'Criminal Minds' season 12 spoilers: Rossi gets a heinous surprise for his birthday

"Criminal Minds" season 12 will be back with another round of crazy investigations and murders for the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to solve with its latest recruit, Stephen Walker (Damon Gupton).

Details about the upcoming episodes of the show reveal that the coming year will not be short on extreme cases for the BAU to take a crack on.

"Criminal Minds" season 12, episode 9, "Profiling 202," marks the return of Tommy Yates (Adam Nelson), the serial killer who first appeared in the season 7 episode, "Profiling 101."

The latter's title was inspired by the number of victims that Yates had. If it is the same for the upcoming "Criminal Minds" season 12 episode, then he has been busy doing a murder spree although last time fans saw him, he was behind bars.

The synopsis of the episode teases that Yates, like before, will again reveal the location of his latest victim, as he did in the previous episode he was in.

For the uninitiated, Yates gets to choose the "special day" he would provide new information on the people he killed. Last time he revealed one, he chose Rossi's (Joe Mantegna) birthday to do so.

It looks like the serial killer is making it a tradition as Yates will again select Rossi's birthday for his annual spill-the-beans fest. The synopsis for the "Criminal Minds" season 12, episode 9 reads:

As Rossi conducts a profiling course on his birthday, he receives a call from his serial killer nemesis, Tommy Yates, telling him the location of his latest victim.

It will be interesting to see where this will go and what Yates really is up to. Either way, this sure makes Rossi's big day difficult to celebrate.

After all that, "Criminal Minds" season 12 will move on to episode 10, "Seek and Destroy," where the BAU will investigate a series of home invasions in upscale neighborhoods in San Diego, with some resulting in casualties.

"Criminal Minds" season 12 returns Wednesday, Jan. 4, at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.