| “ | Do you see Mr. Scratch?. | „ |
| ~ Mr. Scratch in Season 10. |
Peter Lewis, also known as ''Mr. Scratch" or simply "Scratch", was a serial killer by proxy, hacker, and stalker who first appeared in Season Ten of Criminal Minds. He later escaped with twelve other serial killers in Season Eleven and later became the primary antagonist as he targeted the BAU throughout Season Twelve until his death in Season Thirteen.
He is portrayed by Bodhi Elfman.
History[]
Lewis born in Jacksonville, Florida. He had an extremely high intellect; his parents ran a foster home that took in several children who were waiting for adoption. During the day-care sex-abuse hysteria of the 1980s and early 1990s, some of the children made claims that Lewis's father Neil would dress himself and the other children as the Devil, causing people to believe there were child abuse and the practice of Satanic rituals occurring inside the home. At first, the claims were met with skepticism from police, but a core member of the Believe the Children movement, a psychologist named Doctor Susannah Regan, convinced local law enforcement to believe the children. As a result, on March 5, 1985, the group home was shut down and Neil was sent to jail for child abuse and child endangerment. While the investigation was still pending, the other inmates killed him for his status as a pedophile; Lewis was thirteen at the time.
Lewis eventually attended Harvard University and after graduation, was hired by the National Security Agency. The NSA did not employ him just for his skill, but also to keep him under close watch, a practice long in use by the agency, since math geniuses like him were too dangerous and unpredictable to risk them working anywhere else.
In 1992, the FBI's Lanning Report helped the BAU and other federal agencies evaluate Susannah's work and debunk it. This left her credibility in ruin and forced her to go into witness protection after she began receiving numerous death threats. Realizing the closure of the group home and his father's death were all for nothing, Lewis began seeking revenge against Susannah and the children who were responsible for the scandal.
Season 10[]
Mr. Scratch[]
After forcing Daniel Karras, Christine McNeil, and Larry Merrin to hallucinate Mr. Scratch and kill their loved ones, the BAU noticed a pattern in the interrogations and investigate the occurrences. Lewis then targets Bill Kinderman and attempts to make him kill his son, but Bill's paternal instinct overrides his hypnosis, and he commits suicide instead. Reaching his end game, Lewis hacks into the witness protection database in the BAU headquarters in Quantico to find Susannah, causing a widespread blackout in the process. Reid deduces from the code used to hack into the Quantico database that the unsub works for the NSA. Appealing to Tony Axelrod, an NSA employee, Hotch identifies the unsub and who he is targeting next. He goes to Susannah's house but finds that Lewis is already there. Lewis forces Susannah to kill herself in front of Hotch, then drugs him and talks to him in an attempt to make him see Mr. Scratch.
As they talk, Hotch deduces that Lewis was in Susannah's interviews as well, giving testimony against his father. At first, he is enraged by this, but Lewis then takes it as a challenge to get into Hotch's head. He makes him hallucinate Lewis killing Reid, Rossi, and Morgan; and then tries to goad him into shooting the real Reid and Rossi as they try to enter the house. However, Hotch overrides the suggestion and tries to shoot Lewis instead. Dodging the bullet, Lewis retreats into a room in the attic and waits for Morgan and JJ to arrive. When they do, he surrenders immediately, satisfied that he had gotten into Hotch's head. As he is put into a police car, he smiles at a watching Hotch, taps his temple, and smiles tauntingly at him. As the car drives away, Lewis looks over his shoulder to take one last look at Hotch.
Season 11[]
The Storm[]
Hotch is incriminated for conspiracy, during his interrogation, the interrogator Timonthy Ritchie shows tapes of a recording in which appears Peter Lewis testifying against Hotch, this interrogation led the US Department of Justice to investigate Hotch's recent leadership skills. After the BAU finishes the case and managed to prove Hotch's innocence, they soon received the news of a prison breaks in three different states and that thirteen serial killers escaped with Lewis being one of them. It is revealed that Lewis's testimony was only part of his escape plan the whole time and was involved with the people who framed Hotch.
Season 12[]
The Crimson King[]
After Lewis escaped from prison, he decided to continue his experiments, changing his victimology to people who suffered from dissociative identity disorder (DID). At some point, Lewis managed to abduct Daniel Cullen, a.k.a. "The Crimson King", an "injustice collector"-type serial killer who was another escapee. He also relocated to Tempe, Arizona (Cullen's old hunting ground), where he attended a support group in Arizona State University under Reid's name. There, he found a patient named Brian Phillips, who became his first target. He abducts and drugs Brian, makes him believe that he is the Crimson King, and forces him to copy Cullen's M.O. Lewis first has a drugged Brian carve "BAU" into his own stomach, making it appear that Brian was a victim of Cullen's who had escaped, which prompts the local police to summon the BAU team.
Brian commits several crimes while in that induced state and eventually escapes from a hospital with a list of DID patients from across the country, which the BAU acquired as part of the investigation. He returns to Lewis, who invites him inside a house he had purchased, has him lay down on a surgery table, and drugs him again. Afterward, Lewis tells Brian that he has to go, but not before showing him Cullen. Lewis tells Brian that Cullen thinks he is the Crimson King and asks him what he will do about it, then leaves Brian to torture Cullen, taking the patient list with him. Though the BAU is able to stop Brian and rescue Cullen, they are unable to find Lewis. At the end of the episode, Lewis is seen in another hideout looking through files relating to the list. He finds the name of his next victim, Desmond Holt, who lives in Franklin, Tennessee. Peter says, "There you are", draws a circle around Desmond's full name and address, and smiles.
Elliot's Pond[]
Immediately following the events in Arizona, Lewis began stalking Hotch's son Jack. He first appeared at one of Jack's soccer games, prompting the FBI to put Hotch and Jack on 24-hour surveillance. Lewis then attempted to visit Jack at his school while the BAU closed a child abduction case in California. As a result, Hotch and Jack went into witness protection, while Hotch resigned from his position as BAU Unit Chief and recommended Prentiss for the position, so Jack won't be endangered through him any further.
Mirror Image[]
At some point, Lewis managed to abduct both Desmond and Gabriel Lewis, the younger brother of Doctor Tara Lewis. Lewis brainwashes Desmond into believing that he is Gabriel while he held the real Gabriel captive in a warehouse, which is booby-trapped with a device that fires nails from the ceiling. While investigating Gabriel's whereabouts, Tara and Alvez find a TV screen depicting a videotape of Gabriel yelling out "Luke" repeatedly. They find the tape, just in time to see Lewis putting a gas mask on Gabriel and saying tauntingly, "Luke can't help you now." It is later revealed that Gabriel wasn't yelling out Alvez's name, but instead the Gospel of Luke, which turns out to be an important clue in the case. By the time the BAU rescue Gabriel from the warehouse and avoid the trap, though Lewis has escaped again.
True North[]
Lewis was later spotted in Honduras by an associate of Stephen Walker, who managed to take a photo of him and send it to the BAU. This seemed to confirm his involvement in Nadie's murder, as he would have had to cross through Mexico to get into Honduras. As a result, the BAU launched a campaign to petition the NSA and Interpol to add Lewis to a terrorist watch list because of his taunts to the FBI. Meanwhile, Lewis has a series of cognitive interviews with Reid in prison. By the end of the episode, Reid finally remembers that a woman was responsible for drugging him and forcing him to kill Nadie, which apparently exonerates Lewis.
Green Light (Part 1)[]
Lewis was officially exonerated of Nadie's murder by the BAU when Lindsey Vaughn and Cat Adams were identified as the only ones behind it and the framing of Reid. The two had learned about Lewis and his history with the BAU and decided to copy his M.O. as part of their plan to frame Reid.
Red Light (Part 2)[]
Lewis launched another attack against the BAU, beginning it by posing as Garcia and texting Morgan using her cloned cellphone number. In the text, he claimed that Reid had been released from prison and was now with his mother in a safe-house. However, Morgan became suspicious of the text and informed the BAU about this. As a result, Garcia pinpoints the origin of the text and the team heads to the location. However, once they are on a lonely street, Lewis disables their SUVs with spike-strips. Then, he (or possibly someone else, given Lewis's preference for using proxies) rams into the SUVs with a semi-truck, abruptly ending the episode and leaving the team's fate unknown.
Season Thirteen[]
Wheels Up[]
Directly after the crash, everyone except for Stephen Walker comes out alive, but Lewis drugs Emily at the crash site before abducting her with the intent of forcing her to give him Hotch's coordinates. After some torturous hallucinations brought on by the drugs, she eventually breaks the hallucinations with the phrase "Wheels Up," and she escapes as the team arrives. Reid and Lewis exchange fire once before Luke Alvez gives chase. Alvez follows Lewis to the top of the building and they exchange fire, causing the platform that Lewis is standing on to break, leaving him hanging from a ledge. Asking Alvez for help, he hesitates, but Lewis loses his grip, sending him falling to his death.