Jess LaCroix’s journey on FBI: Most Wanted came to a shocking end.
Just after he and girlfriend Sarah began making a new life for themselves, Jess had to take on the hunt for a dangerous stalker.
It led to a moment that lives up to the episode title, Shattered.
A stalker on the warpath
The episode opened with a young man (Joshua Crockett) racing into a New Jersey house, acting like he’d been reading as his parents (Derrick Williams and Valisia LaKae) returned from a fundraiser event. As the teen left, he was grabbed by a man (Toby Hemmingway) with a gun, who forced the family on the couch.
He demanded the father tell him who had been meeting him at the hospital and when he refused, shot their son and warned his wife would be next.
Sarah found Jess painting the house as she suggested some vacation ideas. He suggested they try a fun trip to the Bahamas.
The victims were Dr. Darien Johnson with his wife Jade and son Kelvin. The local cops called in the FBI with a tollbooth photo showing Harley Ross (Toby Hemmingway), who had a long sheet of drug offenses. The team was puzzled why the man would hang around the house eight hours after killing the family, and it didn’t seem like a robbery.
Dr. Johnson’s secretary was heartbroken, wondering why anyone would kill a wonderful man who volunteered for local clinics. There was no record of Harley being a patient of Johnson’s, leaving his motives a mystery.
The team checked out Harley’s home. He inherited the family house from his late father after his mom left as a kid, but indulged in drugs and instant gratification like TV and video games. They found blood in a room along with a woman’s belongings.
The fingerprints matched Lucy Carver, who appeared to have no records in the system. The team speculated there might be a connection with the Johnsons. They spoke to her estranged brother Sawyer (Billy Beyrer), who revealed Lucy had been with Harley and they grew up with an abusive father.
He also speculated their parents’ “accident” was their father driving their mom off a cliff. Lucy had traded one controlling man for another. The team was determined to find her.
Across town, a woman (Loti Hammell) was sending a neighbor home, and as soon as the door closed, a gun-toting Harley stepped behind it to drag her upstairs where her husband (Stan King) was bound and gagged to a chair. He played Russian Roulette to get the man to give him details about a website.
Racing to get to the target
The team found the dead bodies of Hope and Allen Larson, their computer showing a website for a jewelry spot called Blue Bamboo. Allen had been a coordinator at one of the hospitals Johnson worked at. The team investigated the hospital to try to find Harley’s motive.
A nurse at the hospital related that Harley and Lucy had been patients at the hospital. Johnson suspected Harley had beaten her and called in Allen for help. When Harley raised a fuss, they had to let Lucy go with him.
Harley showed up at a chop shop, offering drugs to use a laptop and calling on a woman named Crystal for help.
The records showed Harley had been abusing Lucy for years, reminding Jess of Sarah’s ex-husband. Hana found a laptop that revealed Lucy had ordered a necklace in the middle of the night with the pickup spot being a church.
A surveillance video showed Lucy in a car and Harley hunting her. The team realized the website was the cover for a network to help abused women escape their attackers.
Jess met with the site’s owner, Kate Adams (Jennifer Regan), who had lost her friend to an abusive boyfriend and set up a network to help other women. The “orders” were a code for where to meet, and Harley had somehow stumbled onto it. That meant they had to find him before he hurt anyone else while searching for Lucy.
Harley tracked down a woman named Alicia (Joanna Lamstein) and tried to drown her for information, but Alicia refused to talk. The team showed up and found her barely alive. Ortiz chased Harley, who managed to escape.
A shocking loss
The team went through some of the data and found an email sent from the chop shop. They raided the place, arresting the owner, Arson Gallegos (Chris Grant Winchell), a former cellmate of Harley’s. He’d been busy chopping up the cars of Harley’s victims and refused to talk despite the charges against him.
Crystal was interrogated and admitted Harley used her to pose as a victim to get a line on Lucy’s whereabouts. She also added Harley was trying to get “them” at any cost.
Ortiz tracked Harley down to a house in Brooklyn where a neighbor revealed Harley had dragged Lucy out of her apartment. Ortiz found the elderly couple Lucy had been staying with shot dead.
The team realized this was about more than just hurting Lucy after Barnes called in with records indicating Lucy had been pregnant. It appeared Lucy had been hiding Harley’s child, which set him off.
The team faced the troubling idea Harley would kill his own child before Gaines relayed the daughter, Mia, had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. Harley found out, which triggered him as he saw Mia as property, not a person.
Harley was choking Lucy (Kelly Swint) in a car before a call came in from the hospital. He drove there, searching for Mia, only to realize it was a trap set up by the FBI and he ran.
Jess hunted Harley in the parking lot, finding Lucy begging for help. He turned to see Harley firing his gun at him. As Jess went down with a bullet to the throat, the rest of the team shot Harley.
The team was at Jess’s side as he gasped for breath, the emergency staff racing to him, but it was too late.
At home, Sarah opened the door to find Barnes and Hana and instantly knew what happened. She sobbed into Barnes’ arms before sadly relating that she had bought non-refundable tickets to Bali. She railed on how unfair this was and “don’t tell me it’s going to be okay because it’s not.”
Sarah knew her next task was breaking the news to Tali, and the Bureau put her on a jet to Montreal. She arrived at the school alongside Byron, knocking on Tali’s door to destroy the young woman’s life.
It was a shocking loss for the entire team, and viewers, as FBI: Most Wanted will never be the same again.
FBI: Most Wanted returns with new episodes Tuesday March 22 at 10/9c on CBS.
What a shock!!! Viewers were totally blindsided. Jess was made for the part and the part for him. He will be missed.