A serial killer nobody’s noticed but him …
Summary: Don’s team is on the hunt for a serial killer
Original air date: May 1, 2009 (US)
Written by: Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci
Directed by: Dennis Smith
*100th episode of the series*
Opening numbers:
7636: Missing persons
2260: Murders
6: Unsolved serial killings
100: Episodes
Family Concepts: (character development)
- Don is recovering at Charlie’s house from being stabbed
- David and Charlie started working at the LA office at the same time five years ago
- Larry holds the Walter T Merrick Chair in Theoretical Physics at CalSci
- Larry is a fan of the Green Lantern
- Liz is a fan of Michael Rooker films.
Episode Quotes:
- Larry: Charlie, you’re living and working out of boxes, now. You’ve become a previous incarnation of me!
- Charlie: Let’s say for hypothetical reasons I’m not crazy.
- Larry: I prefer the term conspirasist. I dropped the word nut all together.
- David: In the world of statistical analysis, 23% means —
Charlie: Uh, can I take this one? It means get your ass in gear. - Charlie: Some people drink, some gamble. I analyze data.
Episode Synopsis:
Don is at Charlie’s house recovering, however it appears Charlie is falling into an old habit of hiding in impossible math in order to cope with the family crisis. He has been working non-stop for the past five days on a mathematical study of a serial killer that no one else is even aware of based on a time line pattern he has discovered. David and Colby aren’t sure what to believe but David is willing to let Charlie run with his idea for now.
Nikki finds Charlie the next day at an LAPD investigation into the death of a postman, he’s looking for more data for his theory. David gives sends Charlie to Roy McGill, a conspiracy nut who helped the FBI on a previous case. Roy is excited to help again and while he doesn’t have much data for Charlie, he knows someone who does: Gene Evans an accountant who has helped police departments in California and Oregon solve murder cases. Gene doesn’t have much on murders in the LA area, but he does have notes on several cases around Bakersfield that match Charlie’s time line pattern. He talked to a sheriff’s deputy, Brent Driscoll, about the data, but eventually stopped working on the case when he started getting threatening phone calls.
Roy, working on his own theory thinks he’s found the “victim zero” for the case: Nancy Kershaw, a high school student murdered in 1988. Aspects of her death match things in cases happening now and Roy is convinced she is a link, though Charlie isn’t as sure. Charlie and Roy go back to Gene Evans to get a little more data, only to find both Gene and his wife Martha dead in their car. Charlie and Don realize the micro clusters in Charlie’s data are spikes when the killer is again being careful and killing anyone who could identify him.
Charlie does work out a series of hot zones where the killer lives or works and a group of thirty potential victims based on the type of victim the killer chose in the past. The FBI stake out all of the houses and after a false alarm for Colby and Liz, David and Nikki nearly catch the killer but he manages to get away. Things are starting to fall into place, however. Nikki recovers data from the Bakerfield case and finds a witness in one of the deaths there is the same man as a witness in the deaths of the Evans’. This man was also a suspect in another of the unsolved murders. An analysis of men within the hot spots Charlie finds leads to five names, aliases for the same man: Robert Posdner. Charlie is finally convinced Nancy Kershaw’s death is part of the pattern, and her then boyfriend, Steve Savard, recognizes Posdner’s voice as the same one that threatened him years ago after Nancy’s death.
When the FBI arrive at Posdner’s house, he offers no resistance, and appears proud of what he’s done and is thrilled by the shock the news of what he’s done will do to his wife. He admits to the murders claiming he was always very careful and anyone who knows him will not believe he’s capable of killing so many people.