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“ | Do you know what real pain is? That...hollow ache? That gaping hole that comes from senseless tragedy? No, you don't. You live in blissful ignorance, like all the happy, go-lucky people who have no idea that darkness is a whisper away. You remind me of Steven, my ex-boyfriend. With that stupid smirk on your face. You should've been looking out for Adam instead of lying your cheating ass off! | „ |
~ Tess Mynock cursing one of her victims. |
Tess Mynock is the secondary antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Alchemy". She is the submissive partner of a two-person killing team, who seduces men who remind her of her abusive ex-boyfriend and "gives" them to her husband, Raoul Whalen, to kill, all in the delusional hope that Whalen will use their deaths to revive her deceased son Adam with what he has manipulated her into believing is a Native American ritual.
She was portrayed by Angela Bettis, who also portrayed May Dove Canady in the 2002 horror film May, Carrie White in the 2002 made-for-TV adaptation of Carrie and Abigail Williams in a 2002 Broadway production of The Crucible.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Mynock had a son, Adam, with her abusive and unfaithful boyfriend, Steven Colson. When Adam was a toddler, Mynock and Colson took him on a lakeside picnic, but got into an argument and lost track of him. While they were fighting, Adam wandered into the lake and drowned. Mynock's trauma and grief following Adam's death led her to develop a psychosomatic illness, in which sunlight hurt her eyes because Adam died on a sunny day.
After Colson left her, Mynock married Raoul Whalen, a psychopathic con artist and serial killer who preyed on men and made a living posing as a holistic healer, scamming gullible tourists out of their money with phony Native American "rituals". He convinced her that he cured her "condition", and later manipulated her into believing he could bring Adam back from the dead by getting her pregnant by performing a ritual while she had sex with men who resembled Colson. He also appealed to her hatred of Colson by convincing her that he would have to kill the men after she had sex with them as a ritual sacrifice, and saying to her, "It's time to kill Steven now.".
Whalen used the money he made from his scams to buy the Red Creek Lodge in Rapid City, South Dakota, and hired Mynock as the manager. Under Whalen's direction, Mynock would seduce men in bars and bring them back to the motel, where she would have sex with them while he secretly watched, and then drugged them into unconsciousness using solanine, a poison derived from nightshade that Whalen used in his scams. Whalen would then torture and murder the man while reciting chants that he made up on the spot. When Adam inevitably was not "reborn", Whalen would tell Mynock that the victim "wasn't right", and they would have to try again with another murder.
"Alchemy"[]
Mynock lures her and Whalen's latest victim, Chad Dumont, by asking him to walk her home from a bar, and then having sex with him at the motel while Whalen watches through a peephole. The next morning, she makes him breakfast, which she has secretly drugged. Dumont begins hallucinating, and passes out as Mynock curses him, calling him "Steven" and accusing him of letting Adam die.
Meanwhile, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) investigates Dumont's kidnapping, profiling the kidnapper as a woman who suffers from "black widow maternal desire", the compulsion to force men to get her pregnant in order to replace a child she had lost. They theorize that the victims are surrogates for the child's father, and from the torture involved they infer that she blames him for the child's death. After the motel's maid, Amber Moxley, comes to the BAU with her suspicions about Dumont's disappearance, Supervisory Agent David Rossi convinces her to search Dumont's room while wearing a wire tap. She does so, but Whalen catches her and kills her, later dismembering and disposing of the body.
After finding what is left of Moxley, the BAU theorizes that the motel's owner must be the killer. Technical analyst Penelope Garcia researches the motel's history, as well as that of people in the area who have recently purchased solanine. She ultimately finds Whalen, along with his criminal history and records of his marriage to Mynock and Adam's death. The BAU realizes that both Mynock and Whalen are the killers, and heads to the motel to arrest them.
At the motel, Mynock and Whalen are preparing to kill a bound and gagged Dumont, when she notices Moxley's name tag on the floor. When she asks Whalen about it, he changes the subject, and she realizes that he killed her, in spite of his promise that they would not harm innocent people. When she yells at him for lying to her, he hits her in the face and orders her to kill Dumont. Mynock finally realizes that Whalen has been using her and that she will never get her son back. Just then, Dumont manages to escape his bindings and tackles Whalen to the ground, while Mynock runs away. The BAU bursts in, arrests Whalen and goes looking for Mynock, only to find that she has committed suicide by drowning herself in a nearby lake.
Trivia[]
- Mynock is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Polly Bartlett, Wyoming's first serial killer before it was even a state, her history long being disputed. She lured and killed men with her father Jim in a similar fashion.
- Belle Gunness, a Norwegian-American serial killer of men who were found dismembered on her property, after she reportedly died in a house fire that was presumed to have not killed her so she could escape.
- Faye Copeland, one of a duo of elderly serial killers along with her husband Ray, who lured men for farm work only for them to get shot at buried on their land. Ray also has a history of fraud, like Whalen.
- Velma Barfield, a.k.a. "The Black Widow", a serial killer of her husbands, mother, and hospice patients who had an unhappy marriage preceding her murder by poisoning spree.
External Links[]
- Tess Mynock on the Criminal Minds Wiki