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“ | Is your inner tigress worried, or is she ready for you to be free? | „ |
~ Patrick Jon Murphy as he prepares to rape and kill a woman. |
Patrick Jon Murphy is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Breath Play". He is a serial killer who rapes and strangles women to satisfy his obsession with autoerotic asphyxiation.
He was portrayed by Mark Deklin.
Biography[]
Early life[]
When Murphy was 12, he spied on his neighbor choking his wife as a part of foreplay, only for the wife to die when the husband choked too hard. The episode made a permanent impression on Murphy's still developing sexuality, and he developed a fetish for strangulation.
As an adult, he became a physical therapist, and married a woman named Stacey. The birth of their first child, Connie, put a strain on their marriage, so they saw a marriage counselor. Murphy vented the stress by traveling to Bowen, Illinois, where he raped and strangled a prostitute to death. He and his wife had two more daughters, and after each of his daughters was born, he would go out of town and rape and strangle a prostitute to relieve the pressure that the new arrivals put on him and his failing marriage.
Murphy discovered an erotic romance novel called Bare Reflections which featured many scenes of BDSM. The novel stirred up Murphy's violent fantasies, and he began seeking out women who had read it, finding them in chat rooms and fansites. He would date them under another name, seduce them into roleplaying scenes from the book, and then rape and strangle them once they were under his control. By the time of the episode, he had murdered two married women, Mary Healy and Donna Rayburn, by romancing them online before finally having sex with them and choking them to death either during or just after intercourse.
"Breath Play"[]
Murphy begins a new relationship with another married woman, Emma Zika, and acts out a roleplaying fantasy in which he follows her home, breaks in to her house, and has consensual sex with her before choking her to death. As with the other murders, he goes home afterward as if nothing has happened.
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) investigates the murders, and discover that the killer contacted each of his victims, all married women, on social networking adultery sites and through text messages that directly quote the book. This leads them to deduce that the killer is a family man with a BDSM fetish who begins consensual affairs with women who have read the book, only to rape and strangle them while roleplaying scenes from it. They also theorize that the long cooling off periods between murders could be related to the birth of the killer's children, so technical analyst Penelope Garcia researches married fathers in the area with histories of BDSM, and finds Murphy.
Murphy picks his next victim, Stacey's friend Charlotte Jacobsen, when she mentions that she has read the book. He breaks into her house and hides under her bed while she reads. He leaves the house undetected when she answers her phone, and drives home, unaware that his daughter Connie, whom Charlotte is tutoring, saw him while she stopped by Charlotte's house for a study session.
The next day, he shows up at Charlotte's house and tries to seduce her, quoting the book as he touches her neck. She tries to fight him off, but that only excites him more, and he eventually overpowers her. He binds, gags, and rapes her, only for Connie to show up unexpectedly for a study session and catch him in the act. At the same time, the BAU shows up to arrest him. He hugs the bewildered and horrified Connie, and escapes out the back door. He runs through a nearby cemetery, but BAU Agent Derek Morgan tackles him to the ground and arrests him. He is then imprisoned for life.
Trivia[]
- Murphy is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Timothy Wilson Spencer, a.k.a. “The Southside Strangler”, a serial killer of women in Virginia with delays in between his crimes, until he escalated to more recurring murders.
- Hiroshi Maeue, a.k.a. “The Suicide Website Murderer”, a Japanese serial killer responsible for strangling three people under the ruse of meeting them for mutual purposes, in his case, suicide pacts.
- Philip Markoff, a.k.a. “The Craigslist Killer”, a murderer responsible for the attacks and robberies on numerous women offering sex and massage online, killing one woman, with a typical M.O. of binding them in hotel room beds before emptying their belongings.
- Colin Ireland, a.k.a. “The Gay Slayer”, a serial killer of gay men in Britain with a similar M.O. of seducing them and strangling them to death.
- Rodney Alcala, a.k.a. “The Dating Game Killer”, a recidivist, violent serial rapist and serial killer of women and girls, eventually escalating when he came across popular entertainment media, specifically him winning in a game show but being rejected by the woman who chose him; one of his preferred M.O.s was choking and reviving women and girls until they died.
External Links[]
- Patrick John Murphy on the Criminal Minds Wiki