willow, criminal minds [ 1 ]

023. false flag

"It's time to get out our tinfoil hats, my fine furry friends, because we are on our way to Roswell, New Mexico, AKA, ground zero of conspiracy theorists because of a certain alien crash-- I mean weather balloon." Penelope says while handing out the files.

"The sheriff there has had two suspicious deaths over the last 48 hours." Emily says. "Both victims were members of the truther movement."

"Yes, which is a group of conspiracy theorists who share their out there beliefs online with each other. No judgment here. Let's look at our first victim Bryan Behar." Penelope says. "He believed that the fluoride they put in our drinking water is a mind control agent meant to keep us docile. He died by drowning. People drown all the time, you say. I say not in their own aquariums."

"So the M.O. matches his conspiracy." Matt says. "Is that a coincidence or a choice?"

"That depends on victim number two." Rossi says.

"Uh-huh. That's Carl Lee." Penelope says. "He's a JFK conspiracy nut who was shot once in the throat."

"As anyone who saw the Zapruder film knows, that's where the first bullet struck Kennedy." JJ says.

"Carl Lee we can definitively classify as a homicide, but the drowning death -- that could have another explanation." Luke says.

"That's why we'll be treating this as an equivocal death investigation." Emily says. "Wheels up in 20."

+++

"It looks like our two victims were talking via encrypted texts." Penelope says. "It took a while to break, and their conversation was short, but its content made my perfectly shaped eyebrows go, "Hmm?" Carl says to Bryan, "I think I'm close to finding out who it is." To which Bryan says, "Maybe we should go to the police." And Carl says, "What good would that do?""

"Well, that could be motive. Whatever Carl was close to finding could have killed him and Bryan." Matt says.

"At first glance, yeah. But we're talking about conspiracy theorists here, and a lot of them suffer from association fallacy." Luke says. "Let's say you thought Lyndon Johnson had JFK killed in order to escalate the war in Vietnam."

"That's ridiculous. Everybody knows that--" Rossi starts.

"No, no." Emily cuts him off. "We're not getting into that again. Go ahead, Luke." He glances between her and Rossi for a few moments. He looks at Molly who is smiling in amusement.

"Uh, my point is, that if you thought the government could do that, then you were likely to believe that they'd brought down the towers on 9/11." Luke says. "Pretty soon you're down that rabbit hole and you see everything as a plot."

"So maybe these guys weren't into anything." JJ says. "Maybe they just talked themselves into a group delusion."

"Okay, we should investigate that when we land." Emily says. "And since the police are mentioned so prominently on the text, they might know what the victims were looking into."

"The Chicago mob, right?" Matt asks. "Killed JFK."

"He gets it." Rossi says.

"No. Don't get him started, Matt." Emily orders. "Next, he'll be showing you YouTube clips."

+++

"So we went through Carl's meticulous log of his hardware, and the missing gun should be here." Matt says, holding a photo of an empty secret gun compartment. "It is a bodyguard 380. Now, if the unsub found this in a secret compartment, then he knows Carl, probably very well. And based on the fortress that Carl lived in, it'd probably be another truther. No one else could get that close."