Criminal Minds was a long-running FBI procedural show which frequently featured references to famous serial killers and crimes. The Behavioral Analysis Unit, known as the BAU, often used these infamous killers to explain context or provide similar behaviors to those displayed in the cases they were researching. Sometimes the series did more than just reference these killers and actually based their episodes on real-life events. Season 1, Episode 16, "The Tribe," is one of those episodes. The killers of the episode are a group based on the infamous cult led by Charles Manson.
In "The Tribe," the BAU is called to investigate the brutal and seemingly ritualistic killings of a group of teenagers inside of a development home in Terra Mesa, New Mexico. The crimes are staged to look like they were committed using traditional Native American methods. Therefore, the BAU's first stop is to talk to the local reservation police, specifically a man named John Blackwolf, who is not only the police officer for the reservation but also a local activist for Native American rights.
Blackwolf quickly confirms that the killings were not committed by anyone from the reservation, but someone deliberately framing the local Native population instead. Blackwolf comes to this conclusion because he identifies a variety of different tribes' ancient practices, and none of them were practiced by the same tribe.
Eventually, the BAU discovers the existence of a local cult being led by a man they call "Grandfather." The original crime scene had one survivor, a young woman spared because her father had independently arranged for her to be kidnapped the same night. He wanted to protect his daughter from this very cult. The cult is lead by Jackson Cally. He was a university dropout who studied Native American heritage and used what he learned as part of his plot to create a race war between the white people and Native Americans. This motivation is where he is most similar to Charles Manson.
Mason, too attempted to create a race war by manipulating his followers to commit murder and tried framing the local Black Panther group for the crimes. He referred to his plot as "Helter Skelter" based on a song by The Beatles because he believed that the band's "White Album" was full of references to the coming White versus Black race war. They were also similar in other ways. Like Manson, Criminal Minds' Cally was a criminal long before he became a cult leader. Both Cally and Manson spent time in prison prior to becoming the cult leaders they were remembered as being.
Criminal Minds Season 1, Episode 16, "The Tribe," is about a fictional cult, but it is clearly inspired by Charles Manson and the Manson Family cult from the 1960s. Both the cult leader from the episode Jackson Cally and Charles Manson were lifelong criminals who enticed vulnerable followers to commit crimes in an attempt to launch a race war. Manson believed there would be a race war between Black people and white people, while Cally aimed to start a war between white people and the local Native American population. Criminal Minds often used real-life serial killers and criminals as inspiration for storylines, and "The Tribe" is a good example of that.
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