Tonight on CBS their hit drama Criminal Minds returns with an all-new Wednesday, October 31, 2018, season 14 episode 5, called “The Tall Man,” and we have your weekly Criminal Minds recap below. On tonight’s Criminal Minds episode season 14 episode 5 as per the CBS synopsis, “TThe BAU investigates a spooky local ghost story of the “Tall Man” and the clues it provides when two people go missing in the woods of East Allegheny’s Dead Man’s Conservatory, and a third mysteriously surfaces the following day with limited details as to what happened to her friends.
To assist with the case, JJ reluctantly returns to her hometown, triggering emotional flashbacks to age 11 and her older sister’s tragic death.”
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Three teenage girls went into the woods and only one came out on tonight’s all new episode of “Criminal Minds”.
The girls were all from JJ’s home town. She heard that they went into the forest known as the Dead Man’s Conservatory and she knew why. JJ later explained to her team that there was regional ghost story about someone called “Tall Man”. He would live in the forest and wait for prey. When he apparently finds them, he’d hold them hostage and repeatedly stab them.
The one girl that got away said that’s what happened and she was taken to the hospital where the team could question her. They wanted to know what happened in the forest and unfortunately she hadn’t been much help because she thought they were working with the Tall Man. They asked her why she thought that and she said because they didn’t have faces like he didn’t have a face.
The team soon realized that Ally Macready suffered from early onset schizophrenia. Her parents confirmed it with them and they said they had been trying to keep their daughter off of the medication for as long as possible however that same reason led to the BAU doubting Ally’s story. She was the only one that came back and her story had been full of holes.
Ally said that her friends wanted to talk to her and that they never got the chance to have their conversation because the Tall Man used mind control to get them to all pass out at the same time. The team weren’t sure if what she said was real or not and so they looked into the missing girls. Both Bethany Wilson and Chelsea Davis were texting each other in the lead up to sneaking away from the party.
They had talked about Ally. They said that they had to tell her that night and so the team asked Chelsea’s dad if he knew. He used to date JJ’s sister and he had been honest with her. He said that his daughter and her friends have noticed how erratic Ally has been lately and they were planning on talking to her. That’s why they followed Ally into the forest.
She had been singing to herself lately and she was the one that wanted to chase after the Tall Man. So the team knew they had to find a way to reach Ally because she was they were concerned. They thought that Ally must have had a psychotic break and accidentally hurt her friends. They thought this because none of the blood that had been found on Ally was actually hers. She didn’t have a mark on her and so the team need to know why.
Before they went back in with Ally, though, they found out that all three of the girls’ cell phones were found and that there had been drugs on them. It was the drug that had knocked out Ally and so that both showed that Ally was telling the truth as she comprehended and that she couldn’t have attacked her friends.
The Unsub showed that he or she put some planning into what happened and Ally’s symptoms would have made it impossible for her to be so thorough without medication. The team went back to Ally’s hospital room and they used a coping method to get Ally talking. She told them how the Tall Man had kept asking Chelsea “where is it” and that she hadn’t been asked questions. And so the team believed that there really was someone out there impersonating the legend.
JJ had gone back to her old high school to talk to the girls’ friends. They figured that the Unsub must have been told by one of the girls that they were going to head into the woods and so the team tried to pinpoint who that was. JJ learned that Bethany had a secret boyfriend. She wouldn’t tell anyone not even Chelsea who this boyfriend was and so Chelsea tried found out on her own.
Chelsea took Bethany’s new locket that everyone was sure that Bethany got from her boyfriend and she hid it. JJ told the rest of the team what she learned and they came with a possible scenario. They believed that this boyfriend wanted to strike out at Chelsea for taking the necklace and that he might also be angry with Bethany for showing off.
The team went back to Ally and they had her describe the room she was taken too. She said that there was just the one entrance and she mentioned how there was sheets up on the walls. Some of what she said had reminded JJ of a place and so JJ asked Ally what was on the ceiling. Ally said that there were pink stars on the ceiling and that told JJ where the girls were.
She informed the team that there was an old train car that was the hangout spot back in the day and she said she could lead them to it. JJ later brought her friends to the train car and they found Chelsea, but Chelsea was seriously injured and Bethany was gone. They found the rope that tied Bethany on the floor and it was tied with a loose knot that Bethany could have unraveled at any time.
The only reason Bethany was pretending to be tied up was because she was in on the plan. She and the Unsub had been working together to get the locket back and no one knew why until Chelsea woke up for a few moments and recognized the necklace around JJ’s neck. The necklace had once belonged to JJ’s sister and so she warned her team that they had been wrong about the profile.
They initially believed that the Unsub was a teenager and he was much older. He was old enough to have known JJ’s sister because JJ suspected that the Unsub both gave them a similar necklace as part of his seduction routine. The team realized they were looking for a predator and at first they thought it was Chelsea’s father, only he didn’t recognize the necklace and so JJ’s sister got it from somewhere else and JJ was the only one that could lead them to the Unsub.
JJ was eleven when her sister Roslyn killed herself. Rossi walked JJ back through her memories and JJ remembered how her sister had given her the necklace because she wanted JJ to be strong. In a frazzled teenager’s mind, Roslyn probably thought she was protecting JJ from the predator and so Roslyn never knew that JJ wasn’t this guy’s preferred age. He liked teenagers who were vulnerable like Roslyn and so seeing someone as strong as JJ wear that necklace would have given him pause.
Rossi asked JJ who did that remind her of at Roslyn’s funeral and the answer was Mr. Howard. Howard was the guidance counselor at the local school and he’s worked there since Roslyn. He must have used his position to determine which girls were the most vulnerable and that’s how he’s stayed out of the system so far. Then the whole necklace thing happened and he must have been scared about getting found out.
The team brought in Mr. Howard and JJ used her position as Roslyn’s sister to pretend that she was on his side. She said that Roslyn told her about how much she loved him and so she got Howard to reveal something. He liked using the school as his hunting ground and he wasn’t afraid to return there to dump Bethany. The team found Bethany at the school and she had needed to be resuscitated.
JJ was able to bring her back around and the teenager was well enough to later slap Mr. Howard for him leaving her for dead, but JJ got to inform Howard that he would be going to jail for all the girls he targeted and that’s thanks to his cache of photos that he had on his computer. He was never going to get out again and JJ finally felt some closure with having found out what happened to her sister.
Roslyn fell victim to a predator and, when she realized it, she thought that she had nothing left. Her parents were arguing all the time and her little sister was still just a kid herself. Roslyn killed herself because she thought she was alone and her death led JJ to joining the BAU.
JJ eventually got a new necklace when her husband gifted her one with pictures of their two boys inside.
THE END!