"In the past few weeks, three women have been abducted and murdered at different locations in Los Angeles," Jessica said as she displayed several photos of women on the screen, all of them attractive and graceful white women.
"Sydney Otto, 23, bank teller, killed 15 days ago; Vicky Hague, 39, art teacher, killed 6 days ago; and Linda Dean, 28, bartender, killed 2 days ago.
They were abducted from different corners of Los Angeles, with no connections in terms of social background. Each of them was missing for less than 24 hours before their bodies were found in public places."
"The killer doesn't seem to be hiding their actions at all," Emily remarked.
Jessica nodded and then showed the crime scene photos. "Garcia was so disturbed after organizing these photos that she cleared out the office snacks. Jack, you'll need to restock."
The images displayed three bodies, all nude and wrapped in blue waterproof sheeting.
"They look like they've been floating in water?" Reid squinted at the projection on the screen, sounding unsure.
The bodies were pale all over, with the skin around the joints wrinkled, as if they had been soaking in water for days. However, they didn't exhibit the typical bloating of drowned bodies, which made them appear somewhat unusual.
"The dumping sites don't seem to be near the ocean or any river; they were all found in trash dumps. Could they have been drowned somewhere else and then moved? That seems unnecessary," Jack commented in confusion. While it wasn't uncommon for bodies to be dumped after a murder, retrieving a drowned body only to dump it again was unusual, especially given the short time frame. He had never heard of anything like it.
"That's not the strangest part," Jessica shook her head, handing out the coroner's reports to the team.
"They weren't drowned in water."
"Methanol?" Reid exclaimed as he read through the report.
"Each victim had methanol in their lungs, which means they were drowned in methanol!"
Emily, resting her chin on her hand, read the report carefully. "This isn't the same as throwing someone into water. If the goal is to torture the victims, the killer must have a very private space to carry out the murders."
"What really freaked Garcia out is this." Jessica shrugged, pressing a button on her remote to display three photos of the victims' feet.
"Each victim had a small section of skin removed from the ball of their right foot."
"Methanol and skin? What kind of sick game is this guy playing?" Even Rossi, the most experienced among them, frowned in confusion.
"Methanol is the simplest form of saturated alcohol. It was first discovered through the distillation of wood and has many uses. Pure methanol has only a faint alcohol odor," Reid began his daily dose of encyclopedia-style explanations.
"Is it toxic?" Emily, always attentive to Reid's lectures, asked as she tried to follow.
"It's considered mildly toxic. It's one of the least favorite impurities for distillers. If ingested, 5-10 milliliters can cause a coma within 8-36 hours.
Fifteen milliliters can cause retinal damage and blindness within 48 hours, while 30-100 milliliters can cause central nervous system damage, leading to respiratory failure and death."
Before Reid could continue, Jack interjected with a mischievous grin. "The antidote is to drink a lot of high-proof alcohol, at least 60% ABV, because methanol itself isn't very toxic. The real danger comes from the formaldehyde and formic acid it produces when metabolized in the body.
Ethanol competes with methanol for alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver, giving the body time to excrete the methanol."
Reid, caught off guard, looked slightly wounded.
Emily responded by giving Jack a playful punch to shut him up.
Jack shrugged, amused. "Okay, okay. I've just been reading up on distillation lately, so I know that methanol is the main culprit behind hangovers. Let's get back to Dr. Reid and have him explain its uses."
Reid cleared his throat and gathered his thoughts before continuing his explanation.
"Methanol has a wide range of uses: as a solvent, antifreeze, polyester precursor, and even in explosives. During World War II, the German army added methanol to rocket fuel.
It can also be used to make plant growth stimulants to increase crop yields. But its most common use is in separating other chemicals."
"So, we can't narrow down the suspect pool by tracking methanol purchases?" Rossi, already feeling overwhelmed by the chemistry talk, came to a simple conclusion.
Reid hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I'm afraid not. Even if the killer needed enough methanol to immerse a body, it wouldn't be hard to obtain.
Methanol is also used in biofuels, and with California's large agricultural sector, many people can make it at home."
"Maybe we should focus on the bodies for now. Don't you think it's strange? All the victims were nude, but there's no evidence of sexual assault, and they fit the general standards of attractiveness. Doesn't that seem contradictory?" Jack suggested, tapping the table as he voiced his thoughts.
"It does. Even someone like Robert Napper, an impotent sexual sadist, would express his frustration and repression on his victims through excessive violence—just like the 'Boston Killer,'" Reid added.
---
Reid was referring to Robert Napper, one of Scotland Yard's major failures in the 1990s.
This twisted individual targeted women with children, leaving 86 victims in his wake. Jack had read about one of the cases, and it had raised his blood pressure significantly.
In July 1992, Rachel Nickell, a 23-year-old British model, was walking in Wimbledon Common, London, with her two-year-old son Alex.
Robert Napper attacked them in broad daylight near a pond. He knocked little Alex unconscious, then overpowered Rachel, dragging both into the bushes.
In front of her child, Napper slit Rachel's throat and attempted sexual assault. Due to his own issues, the assault was not successful, so in his frustration, Napper stabbed Rachel 49 times.
When the police arrived, they found Rachel in a pool of blood, with young Alex clinging to his mother's disheveled body, pleading, "Wake up, get up, Mommy!"
He had even stuck paper over her wounds, seemingly trying to stop the bleeding. It's said that some officers from Scotland Yard broke down on the spot.
It took nearly a decade for Scotland Yard to catch Napper, thanks to advances in DNA technology. During that time, they wrongly accused a homeless man, one female officer developed PTSD, and a police photographer had a mental breakdown.
After a long legal process, Napper was finally convicted 16 years after Rachel's murder and was sent to a mental institution.
---
"And then there's the matter of the missing skin on their feet. It doesn't seem to fit a sexual fetish like foot fetishism either," Emily continued, raising more doubts.
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