Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network 

Show Name:  Real Cases, Fictional Minds

Episode Title: Episode 2: Dinner is Served 

You are listening to Real Cases, Fictional Minds, the podcast with your host(s) Jaylli Kushi.

In this episode of Real Cases, Fictional Minds, we discuss: Criminal Minds Season 3 Episode 8, Lucky, and how it is based on the true crime killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Segment 1: Satanic Serial Killer

In this dark and disturbing episode, the BAU travels to Bridgewater, Florida, after being called in after the torso of a college student, Abby Kelton, is found in the Everglades, a swamp in Florida. The lower half of her body had been eaten by alligators, and there seems to be an inverted pentagram carved into her chest, along with her throat being slit. The BAU turns the body over to the coroner, and the autopsy reveals Abby was force-fed ten severed fingers. The forensics team determines the fingers belonged to 10 different women, none of whom were Abby, hinting at a signature or message from the unsub. This evidence leads the team to think the killer has been active for years. Since each finger belonged to a different woman, the forensics team was able to obtain fingerprints. Garcia, who is their technical analyst, used those fingerprints to identify the women as 10 missing sex workers from the area. This led the BAU to confirm that Ferrel had been killing for some time without being noticed. The number of fingers proved that the unsubs' crimes were not a recent occurrence. The team profiles the killer as a white male in his 30s, socially isolated, and likely previously institutionalized for mental health issues, and is no longer taking medications because of the brutality of his crimes. They called him an “adaptive satanist”, someone who twists religious passion to justify his twisted fantasies, and who's now deliberately trying to get noticed after years of flying under the radar. The unsub's actions suggested an obsession with false Satanic rituals, which are not based on real beliefs but delusions. Rossi, one of the seniors on the team, had expertise on Satanic cults, which was crucial to the case; he believes true ritualistic killings are rare and that the symbolism is often a cover for other violent urges. Agent Prentiss and Rossi go to examine a crime scene where another victim, Tracey Lambert, was abducted. Inside the public restroom stall, they discovered a small stack of books nearly piled on top of the toilet, which is super weird and has very odd placement and is completely out of place for a public bathroom, which immediately drew Rossi’s attention. He explains to Prentiss that this meticulous act of how he ordered the book is something that severely mentally ill individuals often do, because they have chaos in every aspect of their lives, and they are trained to create a sense of order, such as keeping their belongings clean and neat. Prentiss then calls Garcia to have her research local institutions, which directs the team's focus to a psychiatric facility in Bridgewater. Hotch and Reid, the other agents on the team, ask Garcia to cross-reference records of local institutions, looking for patients who had been committed for violent acts, especially with a history of arson. Why? Because the records they needed were believed to have been destroyed in a fire in Hazelwood Hospital for the Criminally Insane, which suffered a fire years earlier that destroyed most of its files. Hotch and Reid visited the burned-out hospital and found out that one staff member, Dr. Lorenz, they needed to talk to, had died in the fire while trying to save a patient's file. Luckily for the team, Dr. Lorenz’s salvaged notes and journal provided the information the team needed. Reid was able to read the doctor’s journal, which documented the institutionalization of a 7-year-old boy named Floyd Feylinn Ferell. The journal said he had been institutionalized for attacking his 9-month-old sister and eating a piece of her flesh. He believed he was possessed by a “flesh-eating demon.” Despite his dangerous history, he was released at the age of 18 against medical advice because that was one of the hospital rules, to release their patients at the age of 18 if they thought they were not a threat to the world anymore. After finding out the potential unsub's name, they found an address, so as they always do, the team, accompanied by local law enforcement, burst into Ferell’s home, where they made a disturbing discovery. When they entered, they found a relatively normal-looking but dirty house. But here's the weird thing, eerie music guided them towards the basement, where they found a gruesome scene. Ferell was found naked in the basement, sitting before a satanic altar with blood everywhere. The team arrested him, and he was weirdly calm, initially refusing to talk when the team asked him where Tracy Lambert was. Along with Ferell, in the basement, there was a large freezer that contained 4 frozen bodies of Ferell’s previous victims, revealing the extent of his cannibalistic history. The team also found a captive woman, unfortunately not Tracy but a woman named Sheryl Timmons, which luckily is still alive, but in a terrified state. Now, let's go back to the beginning of this case, because the BAU found the victim with a satanic symbol carved into her chest, the authorities interviewed Father Marks, the pastor at the local church, to gain a better understanding of the religiousness of the community. Agents Morgan, Rossie, and J.J visit the local church and interview him, wanting to know if there had been any recent incidents of vandalism, threats, or strange behavior reported to the church. Father Marks insisted he was unaware of any suspicious activity that would point to a killer within the community. Speaking of community, when the town gathered for a search party for Tracy Lambert, everyone was there, including Father Marks. In between shifts of the search party, there was food being served to those who had helped, one of the foods being chili, now keep that in mind. Now, back to the arrest of Ferell, when he first got to the station, he refused to talk to anyone but his priest, Father Marks. During his interrogation with Father Marks, he acts remorseful, claiming to feel that God has abandoned him. Father Marks attempts to console him by saying, “God is in all of us.” At that moment, Ferell’s persona completely shifts. He gives a dark, knowing smirk and calmly replies, “So is Tracey Lambert.” Father Marks and the agents understood all at once that Ferrel meant he had served chili during the search party… chili containing Tracey Lambert’s flesh. This moment solidifies Ferrell as one of the show's most disturbing villains, not just for his cannibalism, but for his psychological cruelty. 

Segment 2: Milwaukee Monster: Jeffrey Dahmer

Now let's take a look at the Milwaukee Cannibal. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21st, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From the outside, his childhood looked kinda normal, a quiet kid into science, and liked studying animals. But there were early signs that something wasn't right. He became fascinated with dead animals, collecting bones and roadkill just to see how things decayed. As he got older, he became more isolated, started drinking heavily, and by the time he was out of high school, he was already spiraling. He joined the US Army from January 1979 to March 1981 but was discharged for alcohol related issues. His first murder happened way earlier than most people realize, in 1978, when he was just 18. He picked up an 18-year-old hitchhiker named Steven Hicks, who was on his way to a rock concert, and brought him back to his parents' house in Bath Township, Ohio. Hicks wanted to leave, but Dahmer didn't want him to go, so he decided to kill him. He hid the body on his family's property, later disposing of it. Then, for almost 10 years, Dahmer didn't kill again. But that doesn't mean the darkness went away; it was just waiting to strike again. When he started killing again in 1987, it was like something snapped. He met a 24-year-old named Steven Tuomi at a bar in Milwaukee and killed him in a hotel. Then, at the beginning of 1988, he picked up a 14-year-old named Jamie Doxtator, who was one of his youngest victims. He was lured to Dahmer’s grandmother's house and killed there. His first victim, who was ever taken back to his place, was a 25-year-old named Rickard Guerrero, who was killed in March of 1988. Over the next few years, Dahmer murdered 16 more men and boys, ages ranging from 14-33, most of them in Milwaukee. He would meet his victims in gay bars and bathhouses, malls, or just on the street, and he usually offered them money or drinks to come back to his apartment. Once there, he used alcohol and drugs to incapacitate his victims and killed them using strangulation or other blunt-force means. After killing them, he would keep their remains, photos, skulls, and even parts of their bodies. What made his crimes so shocking wasn't just the violence; it was what came after he was killed. Dahmer kept souvenirs, like trophies, and tried to create what he called a “permanent companion.” Investigators also documented acts involving sexual abuse and acts that have been described in press reports as necrophilia and cannibalism. It's one of those cases where reality almost feels too disturbing to be real. But everything started to unravel on July 22nd, 1991. Dahmer met a man named Tracy Edwards and convinced him to come back to his apartment. Edwards managed to escape after a terrifying struggle and ran into the street, flagging down 2 police officers. He led them back to Dahmer's apartment, and what they found inside was out of a nightmare. There were Polaroids of dismembered bodies, human remains stored in the fridge and freezer, and a 57-gallon drum filled with acid. When they arrested Dahmer, that same day, he confessed almost right away, calmly explaining every detail as if he were talking about something normal in someone's everyday life. There is lots of controversy around his case because there were several points where Dahmer could have been caught sooner. In 1988, he was convicted of second-degree sexual assault of a 13-year-old boy but served only about a year in jail. In 1991, one victim, Konerak Sinthasophone, a 14-year-old, actually escaped while drugged and disoriented. Police stopped him on the street, but Dahmer convinced them that Konerak was his 19-year-old boyfriend who'd simply had too much to drink. That's right, after he escaped, Dahmer followed him onto the street. The officers returned the boy to Dahmer's apartment, where he was killed shortly after. The case raised questions about how police handled the investigation, the social marginalization of victims, many of whom were people of color or gay, and how crimes like this can go undetected for so long.  In 1992, he was convicted of 15 murders and sentenced to multiple life sentences, totaling hundreds of years by statute. He was later also tried in Ohio for his first murder and received an additional life sentence. During the trial, Dahmer said he never wanted to hurt anyone again and that he deserved to serve life. But instead, he spent just a few years in prison at Columbia Correctional Institution,  before another inmate named Christopher Scarver, bludgeoned him to death in 1994. Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes left a permanent mark on history, not just because of their brutality, but because of how long they went unnoticed. In the end, it's not just about the killer himself; it's about the lives lost and a system that failed to stop him sooner. Let's remember the victims, not just the name that stole the headlines. 

Segment 3: Compare and Contrast

So when you look at Floyd Ferrell from Criminal Minds, it's pretty clear he's inspired by the real-life case of Jeffrey Dahmer, but the show takes a religious route. Ferrel is portrayed as someone with a violent past who was institutionalised as a kid, which mirrors how Dahmer had a difficult childhood and was interested in things he shouldn't be. But while Dahmer's crimes were methodical and driven by a need for control, isolation, and how he felt a connection to his victims, Ferrell's include fake Satanic rituals, his wanting to share his disturbance with his community, like serving human meat at a search party. The show uses symbolism and profiling to solve the case. In the show, Ferrel was caught because of constant research done within days, while in real life, Dahmer was caught because one of his victims escaped and led the police right to his apartment. In both cases, law enforcement, does take a long time to catch these victims. In the show, the body they find suggests that Ferrell's crimes have been going on for a long period of time, and in real life, Dahmer went on for over a decade, even taking a break for almost 10 years after his first killing. It shows how real life sometimes doesn't need exaggeration to be just as disturbing as something fictional. 

Music Credits:   

• Intro/ Outro: Deep Breath by KonovalocMusic
• Transition: From the Underworld by KonovalocMusic

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