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| “ | I can't respect any woman who tries to come between a mother and her child. | „ |
| ~ Flora manipulating her son Randy into killing his girlfriend. |
Flora Martin is the overarching antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Bond". She is a serial killer who murdered several men, including the man who raped her, and who years later manipulates her son Randy into killing anyone she believes is coming between them.
She is portrayed by Veronica Cartwright.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Flora was kidnapped and raped as a young woman by a truck driver who also cut off her left ear. She got pregnant from the rape, and gave birth to a son, Randy. Eventually, she began killing truck drivers who reminded her of her rapist, and made Randy watch as she tortured and killed them. She ultimately found the man who raped her, held him prisoner in an old barn, and made Randy cut off his father's ear before she killed him. Soon afterward, she was caught and institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, and Randy was put into the foster care system.
Years later, a now-adult Randy, who had repressed the memories of what Flora had made him watch and do, reconnected with her, and began visiting her in the hospital. Still desiring revenge, she manipulated him into finding and killing the people who had separated them.
"The Bond"[]
To make his mother happy, Randy murders the former elementary school teacher who reported Flora's neglect, as well as the Legal Aid lawyer who defended her at her murder trial. He visits her in the hospital and tells her what he did, which she calls the "perfect" gift a son could give his mother. When he shows her an engagement ring he plans to give his girlfriend Chloe, however, Flora becomes jealous and possessive, and accuses Chloe of trying to keep them apart. Randy kills a few more of Flora's perceived enemies, but she is still angry that he has a woman other than her in his life, and tells him to stop visiting her.
One night, Randy and Chloe get into an argument about his mother's hold on him, and Randy tries to choke her in a fit of rage. The next day, he visits Flora and tells her she was right about Chloe, and she tells him to kill his girlfriend. He kidnaps Chloe and holds her prisoner in the same barn where Flora murdered his father, but Agents Derek Morgan and Tara Lewis of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), who have been investigating the murders, stop him by telling him the truth about what Flora made him do and assuring him that he does not have to be like her or his father. He lets Chloe go, and allows Morgan and Lewis to take him into custody.
Randy is institutionalized in the same hospital as Flora, and tries to gain her approval by cutting off his ear so he will look like her. Flora ignores him, however, and becomes transfixed by her own reflection in a mirror.
Trivia[]
- Flora is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Aileen Wuornos, a.k.a. "The Florida Highway Killer", a serial killer of men with a history of rape trauma.
- Sante Kimes, a.k.a. "The Dragon Lady", a con artist and murderer with the complicity of her son Kenneth, Jr., who inspired Randy.
- Edmund Kemper, a.k.a. "The Co-Ed Killer", a serial killer of six women and girls before he murdered his mother, the object of his rage, and one of his mother's friends, then turned himself in.
External links[]
- Flora Martin on the Criminal Minds Wiki
