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| “ | This wasn't supposed to happen to my family. | „ |
| ~ Susan lamenting her husband Richard Jacobs's molestation of their niece, Katie. |
Susan Jacobs is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Seven Seconds".
A seemingly normal family woman from Virginia, Susan is responsible for the kidnapping and attempted murder of her niece, Katie Jacobs.
She was portrayed by Suzanne Cryer.
Biography[]
Very little is known about Susan's background, except that she once worked at her local mall (The Potomac) in Virginia. By the events of the episode, Susan had left to pursue another career. At some point, Susan met a man called Richard Jacobs and fell in love with him. The couple eventually got married and went on to have a son, Jeremy. Susan was also close to her in-laws - Richard's brother Paul, Paul's wife Beth, and their six-year-old daughter Katie.
However, Susan's perfect world would come crashing down when she discovered that Richard was a pedophile sexually abusing Katie. Although she and Richard pretended that everything was fine, this revelation caused a serious rift between them, which eventually led to the breaking down of their marriage and Richard moving out.
Despite the sickening revelations about her husband, Susan did not report Richard to the police, nor did she tell Paul and Beth what he did to their daughter; she instead irrationally blamed Katie for her failing marriage. In her delusional state, Susan convinced herself that everything would return to normal if Katie was gone. A week prior to the events of the episode, Susan watched a news report about the kidnapping and murder of a girl named Jessica Davis, who was the same age as Katie, at the mall where she used to work. Susan came up with a plan to get rid of Katie, which she believed would make everything right with her family again.
In "Seven Seconds"[]
Seven days after watching the news report, Susan and the rest of the Jacobs family go to the Potomac Shopping Mall. Susan leaves the group, claiming that she is going to buy Richard a birthday present. The rest of the family goes off to do their own things, including Jeremy and Katie, who go to the arcade together. While Jeremy is distracted by the games and impressing a teenage girl, Katie mysteriously disappears.
Upon reuniting with his parents, aunt, and uncle, Jeremy reveals that Katie has vanished. Susan immediately calls the authorities, who place the mall in lockdown and contact the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), both to help search the mall for Katie and profile her kidnapper. As law enforcement officials carry out a thorough search of the mall, Susan hypocritically tries to comfort her hysterical in-laws, who are particularly afraid that the kidnapping will trigger Katie's asthma.
As part of the investigation, BAU Agents Emily Prentiss and Aaron Hotchner question potential witnesses, including Jeremy. They briefly suspect him of harming his cousin, which provokes a nonchalant response from Susan. Prentiss finds Susan's reaction strange, and questions her as well. Susan tells Prentiss that she had been buying Richard an engraved cigarette lighter for his birthday at the time of Katie's disappearance. She also mentions that she used to work at the mall.
Meanwhile, Agent Spencer Reid questions Jeremy and quickly sees that he is innocent, though is hiding something. He and Agent Derek Morgan search Paul and Beth's house and find in Katie's bedroom soiled bedsheets and a mutilated doll, classic signs that a child is being sexually abused. From this evidence, as well as the expensive, child-sized necklace that had been found in a mall trash can by police dogs tracking Katie's scent, they deduce that someone, probably a family member, is molesting Katie and buying her silence with presents.
Upon learning of Katie's abuse, Hotchner and Prentiss' attention turns towards Richard. Having previously questioned him about both Jeremy and Katie, they notice that Richard could answer any question about his niece but knows very little about his own son, a behavior often found in child molesters who prey on family members. Hotchner manages to trick Richard into confessing that he had molested Katie. Richard insists that he had nothing to do with the kidnapping, however.
As Hotchner leaves to help with the search, Prentiss recalls her conversation with Susan and realises that she had not seen Richard, whom Susan had said was a smoker, light a single cigarette on what is surely the most stressful day of his life. When Prentiss asks Richard about it, Richard replies that he had quit smoking over a month before. Prentiss then begins to wonder why Susan had bought a lighter for someone who doesn't smoke.
Prentiss also recalls that Susan had told her that she used to work in the Potomac Mall, and that the family outing there had been "convenient". Prentiss goes to the mall's upper level, where she finds Susan sitting with Paul and Beth. Prentiss asks to speak with Susan alone and confronts her about the inconsistencies in her story. She suddenly becomes nervous and evasive, and so Prentiss takes Susan into a separate room for questioning as Paul and Beth demand to know what she did to their daughter.
Prentiss confronts Susan with the truth about Richard and the fact that they were no longer living together. She also points out that, having previously worked at the Potomac Mall, Susan would be familiar enough with its layout to know where she could kidnap Katie and hold her prisoner while avoiding the mall's security cameras. Finally, she says that Susan wanted her niece to die, so she duct-taped the girl's mouth and trapped her in a small space in order to trigger Katie's asthma and make her suffocate to death. When Susan tries to deny it, Prentiss chews her out that, rather than face the truth about her husband's sickness, she chose to try to kill her own niece in the deluded hope that the girl's death would make Richard's pedophilia go away, and ripped off Katie's necklace and threw it away because it reminded her of what Richard did.
When Susan still refuses to admit what she did, the usually unflappable Prentiss angrily forces her to look at Katie's disfigured doll, yelling that she and Richard are responsible for Katie's suffering and that Susan had robbed Katie of her childhood. As Susan cries for Prentiss to stop and breaks down in tears, Prentiss furiously asks where Katie is. Susan cracks but doesn't give up the location. Just then, Morgan, Hotchner, and a team of police officers and paramedics manage to find Katie in the basement, who has stopped breathing after an asthma attack. Fortunately, the paramedics revive her.
Susan and Richard are both arrested - Richard for child sexual abuse and Susan for kidnapping and attempted murder. As she is taken to the police car, Susan shares one last look with her distraught son. Jeremy admits to Reid and Morgan that he heard Katie call his mother's name before she vanished, and questions his fate with both his parents incarcerated. Reid and Morgan don't have an answer but promise to make sure sure Jeremy will be okay.
Trivia[]
- Susan Jacobs is inspired by two real-life criminals:
- Susan Smith, who murdered her two children so she could have a relationship with a man who did not want children.
- The “Boca Killer”, an unidentified serial killer/kidnapper of women and children from the Town Center of Boca Raton.
External Links[]
- Susan Jacobs on the Criminal Minds Wiki
