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Kelvin Cornwell is a budding serial killer who appears in the Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior episode "The Girl in the Blue Mask".
History[]
Kelvin was a drunk who often beat his wife and presumably his daughter, Kristi Anna. In 2007, when his wife finally left him and filed for divorce, he abducted Kristi Anna and left with her. Sometime later, he forced her head close to a burning stove, saying she reminded him of her mother, burning her face severely. When he took her to the ER, he claimed she had accidentally fallen face-first into a fireplace. When Kristi Anna told them what really happened, they called the police, but Kelvin had disappeared with her by the time they got to the hospital. He quit drinking and got his daughter prescribed various salves and other drugs to treat her scars, but she would most frequently wear a blue burn mask. When her sixteenth birthday started coming up, he began killing people and removing their faces, planning to transplant them onto his daughter, Kristi.
Profile[]
The unsub is a man, since it is too easy manipulate the emotions of a girl. He works as a type of tradesman and is handy with tools. All of the victims he has attacked have died so far, but it is believed that he has not set out to kill. Instead, it is as if he is fixated on their living tissue. There is no evidence of the unsub being a cannibal, since a traditional cannibal would have eaten the victims' flesh. If he is not getting the results he wants, he is not going to stop removing people's faces until he does. He brought a cooler to David Clayford's crime scene to take the skin after he removed it, but was surprised and left it behind. It is possible he could be making a suit of skin, much like Ed Gein. He focuses on the left side of the face and only tries to get small pieces of skin, not large sections. He might be disfigured and trying to fix his own face to change his appearance. If he is taking skin for hetero-grafts, he will need someone to help him. The unsub promised something when he attacked Cindy Shearin, implying some form of commitment to someone, making his motivations emotional. He could be removing faces for someone he loves.
If he was practicing his harvesting techniques on David Clayford and failed, then he was successful with Cindy Shearin. He is taking risks by attacking another person in broad daylight, but it also shows how desperate he is towards his goal. By attacking his first and last victims, it is possible he is collecting skin for a young woman, such as a daughter, wife, or girlfriend. He may not have medical experience, and if he really doesn't, there is no chance for him to successfully perform a skin graft or a transplant, even an auto-graft without the proper tools or conditions. If the unsub is attempting to make a transplant, no matter what he tries, the skin he has is not going to stay on the patient's face for as long as he expects it to do. He might come to this realization and subsequently become deluded enough to abduct a donor and attempt a person-to-person transplant. The unsub thinks he is talented enough to remove and remake someone's face. Judging by the last victim, the patient is a disfigured girl, but not necessarily, and if he is delusional, she just has to fall short of his standard of beauty. She is whatever the unsub has been telling her: undercutting her self-esteem, she can never be too pretty or too thin for him. Delusions are necessary to the unsub's motivation, as is reality.
If he thinks he can preform a transplant, then that is what the unsub is going to attempt. The unsub could be a highly proficient tailor, as he would need great skill to stitch a piece of skin to a face. He could also be a taxidermist, as they would use an air-pressure gun when filleting animals and also be proficient in sewing skins and animal hides. He also has a propensity for violence and is confident on some level of his fine motor abilities. If he was thinking about experimenting with skin removal, he would do it with animals first, and he would then try to desensitize himself from the cruelty before practicing those methods on people. He is striking less aggressively by using tasers now because he does not want to damage the skin on their faces. By abducting Dawn Taggert, he has solved the problem of transporting skin by taking live skin tissue. However, if he attempts the facial transplant, Dawn and the unsub's daughter could both end up disfigured and may not even survive.
With the first three victims, the unsub is indifferent to their suffering. He is numb and desperate, and ro him, the next logical step is to take living tissue, no matter what the risk or cost of life would be. He might just be a normal man driven by guilt by whatever he did to his daughter and is now trying to fix her. He could be using her disfigurement as a way of keeping her prisoner somewhere. He has a history of spousal or child abuse and lives in a rural area or some other place where the daughter's absence will not attract too much attention. He is concerned with appearances and attention, so he could be a specialty painter, one who stencils in the houses, allowing him to have the tools necessary to remove skin.
Modus Operandi[]
In his first two attacks, Kelvin used a chloroform rag and beat the victims into submission with one of his work mallets, but in all subsequent outings, he used a taser, since it wouldn't cause any unnecessary damage to the victims. Every victim had one side of their facial skin removed through different means; the first had hers crudely sliced off with a knife, the second's was removed via an air pressure gun and tearing, and in the third assault a razor blade was used.
Known Victims[]
- Unspecified dates in 2007:
- His unnamed ex-wife (physically abused only)
- Kristi Anna Cornwell (his daughter; survived; severely burned her face with a stove)
- 2011:
- March 12: Amy Sherigan (clubbed with a mallet and fatally mutilated her face with a knife)
- March 21: Sergeant David Clayford (clubbed with a mallet like the previous victim, then fatally removed the left side of his face with an air-pressure gun)
- March 22: Cindy Shearin (attempted, but survived; tasered and non-fatally removed the left side of her face with a laser blade)
- March 22-23: Dawn Taggert (tasered, abducted and attempted to kill; was rescued)