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| “ | Let you go? Let you go?! Do you think I brought you all the way up here just to let you go? | „ |
| ~ Bachner as he prepares to kill one of his victims. |
Joe Bachner is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Edge of Winter". He is a serial killer who picks up women in bars and rapes, tortures, and murders them, and who also turns one of his victims, Daria Samsen, into his willing accomplice.
He was portrayed by Taymour Ghazi.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Bachner was orphaned at age six when his parents were killed in a car accident. He was adopted by his aunt, Juliana Hartig, an abusive alcoholic who regularly beat and tortured him, going so far as to frequently unleash swarms of angry bees onto him, which stung him dozens of times. He grew up to be a misogynistic sociopath who took sadistic pleasure in abusing women, particularly by inflicting dozens of tiny stab wounds upon them that resembled the bee stings he sustained during his aunt's "punishments". He was arrested several times for domestic abuse.
When his aunt died of a heart attack, Bachner lost his chance to make her pay for what she did to him, and so began killing random women to satisfy his rage. His M.O. was to charm a woman at a bar and persuade her to come home with him, where he would incapacitate her and rape and torture her for weeks before finally stabbing her to death.
"The Edge of Winter"[]
Bachner acquires an accomplice when he kidnaps Daria Samsen, a young medical student who reminds him of his hated aunt. He rapes and tortures her, but rather than kill her, he brainwashes her into believing that he loves her so she will help him kill women and become his patsy should he get caught. With Daria's help, he murders three women within a year, and kidnaps a fourth, Carrie, whom he holds in captivity in his tool shed alongside Daria.
He poses two of his victims in very public areas in order to draw police attention, and ties another one, his first male victim, to a scarecrow post. The bid for attention is successful, as the local police call in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to profile and help them catch the killer.
One night, Carrie steals the key to the tool shed and tries to escape, but Bachner shoots and wounds her, while a frightened Daria takes off running, eventually getting rescued. BAU Agent Derek Morgan interviews her about her kidnapping, and she tells him that she and Carrie were both kidnapped and brutalized by Bachner and a man named Coby, although it is left ambiguous whether she is lying or has lost touch with reality and convinced herself that her story is real. Regardless, Morgan soon figures out that she was Bachner's accomplice and arrests her, and she is institutionalized.
Meanwhile, Bachner, infuriated by Daria having gotten away from him, flees with Carrie to an abandoned house once owned by his client Coby Peters, the inspiration for the "Coby" of Daria's story. Bachner murders a woman named Melissa Coleman, and then kidnaps a motorist and tries to make Carrie torture him so as to turn her into Daria's "replacement". Carrie refuses, however, so he stabs the man to death with an ice pick.
Just then, the BAU storms the house, having found Bachner thanks to information Morgan learned from Daria. He tries to run, but BAU Agent David Rossi manages to shoot and wound him, rendering him helpless. Rossi then arrests Bachner, who is imprisoned for life. Daria, meanwhile, is institutionalized permanently.
Trivia[]
- Bachner is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Edmund Kemper, a.k.a. “The Co-Ed Killer”, a violent, misogynistic serial killer of women who was raised by an abusive maternal figure.
- Peter Kürten, a.k.a. "The Vampire of Drüsseldorf", a German serial killer responsible for an indiscriminate bladed weapon and hammer rampage, with attempts also to mount at least one victim in crucifixion to scare the city.
- Leonard Lake, a serial killer/rapist along with Charles Ng, conspiring to kill various people in their cabin in California, including women to rape and murder.
- The killers of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was tied to a fence, tortured, and murdered in Wyoming.
- Paul Michael Stephani, a.k.a. "The Weepy Voiced Killer", a serial killer of women, primarily by extreme violence with sharp weapons, with a history of domestic violence in his family and a record of assault.
- Gary Heidnik, a murderer and serial rapist responsible for kidnapping and raping numerous Black women, killing two, and even forcing one woman to participate in the torture.
- Cameron Hooker, one of the two kidnappers of Colleen Stan, imprisoning her for years, raping her, and brutalizing her with the assistance of his equally brutalized wife Janice, until Colleen developed Stockholm syndrome out of survival up to the point she escaped and called police.
- Nick Ruskin, a.k.a. "Casanova", the main antagonist of the Alex Cross, a serial killer/rapist of women in North Carolina, who were held captive together for rapes, then murdered in the woods once Ruskin was done with them.
External links[]
- Joe Bachner on the Criminal Minds Wiki
