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The Tribe

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"The Tribe" is the sixteenth episode of Season One of Criminal Minds.

Summary[]

When college students in New Mexico are found tortured and murdered in an unoccupied house, the BAU suspects a group of killers with an extensive knowledge of Native American rituals is responsible.

Full Summary[]

There’s a party going on in Tera Mesa in a home.  A couple starts making out and a girl strolls through the house before asking another man where the bathroom is.  She gets to the second floor, and another couple is making out.  The guy closes the door, and she looks out a window to the van.

Outside the home, a man confirms the woman is who they’re looking for.  She goes outside and is abducted by two men in black. Back in the house, the guy who told her the bathroom was upstairs comes downstairs.  Outside, a group of men are running towards the house.  The man is searching for the girl, Ingrid. 

He goes outside and is stabbed.

At HQ a gorgeous man with a motorcycle helmet comes out of the elevator.  Garcia follows him into the bullpen, but runs into Elle.  She sees the man, and they eye each other up.  As he comes towards them, Morgan comes in, greeting the man as Sean.  He points him towards Hotchner’s office.  He’s Sean’s older brother.

It’s a tense moment between brothers, but Aaron is happy to see him, until Sean says he’s not going to Georgetown to study law.  Instead, he’s going to work at a restaurant in New York.  The brothers start to argue, and Sean goes to leave, but Aaron stops him in the bullpen, where JJ, Garcia, and Elle are waiting. Sean tells his brother to stop, and not to profile him before leaving. 

In the conference room, JJ is going over the case.  No sexual assault or signs of theft, but five 19 year old college students were murdered.  Gideon believes that it’s not a single unsub, but rather a pack. 

Reid, Hotchner, and Gideon go to the crime scene, while the rest go to the station. Reid informs the police that the kids were skinned alive, mutilated, and impaled, and that they were all war rituals from native Americans.

Gideon makes the call that they need to go to the Apache reservation.  Hotch talks to Garcia and they have a suspect in John Blackwolf, but they find out he’s the reservation police.  Gideon, Reid, Hotch, and the sheriff meet the reservation president, Jane Bear on the land.  Together they go to the school, where Blackwolf is teaching.

Bear takes over for Blackwolf, and he grabs his knife and badge, joining the team. They hand over the pictures of the scene, and Blackwolf says he need to look at the actual scene.  Right off the bat, it’s obvious that Hotchner and Blackwolf do not get along. 

Blackwolf points out that whoever did this is not Apache, but rather stealing the most brutal methods from Native Americans.  The Navajo, Comanche, Pueblo, and Sioux.  He says that no tribe did all the methods used together.  He points out that real Indians would know that. 

He also says that there were a total of eight men, two who grabbed the young woman, and six who ran in single file to hide their numbers, and attacked the rest of the house.  Back at the station, Blackwolf agrees to stay on the case to help with the profile. They deliver it to the officers, but the officers want to believe that it’s the Native Americans doing it. Blackwolf says that it’s a confused imitation of Native American culture and the team talk to the sheriff. 

The American Defense Unit is against the Apache getting their land back that the government had seized for the condo property to begin with.  They bring in the leader, Minton. Roy Minton says that his members don’t need to fight the Apache in person as they are doing it in court. 

They have the sheriff put Minton on surveillance.  Garcia calls in and speaks to Derek.  The sixth girl is named Ingrid, a woman who moved to New Mexico two years ago.  The group speaks to her father.  Ingrid’s father reveals that he never reported her as missing because she has her own place and doesn’t live with him.  JJ tries to get the father to appeal to the media, hoping that it will return her, or at least stop them from harming her.

At a hotel, on the news, the kidnappers see that her father is appealing to them. One of the men says that it’s time to get rid of her after seeing it. 

Back at the Griesen house, Elle comes to Hotchner with a phone, saying it’s the kidnappers and they want to speak to him.  The man reveals that he’ll turn Ingrid and he and his partner in, but he doesn’t want Griesen to know, because Griesen paid him to kidnap her. 

That following morning the kidnappers come out and are on their knees, shirts off to prove they don’t have weapons.  The team comes up on them and arrests them.  Once being interrogated, they both say the same story.  Griesen hired them to kidnap Ingrid, and paid them half in advance. They laid low at the hotel, but were shocked to see the murders on the news the following morning. They called Griesen, and he said he’d come by, but when they saw him on the news, they called the FBI. 

Gideon goes to interview Griesen with Hotchner.  Morgan gets a call from Garcia while Reid goes to speak with Ingrid, who’s laying in a hospital bed.  Ingrid repeats her name and social security number, but otherwise seems catatonic.  Reid leaves the room.  They call Hotchner.  She dropped out, and shows the same reactions to being a POW, but the team quickly comes to the conclusion that she dropped out of school despite having good grades and vacated her apartment to join a cult. 

At Minton’s residence, a police officer is sitting in his cruiser.  From behind he’s being approached by an unsub with a knife. Inside, the Minton’s are sleeping, only to be woken up by someone with a knife.  Back outside, we see the front of the house, and through the back of the cruiser, we can see the cop has been murdered, as blood is spattered on the windshield.

Hotchner speaks to Griesen once more with Morgan, and they talk about how Minton’s family was murdered in the same way as the Tera Mesa killings.  He tries to convince him that helping them will help Ingrid.  He takes fault for it, feeling guilty about how Ingrid fell into the cult during her first semester, after her mother had died. 

Reid is going over the new profile, of the cult leader with the officers.  Morgan points out that they could have lesser crimes on their records.  Elle tells them to include anyone that studied Native American culture extensively.

At the new crime scene, Blackwolf and Hotchner have the sheriff bring Ingrid.  Blackwolf introduces himself and leads her through the house.  Ingrid doesn’t emote as she’s brought to the little girl’s room.  She  breaks down during the argument with Blackwolf, and accidentally says their location, in the deadlands. 

Morgan gets a call that Jackson Cally is the cult leader, and had been kicked out of the school six months before the others.  Blackwolf says that there’s an abandoned motel off route 29, and they raid it in search of the cult members.

Hotchner comes across Cally, who identifies himself as ‘Grandfather.’  He says the others are ‘hunting.’  After talking with Reid and Gideon, he says he’s going to give Cally an audience. Cally speaks with Hotchner, and goads Blackwolf, revealing his true nature as a racist, trying to start a race war between white people and the Native Americans.  The team comes to the conclusion that they were staging attacks against each group, and the next attack will be against the reservation. 

Once there, the cult goes towards the school, dressed as ADU members, but the classroom is empty.  They have the children hidden, and Hotchner and blackwolf are waiting to incapacitate them. Blackwolf creates a diversion, and Hotchner knocks out the first.  The cult member split up and Hotchner and Blackwolf knock out two more.  During the next one, the member pulls a knife on Blackwolf when he’s disarmed.  However, Blackwolf is forced to stab him.  When Hotchner comes across him, two more appear with guns, and are about to shoot Blackwolf, but Hotchner shoots and kills a woman.  The fourth gives up. They arrest them and the case is closed.

After the case, Hotchner goes to a restaurant to see his brother.  He gives him the card of a New York agent in case he needs anything, saying it’s his way of apologizing.  He sits down and places an order.

Guest Cast[]

Referenced Criminals[]

Music[]

  • "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly
  • "Roberto Duran" by the Ribeye Brothers
  • "When All is Said and Done" by Tyrone Wells
  • "The Scientist" by Coldplay

Bookend Quotes[]

  • Aaron Hotchner: Nietzsche wrote, "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe."
  • Aaron Hotchner: There's an old Apache saying: "You can take many paths to get to the same place."

Trivia[]

Criminal Minds Episodes
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