'Criminal Minds' Season 11 Episode 17 Recap: "The Sandman"

The team behind the hit TV series ‘Criminal Minds’ sure knows how to keep their viewers glued to their seats and wanting for more as they keep on dishing out intense stories after another combined with cliff-hangers that will leave you wanting. So without further ado, here is a recap of this week’s episode titled “The Sandman”.

The BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) is now complete as Morgan is now back after six months of hiatus following his hostage and torture ordeal he went through. And now they are back to work with another case involving an UnSub who kidnaps a child and tortures the parents.

He slits the father's throat while he's sleeping and puts glue and sand on the mother's eyelids. The mother tries to open her eyes when she hears her child's screams. Eventually, the Unsub kills her.

The boy's body is soon found and it's clear that he was killed immediately after being abducted. The only lead the BAU has is a white male speeding away in a grey sedan from the crime scene. We also learn that the sand came from New York.

Since his first attempt failed, the UnSub went on kidnapping another girl and the mother was able to escape and live which enables the team to have more details about the kidnapper.

It turned out that the Unsub was Patrcik Sorenson, a white male who is a sadist and was looking for payback from his drunken mother for leaving him helpless at the hands of a pedophile when he was young. Patrick had told the authorities that he got through the assault by staring at an hourglass. 11 hours later, the boy was released, but his mother never showed up. Patrick was then tossed into the foster system.

It was then discovered that Patrick’s mother died and this has triggered Patrick to go on a kidnapping spree as a way of looking for an apology from his mother.

Patrick has his unique ways of leaving the crime scene. He leaves an hour glass and said the words "11" to the victim's mother. Thus, the BAU comes up with a plan: Let the victim's mother fake apologize to Patrick. It would buy her daughter some time and give the BAU ample time to locate the Unsub. It almost works, but during the call the victim's mother utters her daughter's name. Patrick snaps back to reality.

Good thing, the team were able to locate them and stop Patrick which killed him in the process.

Stay tuned for more updates about the next episode.