Alert Missing Persons Unit Season 3 Episode 7 Recap: April

Fox’s ‘Alert: Missing Persons Unit’ tackles another challenging case in the seventh episode of its third season when a woman named April goes missing. The episode begins with her looking at engagement rings with her friend, as she is in a happy and fulfilling relationship and wants to take it a step further. However, her plans are ruined when she is kidnapped and thrown into what seems to be a walk-in freezer. With the risk of hypothermia setting in, she has only a day, at most, before she dies. The MPU must find her within this time frame, but for that, they have to solve another mystery that relates to the death of several women. SPOILERS AHEAD.

A Cold Case Connects to the Latest Disappearance

A new case for the MPU comes in the form of a man named Jeffery walking into the MPU office with a box. He reveals that his fiancée, April, has gone missing, and he believes that his father, Walter, may have something to do with it. He reveals that his father has fallen into a coma, and when he was going through some stuff in the basement, he found a box with the photos of him and April. It seems that Walter has been keeping an eye on them. But what truly concerned him was the discovery of another box of weapons and stuff used to harm people. Jeffery worries that his father may have done something to April.

The problem is that Walter is in the hospital, and until he wakes up, he cannot be interviewed or interrogated. The team gets lucky when the man regains consciousness. Jason thinks about wasting no time and arresting the man, but before he can do that, a familiar face shows up to tell him that he cannot always have things his way. It is Lt. Gabrielle Bennett, Jason’s ex-colleague from Philadelphia PD. She used to train under Jason, but when she got tired of him working his way around the rules, she came clean about it, and Jason was forced to move on.

Despite the friction between them, the importance is given to the case. Gabrielle is intent on arresting Walter because evidence reveals that he is a serial killer known as the Ringbearer. He was called that because he would abduct women, kill them with hypothermia, and then return their bodies, minus their ring fingers and their rings. The women would be either divorced or those who got a restraining order against their exes. The murders started a couple of years back, but the killer was so precise with the killings that he did not leave any clues behind. Now, when there is a possibility that Walter could be it, Gabrielle is not ready to leave anything to chance, even if it means working with Jason again.

The Father and the Son Blame Each Other for the Horrific Crimes

When Jeffery walks into the station with the evidence pointing a finger at his father, he seems to be entirely aware of what he is doing. In the box, Kemi and Mike find another box that turns out to have the rings of the women killed by the Ringbearer. In a way, this confirms that Walter is the said killer and must have abducted April as well. However, when the old man is interrogated, he reveals that the box belongs to Jeffrey. He claims that when he confronted his son, they got in a fight, and Jeffrey threw him down the stairs, hence the injury.

With the father and the son blaming each other, the MPU is conflicted about whom to believe. Moreover, they are yet to find April, and the clock is ticking on her life, which means they must figure out who is telling the truth. Jason asks for Wayne’s help, who looks into the previous deaths and discovers that all the women had been to the same court to have their divorce or other documents handled, and Jeffrey processed all of them. This creates a clear connection between him and the Ringbearer’s victims, hinting that he could be it. When Kemi tries to get Jeffery into the interrogation room to talk, he holds her at gunpoint and locks himself and her in a room. His only demand is that his father be questioned and April be found as soon as possible.

Wayne discovers Jeffery couldn’t have abducted April because he was at work then. Now that he has an alibi, it is clear that Walter has abducted her. Meanwhile, Kemi gets Jeffery to confess to the fact that he and his father killed the women together, which means that there had always been Ringbearer serial killers. They did it out of hatred for Jeffrey’s mother, who walked out on him when he was a kid. This led the father and son to hate the women who would drop out on their families by getting divorces. It seemed logical to kill these women for a while, but then Jeffrey met April and fell in love with her. His father couldn’t digest that his son had fallen for a divorcee, so he decided to rectify the situation when his son wouldn’t listen to him.

The Search for April Ends on a Complicated Note for Jason

When it becomes clear that Walter abducted April, Jason and Mike try to scare him into telling them where she is being held. However, he tricks them, making it even more difficult to find the victim. This is when Wayne works her magic. She discovers that Walter used to work at a meat processing plant, which is close to the location where he took the MPU team. She tells Jason and Mike to keep looking around and find a walk-in fridge. Luckily, they find it in time, and April is saved. She is immediately taken to the hospital. The news of her rescue defuses the situation with Jeffery, who releases Kemi and surrenders himself.

Gabrielle is impressed with Wayne, considering the initiative she showed in the investigation and how, without her, April couldn’t have been saved. It seems that Jason needs to acknowledge this as well, but he messes things up with her. At the beginning of the episode, Wayne tells Jason about a job offer that requires her to move to a different town. Because she is not too keen to leave Philadelphia, she wonders if Jason can get her a job at MPU. While he doesn’t doubt the fact that she is immensely talented, he is not sure about having her around all the time. So, he lies and tells her that Mike refused to hire her on the grounds of her criminal background.

Wayne expresses this disappointment in front of the team, where she is told that Mike is not the authority on hiring people. This exposes Jason’s lies, so by the end of the case, she takes the job that requires her to leave. Jason apologises to her, but his actions have shown her that perhaps, he doesn’t want her around, so she is ready to move away. She doesn’t know how long the job will require her to stay out of Philly, but it will be long enough for her and Jason to figure out what they really want from each other, and most importantly, if they still want each other at all.