Blood Relations

The BAU travels to rural West Virginia, the area around Wheeling, where two men, Clark Howard and Mathias Lee, were killed in separate incidents, both by some form of barbed wire as the murder weapon. The BAU learns that the men hated each other, leading to the question of whether the second killing was done in revenge of the first. They also learn that the men's feud extends to their extended families. The feud is currently led by Cissy Howard and Malachi Lee, the respective matriarch and patriarch of the two families, the two who have not seen or talked to each other in years by choice. What concerns the BAU is that barbed wire was stolen from three local farms, meaning that at least one other person is being targeted to be killed. The feud seems to stem historically to moonshine, and the BAU believes the current feud concerns production of today's version of moonshine: meth. But when they learn what the product being fought over is, their attention turns to Caleb Howard as the possible unsub, he being the sole known black sheep of the two families. The team will have to dig deep into Cissy's background to discover the full motive of the killings. —Huggo