She's dead! There's no possible way she could've survived!Connor O'Brien discovering that one of his victims survived.
Connor O'Brien is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Public Enemy". He is a spree killer who seeks to murder as many random people as he can in order to "outdo" his father, career criminal William O'Brien.
He was portrayed by Nate Mooney, who also portrayed Terry Willard in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Ryan McPoyle in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, as an adult, and by Randon Davitt as a child.
Biography
Early life
Connor's father, William O'Brien, was a career criminal specializing in arson for hire. In 1993, when Connor was 10, William burned down the family house in an attempt to collect the insurance money, and inadvertently killed his wife (and Connor's mother) Judy. He was arrested and charged with murder, and Connor testified against him, sending him to prison for life. Watching his father kill his mother irreparably traumatized him, however, and he grew up to be a psychopath just like his father, getting gratification from setting fires and destroying property to fuel his increasingly violent fantasies. He got a job as a fry cook at a diner frequented by police, and enjoyed hearing their lurid stories of violent crimes.
A month prior to the episode's events, William's prison sentence was reduced, winning him the chance to be paroled within a few years. Connor saw his chance to finally "outdo" his father by killing as many people at random as he could. Within the following two weeks, he killed two people in public places (one in a restaurant bathroom, another in a laundromat) by stabbing them and cutting their throats.
"Public Enemy"
Connor follows the Collins family into their church and sits behind the father, Paul, and then quietly slits his throat, using the ensuing panic and chaos to escape unseen. He then attempts to kill a young woman at a bus stop, but she gets away, so he kills the owner of a flower shop.
The local police contact the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to profile the killer, and they cordon off the area before Connor can escape. He decides to insert himself into the crime scene by pretending to be a witness, as when the BAU questions him, he claims that he tried to save the victim. Police officer Joseph Liddy, who knows Connor from the diner, later tries to detain him, but a panicked Connor stabs him to death and flees.
The following day, Connor overhears Liddy's fellow officers cursing out the killer. His ego wounded, Connor slips out of work to find another victim in order to regain his sense of power. He eventually kills a young woman at the local library in front of her child.
The BAU decides to draw the killer out by holding a press conference and lying that the woman survived. Sure enough, Connor goes to a vigil held in honor of the other victims, intent on "finishing the job" by killing the woman and anyone else he can find. When he sees BAU Agent Derek Morgan, however, Connor figures out the ruse and tries to run, but Morgan manages to subdue him.
Ironically, Connor is sent to the same prison as his father, who condemns his son for testifying against him, and mockingly asking if his mother knows where he is. Enraged, Connor acquires a shiv from another prisoner and stabs his father to death.
Gallery
Trivia
- Connor is inspired by multiple real-life serial killers:
- James Swann, a.k.a. "The Shotgun Stalker", a serial killer whose delusions and hallucinations drove him to kill and attack people in historic racial and ethnic neighborhoods in D.C.
- The unidentified "Axeman of New Orleans", a serial killer in New Orleans in Italian and Italian-American neighbors always leaving behind the axes they used at the scenes.
- Edmund Kemper, a.k.a. "The Co-Ed Killer", a serial killer known well by cops who killed six women in a continuous spree before he killed his mother, the object of his rage.
- Gary Taylor, a.k.a. "The Royal Oak Sniper", a serial killer with an every changing history of crimes and M.O.s.
- Pedro Filho, a Brazilian serial killer and vigilante who later murdered his father in prison for killing his mother.
- Scott Roeder, the shooter guilty of the assassination of George Tiller, a third-trimester abortion specialist who was murdered in his own Lutheran church while attending Sunday Service with his wife.
External links
- Connor O'Brien on the Criminal Minds Wiki
