| “ | To the death, or Jane dies. | ” |
— Bell
| ||
John Vincent Bell was a prolific serial killer, family annihilator, stalker, abductor, and one-time proxy killer who appeared in the Season Five episode (as well as the pilot episode of Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior) "The Fight".
Background[]
Not much is revealed about Bell's early days, other than that he was born on February 6, 1967, in San Mateo, California. He had a wife and a daughter, Mandy. They eventually divorced, leaving the custody of Mandy, or at least some of it, with the ex-wife. When she died, Bell was declared an unfit parent due to his numerous mental problems. On May 5, 2002, when Social Services arrived to take Mandy away, he went into a frenzy and attacked two social workers, beating one of them to death, with a metal baseball bat. After that, he was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter and evading arrest. At some point in April of the following year, while he was serving his time at San Quentin State Prison, Mandy was involved in a serious car accident and died after being on life support for three days. As a result of the incident, Bell began working out and took up boxing, challenging other inmates at the yard and saying he would fight them to the death. One day, his obsession overcame him and he ended up picking a fight with the guards. After that, he was placed in solitary confinement for the rest of his sentence. When he was released, Bell began serial killing the following year, murdering a father-daughter duo and four homeless men (having the father fight the transients prior to doing so) around the anniversary of Mandy's death. He then repeated this process the next year.
The Fight[]
Bell abducts the McBrides at gunpoint.
In the beginning of the episode, Bell has already killed a homeless man as the start of his cycle. Next, Ben and Jane McBride are seen walking up a hill in a heated discussion. They are approached by Bell, who forces them to come along quietly at gunpoint. He is then seen with them, having chained them to a pillar in his family's abandoned gym, and offers to take Jane with him in exchange for letting them both live. McBride tells him to go to hell and John leaves, saying "If that's your answer..." Meanwhile, the homeless man's murder, as well as Bell's prior murders, has led to the summoning of the BAU and the private investigating of Sam Cooper's team. Bell then removes McBride's shackles and places him in an empty pool along with a transient, makes him release him and tells him to fight the man, on the condition that he and Jane will both live if he wins. McBride is able to win and Bell kills the transient, chains McBride to the pillar again, and dumps the body in Presidio Park. Prentiss and Rawson investigate the scene and figure out how Bell operates. Rossi and Simms then visit San Quentin and give the profile to an old friend of Simms. Back at the gym, Bell takes photos of himself and Jane using a polaroid camera in order to taunt McBride, who is then forced by Bell to fight another vagrant and this time beat him to death or Jane will die. McBride reluctantly beats his opponent to death, apologizing after each strike.
Simms and Rossi go back to San Quentin, where Simms's friend tells them about John and what he had done during his imprisonment. At the McBride residence, LaSalle and Morgan find a private diary kept by Jane. Even though the thoughts are private in nature, it is placed where anyone can read it. They then learn the family was seeing a family counselor, who had instructed her to keep some kind of journal; that same office also counseled Bell and his family, leading to the two BAU teams to deduce him as the killer. Back at the gym, Jane tricks Bell into taking her with him in order to keep McBride safe. Bell does so, leaving McBride behind. Outside, both BAU teams and SWAT arrive at the scene and find McBride, rescuing him. As Bell tries to leave with Jane, he spots the police cars and flees. He drags Jane with him through a parking building to the roof, being quickly followed by Prentiss, Morgan, and LaSalle. He holds Jane hostage at gunpoint, but is talked into letting her go and gets up on a wall. He jumps down from it, pretending to kill himself, but lands on a construction platform. When Prentiss goes to see if he died, he raises his gun in an attempt to kill her, but is shot twice and killed by Rawson, who was using a SVD Dragunov rifle from another rooftop. McBride and Jane later reunite happily while the former is being taken on a medical stretcher.
Modus Operandi[]
"You win, you live. You lose, I kill your daughter, And I kill you. Understand?"
One of Bell's snuff films.
Around the anniversary of his daughter's death, Bell would abduct two homeless men by luring them with some kind of ruse and take them to his family's old gym, where he would make them fight each other. He would then videotape himself shooting the loser execution style with a .45-caliber M1911 pistol. Next, Bell would abduct a father and his brunette teenage daughter (who were surrogates for himself and his daughter) at gunpoint, take them to the gym, and restrain them with chains. He would find the fathers and daughters at a therapy center they went to in the Tenderloin district and stalk them. To stop the wife of the abducted father from filing missing persons reports, Bell would send her the video of the first homeless man's murder, and a note telling her he is watching and that if she contacts the police, he will kill her husband and daughter. Since he is stated to never keep anyone alive, it is likely Bell kept the winning vagrant for the father to fight, and that after he murdered the fathers and daughters, he then killed the mothers to tie up loose ends.
After the winning vagrant would lose to the father and subsequently get murdered, Bell would then go around searching for more homeless men and then take them to the gym, where he would force the father and the vagrants to fight, with the loser being shot in the head. While holding Ben and Jane McBride captive, he forced Ben McBride to kill the second homeless man he fought, by beating him to death, under the threat that he would kill Jane. Usually, the fathers won a few fights, but when they inevitably lost, Bell would place blindfolds on their eyes and also those of their daughter (presumably out of remorse) before killing them, leaving their bodies in the father's car. The bodies of the homeless men, including the one killed for the videotape sent to the wives and apparently the one who defeated the father, would be dumped in isolated areas at Presidio Park. While his victims were in captivity, Bell would take pictures of himself and the abducted daughters and use them as intimidation against the fathers. Also, he would sometimes use rubber bullets to keep the vagrants under control.
When he attacked the Social Service agents, he bludgeoned them with a metal baseball bat. He attacked them savagely enough that he unintentionally killed one of them.
Profile[]
"Why keep this up? She's better off with me. We both know it. Soon, this will be all she knows. You let her walk home from school every day on her own. She'll be safe with me, Ben. She won't even miss you."
The unsub is a white male who is most likely in his 30s and has served some time in prison. Judging from his choice of dump sites, he is either imposing or physically fit. He also has access to some kind of space that is private enough for the neighbors not to hear what is occurring. His ability to control his prisoners suggests that he is an organized control freak and would have been obsessed with the prison guards and their tactics to control the inmates. He kills his victims the same time every year. He probably had a daughter of his own, a brunette about fifteen years of age, whom he would often talk about. The dates in which he abducts and kills his victims likely correspond to a traumatic event involving his own daughter, whom he most likely lost in some way, and it is symbolic in the sense that he did not fight for her in the first place. Serial killers usually choose victims that are surrogates for someone, like a wife or a mother. In this unsub's case, his own guilt is making him choose surrogates that represent himself. As a result, he abducts father-daughter duos that remind him of himself and his own daughter, and he would then force the fathers to engage other prisoners (male vagrants) in fights as a way to turn them into surrogates for himself.
Known Victims[]
- May 5, 2002: Social Service Agents Knight and Sauls (first names unrevealed; both bludgeoned with a metal baseball bat):
- Agent Knight (survived)
- Agent Sauls (was unintentionally bludgeoned to death)
- Post-April 2003-Unspecified date in 2008(?): Numerous unnamed prison guards (all assaulted only)
- The 2008 killing cycle:
- April 4: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the second homeless man, but lost; executed on camera)
- April 4-7: An unnamed father and daughter (stalked for an unspecified amount of time; later abducted, held captive, and eventually killed)
- April 5: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the first homeless man and won, then forced to fight the father, but lost)
- April 6: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the father, but lost)
- April 7: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the father and apparently won, but was still killed)
- c. April 7: An unnamed mother (stalked and later killed sometime after her husband and daughter's murders)
- The 2009 killing cycle:
- April 4: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the second homeless man, but lost; executed on camera)
- April 4-7: An unnamed father and daughter (stalked for an unspecified amount of time; later abducted both, held captive, and eventually killed)
- April 5: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the first homeless man and won, then forced to fight the father, but lost)
- April 6: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the father, but lost)
- April 7: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the father and apparently won, but was still killed)
- c. April 7: An unnamed mother (stalked and later killed sometime after her husband and daughter's murders)
- The 2010 killing cycle:
- April 4: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the second homeless man but lost; executed on camera)
- April 4-7: Ben McBride and his daughter Jane (stalked for an unspecified amount of time; later abducted both):
- Ben McBride (later left for dead; was rescued)
- Jane McBride (later held at gunpoint; was released)
- April 5: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight the first homeless man and won, then forced to fight Ben, but lost)
- April 6: Unnamed homeless man (forced to fight Ben but lost; was then beaten to death by a reluctant Ben when he threatened to kill Jane)
- April 7: Emily Prentiss (attempted to shoot in an ambush)
Notes[]
- Bell appears to have been inspired by Tim Vogel ("Extreme Aggressor") - Both were serial killers and abductors who targeted a certain type of victim; abducted, restrained, and held their victims captive in a secluded location, and died after standoffs in which they used young female victims as human shields and tried shooting at least one member of the BAU. In addition, Vogel appeared in the pilot episode of Criminal Minds, being the show's first official unsub, while John appeared in the backdoor pilot of the show's spin-off, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. Both episodes were also directed by Richard Shepard.
- Bell is the first of two unsubs in the show's history to have two distinctly separate victimologies that were practiced simultaneously in their killings. The second was Trevor Mills ("A Thin Line"), who targeted both Caucasian families and ethnic minorities.
- A serial killer who has two distinctly separate victimologies practiced simultaneously during their killings is actually not impossible in real life. From 1996 to 1997, Cedric Maake committed a series of rapes and murders in South Africa. His first victimology was single women (he would break into their homes before assaulting them with a knife) and couples (he would fatally shoot the men and rape the women). His second victimology was initially tailors, who he would bludgeon with a blunt object such as a rock, but he moved on to taxi drivers, who he would shoot. Like Bell, these two separate victimologies initially led authorities to believe two serial killers were at large, instead of one, until the investigations began to overlap with one another. During the separate investigations, they named the perpetrator of the attacks on women and couples "The Wemmer Pan Killer", and the perpetrator of the tailor and taxi driver murders "The Hammer Killer".
- According to his arrest record, Bell's Social Security number is 965-10-8932.