10E21 - Mr. Scratch

The BAU is holding three different murderers - Larry Merrin, Daniel Karras and Christine McNeil. In each case, the victim is a loved one, with each murder taking place in a different part of the country. Christine is in a semi-comatose state. In the other two cases, the male murderers tell similar fantastical stories of not killing the victim, but of smelling burning sage before feeling ill and then being attacked by a shadow monster with talons. In both instances, they use the exact same terminology of "shadow monster" and "talon". The BAU knows that the killers were somehow placed under a psychotic suggestion using a drug. Each of the three murderers were adopted in 1985 when they were three or four years old, leading to the thought that each crossed paths with the unsub in the adoption system. When a fourth similar story arises, they realize another similar link between the four situations are people who have had what they believed to be repressed memories but were actually suggestions arising from therapy, those false memories which led to several people in authority, such as parents, teachers and clergy, being accused of long past crimes on children that never really happened. They have to work their way in Christine's subconscious to evoke memories of her childhood to discover the identity of the unsub and who his ultimate target is.