Wayne Hitchcock

"It's only important that you know, Agent Burke."

Wayne Hitchcock is a serial-turned-spree-killer, family annihilator, mass abductor, and arsonist appearing in Paradise Lost in Profiler.

Background
Wayne Hitchcock has a brother named Jason who disappeared from being kidnapped. He was held captive for seven years, his parents crying on his shoulders in their grief. But at the end of those seven years, Jason escaped from his unidentified captor and found police who returned him home to his family. The stories wasn't just in the papers and gaining national attention, but a made-for-tv movie titled "All the Way Home" ripped from the headlines of the case. What no one found out after is Jason was doted on even more than Wayne once he came back, which left Wayne feeling abandoned and begrudged. It's also implied that he was constantly treated frighteningly by his parents, rebelled and had disturbed tendencies, and was even harassed constantly by Jason, who enjoyed soaking in all the attention he got for his own ego that kept inflating as time went by. Fed up with constantly being asked about the rest of his family, Wayne changed his last name to Hicks in college. He eventually got a job as a ranger for park services at Yosemite National Park, enjoying the work he did and living his life in comfortable peace. He felt his whole childhood flooding back into his mind in 2000 when he met a family vacationing in Yosemite, a mother named Ruth Lassen and her two daughters, Katie and Lisa. He took a liking to Katie's questions and enthusiasm to learn about the park, and he shared her resentment when he said Lisa was more doted on by her than Ruth. Once he got more exposure to their family dynamics, he snapped and decided to get notice about his own negligence and family's drastically chaotic dynamics. Whether holding them captive or attacking them all outright and stashing their bodies, he killed the entire family, leaving them missing for a week after. Once he felt motivated to start getting recognition, he made finds for the police to find the bodies to send a message about his life story.

Paradise Lost
Hicks is first seen driving the car up to a lot where The Laws Brothers and Garrett Lumley were drinking and doing drugs, intending to frame them for the murders temporarily to steer the police off track. He starts with opening the trunk, with Ruth's and Katie's corpses inside, stabbing them repeatedly. He finishes by pouring accelerant into a canister through a catheter, drenching the car with the solution, then lighting a road flare and dropping it into the car, leaving the whole vehicle and two bodies to bur in the fire. He's seen regularly as one of the responding officers on the scene, pitching into the investigation and giving notices on updates and clarifications regarding suspects and the park. He eventually brings the agents a postcard he wrote himself, which he says "just arrived in the mail", showing the location of Lisa's body in a stream, missing her head. George Fraley gives an accidental false lead leading to an anarchist named Cecil Young, starting a shootout Hicks is present at with his own shotgun. Although Young is arrested and his arsenal of deadly weapons is confiscated, Hicks grows even more overwhelmed and resentful at the police for not getting his message. To shock the police with another threat, he attacks Jane Weston, a Park Services employee who sets up camp in a designated area for the night. As she's cooking in a pan, she sees Hicks creeping up on her, leading to her throwing the water she was boiling in his face and striking him with the pan twice. This isn't enough, as he throws the pan out of her hand, chases her into the stream nearby as she screams, and stabs her to death, carrying her back to the bench she camped near to pose her body laid out under the sky. By this point, he's also gone after Edwin Laws and Mark Dolan, Laws he shot in a blitz attack, Dolan after being lured by Hicks once he lures him with the ruse of how the FBI suspected him. He's later seen patching himself up in his residence, watching the reunion scene near the end of the tv movie off his family. He picks up on how the team's closing in on him with a closer profile, and when Rachel Burke goes to check the Lassens' cabin, he holds his gun on her and talks about what he found out about Katie being ignored. When Burke says she knows it's personal to him, he confirms it by telling her his real name, then forces her deep into the woods. He says to her while they wade through the water just near the two dead male victims' graves that he wanted to "be set free" killing them, but when the team was more confident in their profiles, his intended message got out too much, leading them loser to him as well. Burke says that was him because he was trying to tell his story, which he lividly throws back at her, blaming them all for what translations of his story they "threw around" and saying they're powerless to stop him and other criminals, that the movie got it all wrong. He then goes own saying Lisa triggered the family massacre, judging him at first sight, whereas Katie actually cared to talk with him, the two of them even sharing their family backstories. Burke then says he didn't feel bad for Laws and Dolan, because they got the attention for his crimes, which he replied with Laws was more than Dolan, Dolan being easy to lure. Burke asks if he'll take the credit, but he says it's only important if she knows. When he makes one final statement of how his parents turned from him to Jason once he came back home, Burke looks down, just before she tackles him into the water. They fight, Burke forcing Hitchcock to drop his gun and beating him repeatedly to get away, and Hicks trying to drown her. He then takes out his knife saying he didn't want so quick and ending, but she's seen all she heeds to. Just as he's about to stab her, Bailey Malone arrives with John Grant and shoots Hitchcock once, sending him falling into the water. He survives the shot and is immediately arrested, recovering enough to stand trial.

Modus Operandi
Hitchcock's MO's widely varied as he progressed in his murders. He started with targeting the Lassen family because they resembled his own, but as he grew wilder in his spree, he picked off various people around his station at Yosemite like a devolving slasher villain. He had a variety of MOs, going from stabbing to shooting to attempted drowning. He was no stranger to postmortem mutilation, like stabbing Ruth and Katie Lassen found after they were dead before setting them and their car on fire, and for Lisa Lassen, he decapitated her. It's unknown if he killed the family outright or held them hostage for the week they were missing. He left their corpses on the site of where he murdered them or by moving them elsewhere in Yosemite, thus where Ruth and Katie were moved to the Laws' party and rape location to frame them and Lisa was left headless downstream from Dome Reservoir, Jane Weston was posed at the campsite she was killed at and Mark Dolan and Edwin Laws were left in graves where they were slaughtered after he lured them there. Hitchcock also sent a Yosemite postcard leading to Lisa's body.

Known Victims

 * The Lassen family
 * Ruth Lassen (stabbed postmortem; burnt while in her car trunk)
 * Katie Lassen (stabbed postmortem; burnt while in her car trunk)
 * Lisa Lassen (decapitated postmortem; left downstream from Dome Reservoir; sent a postcard revealing her location)


 * Jane Weston, 28 (Park Services employee; stabbed three times; posed on a picnic table postmortem)
 * The grave murders (both shot dead; left in shallow graves postmortem):
 * Edwin Laws
 * Mark Dolan


 * Rachel Burke (abducted, forced into the woods, and attempted to shoot, then drown, then stab in a scuffle; was rescued)

Trivia

 * The beginning of an episode says it was based off real events, but with a different story and changed materials. Given this, it's heavily suggested the episode was based off both Stephen Stayner, a boy who was kidnapped and raped for years by the captor before he escaped, and Cary Stayner, his brother and in adulthood a serial killer and rapist known as "The Yosemite Killer", having raped and murdered four women around the lodge resort he worked at.