twice, but Jacobs eventually wore her down until she became a semi-willing participant, telling herself that she was the girls' only chance to survive. She helped Chrissy and Kyle give birth to healthy babies.
Over the next five years, Jacobs and Coleman kidnapped several other pregnant teenage girls, intent on creating a new society with Coleman as its self-appointed leader.
"The Bunker"[]
Jacobs and Coleman kidnap chef Allie Leighton, whom they plan to use to tend to their captors' nutritional needs as they carried their babies. Jacobs and Childs welcome a terrified Leighton to her "new home" in the bunker, but she throws an alarm clock at them and tries to escape, only for Coleman to subdue her. Jacobs makes Leighton promise not to try escaping again, and then gives her a tour of the bunker's facilities. Leighton grabs a pen and holds it to Childs' throat, threatening to kill her unless they let her go. Jacobs warns her that there will consequences if she hurts Childs or "any of the others". Leighton then passes out from exhaustion and hunger.
After Jacobs puts Leighton in a cell, an alarm goes off, triggered by Coleman. When Jacobs asks what is wrong, Coleman tells her that Childs has committed suicide, and that she has to help him get rid of the body. Jacobs reluctantly helps him dump Childs' corpse in a nearby park, while she tries to give the late doctor some dignity by wrapping her in a blanket. Jacobs briefly protests the way they treated Childs, but Coleman cows her into silence and then orders her to kidnap pediatrician Paige Burrell to replace Childs as the cult's doctor. Jacobs then introduces Burrell to their captives and their children.
Meanwhile, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) starts investigating the kidnappings, initially profiling the kidnapper as a male loner seeking to create his own cult who uses chloroform to subdue his victims. When they find Childs' body wrapped in a blanket, however, they realize that the kidnapper, who is himself incapable of compassion, is working with a submissive female partner who puts the victims at ease so he can blindside them.
They deduce that the female partner was herself kidnapped by the leader, who manipulated her into joining his cause; they also theorize that they are holding their captives an underground bunker on land owned by the submissive partner. Reasoning that they probably met online in an "apocalypse prepper" chat room, Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia cross-references apocalyptic chat rooms with chloroform purchases and large plots of land owned by women and finds Jacobs and Coleman.
In the bunker, Burrell tells Jacobs that Leighton has a fever; when Jacobs goes to check on her, Leighton puts a knife to her throat and demands to be released. Coleman intercepts them, but before he can do anything, the intruder alarm goes off, and he sees BAU Agents Jennifer Jareau and Spencer Reid breaching the perimeter of the bunker. Coleman starts to make a run for it, while telling the prisoners to do whatever they want with Jacobs.
When Coleman locks Jareau and Reid in an airtight room to suffocate them to death, they tell Jacobs to enter the code that will open the door. She refuses, however; despite having been betrayed and abandoned by Coleman, she is still too subservient to him to "disobey him" by sparing their lives. Jareau and Reid shift tactics and show the captives proof that the outside world still exists, and that Coleman lied to them. Coleman tries to tell his prisoners that the "outsiders" are trying to trick them, but they see through him at last and gang up on him, led by Jacobs, who tells them to "do whatever you want with him". After the prisoners give Coleman a thorough beating, Jacobs releases Jareau and Reid and allows them to take her and Coleman into custody. They are both then incarcerated for kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.
External links[]
- Irene Jacobs on the Criminal Minds Wiki
