List of characters in Criminal Minds

The following list represents the characters related to the TV series "Criminal Minds".

Characters

Current characters

; FBI BAU Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi: Played by Joe Mantegna, Dave was in early retirement until his voluntary return to the BAU. He had retired in order to go on lecture and book tours. Rossi carries a chain containg the names of three children he saved during his early career with him on every case, as he never caught the killers of their parents. In episode 3x14 Damaged, he returns to the case with the his new team and catches the killer. His sidearm is an M1911 pistol.

; FBI BAU Supervisory Special Agent Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner: Played by Thomas Gibson, Hotch was formerly assigned to the FBI Field Office in Seattle, Washington. Currently, he is the head of the BAU team. He and his wife are parents of a baby son. Hotch's attempts to balance his family life and his job successfully is an ongoing theme on the show. His sidearm appears to be a Glock 19. He carries two guns.

:Hotch also has a younger brother named Sean. While they butted heads over Sean's decision to become a chef instead of a lawyer, they seem to share a fairly friendly relationship. Hotch helped Reid with his firearms qualification. He was formerly a lawyer before joining law enforcement. It was hinted that he was at one time assigned to SWAT. Hotch is generally seen as a very serious personality due to his role as head of the unit and members of the team have joked that he has no sense of humour. In the episode "Revelations", Hotch asks the team to describe his worst quality in a bid to decipher a hidden message Reid has given him, J.J. said he was a "bully" while Prentiss said he "didn't trust women as much as men". It was hinted that he had experienced abuse during his childhood in the episode "Natural-Born Killer" when he says some people grow up to be killers, and some grow up to catch them.

; FBI BAU Special Agent Derek Morgan: Played by Shemar Moore, "Derek Morgan" is a confident and assertive everyman character. He has a black belt in Judo and runs FBI self-defense classes. He and his two sisters (Sarah and Desirée) grew up in a tough urban neighborhood. After the death of his father, Morgan struggled somewhat, youthful fighting earned him a juvenile criminal record. He was taken under the wing of a local youth center coordinator, Carl Buford. Buford acted as a surrogate father to Morgan, leading Morgan to a college football scholarship.

:While Buford's reputation as an upstanding member of the community was instrumental in having Morgan's criminal record expunged, it is later revealed that Buford was also a child molester who had abused the young Derek Morgan. (episode 2x12, "Profiler, Profiled"). It was this abuse which ultimately lead Morgan to a career with the FBI. In a recent episode it is also suggested that the abuse inflicted on him led him to lose faith in God.

:Typically, Derek is and thinks of himself as Gideon's right hand man. He is often one of the first agents to enter a suspect's house, even going in with SWAT. He is an expert in obsessional crimes. He often makes good-natured fun of Reid's genius. Derek's sister has remarked that Derek often talks about Reid after he began to spout out statistics. He has a playfully flirtatious friendship with AV Tech Penelope Garcia. He once did 18 months undercover, which he mentioned in episode 1x08 ("Natural Born Killer"). He once insisted on staying with a woman whose car had been rigged to explode, refusing to leave until the explosive was defused. Though Gideon considered the act stupid, he also admitted that "a young man he greatly admires and respects" was putting his life on the line. In that same episode, Morgan said he had bomb squad experience. He puts this experience to use in episode 1x03 ("Won't Get Fooled Again"), reassembling a bomb using scorched fragments from the crime scene, in the same episode he also mentions that he has ATF experience. In the season 3 finale, he states that he used to be a Chicago cop. His sidearm, a Glock 19, holds a detachable flashlight. He also has a dog named Clooney, as revealed in episode 1x21 ("Secrets and Lies").

; FBI BAU Special Agent Dr. Spencer Reid: Played by Matthew Gray Gubler, Doctor Reid is a genius who graduated from high school at age 12. In his youth, his father left him and his mother, no longer able to deal with the paranoid schizophrenia of Reid's mom. Reid grew up learning nearly everything he knows from books, with his mother often reading to him. Still, Reid knew the way his mother was living wasn't healthy, and after he became overwhelmed with her care he had his mother placed in a mental institution. She is still there, and Reid has stated that although he sends letters every day, he is afraid to visit her. Reid is also worried about the fact that his mother's illness can be passed on genetically; he once told Morgan that "I know what it's like to be afraid of your own mind".

: In the first episode, Reid is a 23-year-old former Las Vegas schoolboy with a triple PhD. He turns 24 in episode 1x04 ("Plain Sight"). He has retained his computer-like personality, still often spouting relevant data during missions, and sometimes referencing statistics. Serving as the team's statistics expert, he has an uncanny ability for spotting complex patterns. He does not believe that genius can be measured, but admits that he has an eidetic memory, an I.Q. of 187, and the ability to read 20,000 words per minute (episode 1x01, "Extreme Aggressor") and also can remember books that he has read as young as six years old. Dr. Reid also serves as the team's handwriting analyst. Agent Derek Morgan finds Reid's intelligence and unique personality amusing. He often complains that Reid "knows everything" despite denying it in Broken Mirror (1x5) He went on a date with J.J., the only person who calls him Spence, to a Washington Redskins game, but nothing seems to have come of it. After that, in episode "Someone's Watching" (1x18), he seemed to start to develop a relationship with actress Lila Archer, the victim of the case, but it was cut short after the case was finished and they returned to their own lives. However, at the end of the episode, he was thinking about calling her but it seems like he never did.

: Reid was kidnapped and tortured by a killer with Dissociative identity disorder in the second season episodes "The Big Game" and "Revelations" (2x14/2x15). Although beaten and drugged with dilaudid, Reid managed to give the team clues to his whereabouts (via webcam) and killed his abductor just as the others found him. He took the Dilaudid with him, and in several of the following episodes appeared to be having trouble getting over his trauma. Although it was hinted that he was possibly on drugs, it was never addressed directly; and in the episode "Jones"(2x18), when confronted by Gideon after disobeying orders, Reid simply implied that he would no longer let his troubles affect his work. In the episode "Elephant's Memory" (3x16) he attended a support group meeting for addicts in law enforcement. He said he'd been experiencing cravings recently and spoke of the teenage suspect shot in front of him before being interrupted by a page from work. By the dialoge that happens as Reid leaves the meeting, and at the end of the episode, it is asumed that Reid has overcome his addiction and is working on staying clean.

; FBI BAU Special Agent Emily Prentiss: Played by Paget Brewster, Prentiss is the daughter of Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss. In her first appearance, she recognizes Hotch from one of his first commands: security clearances for her father. Her arrival surprises both Hotch and Gideon, as neither of them had signed off on the transfer. Prentiss insists her parents have not pulled strings for her. Ultimately, she joins the team at the end of episode 2x09 ("The Last Word") on a probationary basis. She replaces Agent Elle Greenaway. She is a graduate of Yale and has been working for the FBI for little under ten years, primarily in the Midwest. Due to spending her early life with her parents on diplomatic missions to the Middle East, she speaks fluent Arabic and is familiar with that area's local culture. She also speaks some Russian and Spanish. She appears skilled at chess, and it is possible that she is better at the game than Reid. JJ once asked Prentiss how she could handle the stress from being with the BAU, especially since her last position was a desk job. Hotch concurred that she had "never blinked," and Prentiss could only reason that she "compartmentalizes better than most." ("Revelations") After a bad date in the following episode, she admits to Derek Morgan that she is a "nerd," despite how much she tries to hide it. For this reason, she hasn't had much success romantically. She discovers that she and Morgan share similar tastes in books when they begin discussing Kurt Vonnegut. At the end of season 2, BAU supervisor Erin Strauss reveals to Emily that she arranged for Emily to join the BAU though Emily thinks she was accepted on her own merit. Strauss asks Emily to sabotage Hotch's career by spying on him and relaying confidences back to Strauss, especially concerning Elle Greenaway's shooting of a suspect and Reid's struggle with narcotics. She seems to consider this offer, and the season ends with a cliffhanger until the second episode of season 3, in which she resigns from the FBI to avoid betraying Hotch. Emily has previously told Hotch that she thinks politics "makes people distrustful" and "tears families apart," ("Sex, Birth, Death") implying that her home life as a child was not pleasant due to her mother's job. She returns to the team in the next episode, her resignation having never gone through system due to technical interference from Garcia, and the issue has not been brought up since. In episode 3x19 ("Tabula Rasa") a high school photo reveals that Emily was a goth. Also, in episode 3x12 ("3rd Life"), she implies to Hotch that she smoked as an adolescent as a way to rebel against her parents. In the season 3 finale "Lo Fi," she shoots and kills an armed suspect after the suspect shoots a New York police officer. Her sidearm is a Glock 19.

; FBI BAU Special Agent Jennifer "JJ" Jareau: Played by A.J. Cook, JJ often acts as the team's liaison with the media and local police agencies. She once went on a date to a Washington Redskins game with Reid, but little has come of it romantically. JJ graduated from East Allegheny High School near Pittsburgh, PA, where she was the captain of the varsity soccer team her senior year and earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh. She is a fully qualified federal agent, but has stated that she does not want to become a profiler. During one case, she accidentally stumbled upon a barn full of dogs who were known to eat human flesh. Though she survived by shooting them all, the event left her with brief psychological scars. At one point while safe and washing her hands, she hallucinated that one of the dogs was behind her, and ended up almost shooting Prentiss. (episode 2x15, "Revelations") She seems to have recovered in subsequent episodes. In the episode "North Mammon" in Season 2, after playing a key role in the case, she responds to Hotch's question about if she ever thought about becoming a profiler by saying that she likes being the voice on the end of the phone that the Detective or relatives of victims can talk to. It is revealed to the viewers in episode 3x18, "The Crossing", that JJ is pregnant. Her sidearm is a Glock 19.

; FBI Audio/Visual Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia: Played by Kirsten Vangsness, Garcia is the team's Audio/Visual Technician at BAU Headquarters in Quantico, VA. When she speaks with Morgan they use pet names such as "hot stuff", "sweet cheeks" or "baby girl". Although they haven't pursued a romantic relationship, Garcia did show mild jealousy at the sight of Morgan dancing with two other women. She is into online games, specifically MMORPGs. Garcia has said she can run U.S. Central Command from her office while also playing online poker. She is extremely protective of her computers and the FBI database. Some cases seem to eat away at Garcia, as she often gets nervous or upset when analyzing video or sound recordings of murders or other serious crimes, as she has to listen to and watch them over and over again many times. In one episode, she showed a fondness for Reid, offering to take him out on the town to distance himself from a subject, only to have it interrupted by the subject's attempted suicide. It is revealed in the episode "Penelope" that Garcia went underground after her parents were killed in a car crash and learned computer code as a way to deal with their loss. It is also revealed that she is considered by the FBI as one of the most dangerous hackers in the world, and, when she was finally arrested after several years of mercenary hacking, they offered her an expunged record and amnesty if she agreed to join the FBI.

Recurring characters

;Haley Hotchner:Played by Meredith Monroe, she is the wife of series regular Agent Hotchner. She and Hotch have a newborn son, Jack. Jack's name was revealed in episode 2x04 ("Psychodrama"). They are recently divorced due to her inability to cope with Hotch's job and duties.

;Agent Anderson:Played by Brian Appel, he appears in "Plain Sight" (1x04),"The Fisher King" (1x22 and 2x01), "The Big Game" (2x14), as well as "Honor Among Thieves" (2x20) and "The Crossing" (3x18).

;Agent Josh Kramer:Played by Gonzalo Menendez, he runs the FBI Field Office in Baltimore, Maryland, as well as the Organized Crime division in that city. As such, the two episodes which take place in Baltimore, "Natural Born Killer" (1x08) and "Honor Among Thieves" (2x20) both have him liaising with the BAU.

;Kevin Lynch: Played by Nicholas Brendon. Kevin was Garcia's replacement when she was taken off the case in "Penelope". He is also a former hacker, but he is also far messier than Garcia. When they met in the end of the episode, they fell in love with each other. They've apparently been dating ever since. They had a date at Garcia's apartment in the beginning of "Damaged".

;Detective William LaMontagne Jr.: Played by Josh Stewart. William works for the New Orleans Police Department. He worked with the BAU in the episode "Jones" in which they solved a case that his father, who was killed in the Hurricane Katrina, had been working on. While they were there, he and JJ became romantically involved, although he wasn't mentioned again until "In Heat". In that episode, he was brought to Miami where the UnSub had killed a friend and coworker of him. Then it was revealed that he and JJ had been secretly contacting each other since "Jones". JJ didn't want to reveal their relationship since she believed it would complicate their personal lives, but in the end, they went public with it. It was revealed, however, that the team had known about their relationship since "Jones". In episode 3x18, "The Crossing", it is revealed to the viewers that JJ is pregnant, and he is the father.

Former characters

; FBI BAU Supervisory Special Agent Jason Gideon: Played by Mandy Patinkin, Gideon is the BAU's best profiler. He helped Morgan and Reid through their nightmares. Prior to the series, he is said to have had a "famous breakdown" after he sent six men into a warehouse with a bomb in it. All six agents were killed, and he was heavily criticized about the event. He shows particular dislike for the practice of using religion as a defense or motivation for one's crimes. Gideon also has a son named Stephen, as shown in episode 1x11 ("Blood Hungry"). The nature of their relationship has not been directly stated, but it is implied that they have not seen each other very recently. Gideon began to lose confidence in his profiling skills after Frank murdered his girlfriend. During his final case in Arizona, he further lost faith in his abilities when his decision to release the unsub resulted in the deaths of both the unsub and a young woman. As a result of his actions Hotch was suspended and this was the final straw for Gideon. Leaving his gun and badge behind at his cabin with a letter for Reid to find, he left to wayfare and to regain belief in himself and happy endings. Gideon shared much in common with real life FBI profiler John E. Douglas, who has written many books on the subject. Similarities include that both controversially predicted an unsub would have a stammer, and both required a prolonged leave of absence due to stress related illnesses acquired as a result of the job Fact|date=February 2008.

; FBI BAU Special Agent Elle Greenaway:Played by Lola Glaudini, Elle was formerly assigned to FBI Field Office in Seattle, Washington; recently assigned to the BAU, expert in sexual offense crimes. Her father was a police officer but was killed in the line of duty. She is half Cuban and speaks Spanish. She was shot by an Unsub in the season 1 finale. Though physically recovered by the end of the season 2 premiere, the event still left her with psychological scars. These scars led her to act more harshly during a case involving a serial rapist. Ultimately, she killed the suspect before he could even be properly arrested. During this episode she mentions that the unsub wrote on the wall with her blood from the wound. She handed in her badge and gun at the end of the following episode, 2x06 ("The Boogeyman"), saying that it was not an admission of guilt.

Notable UnSubs

(UnSubs that have had some sort of effect on the show's storyline)

"Under Construction"

; Randall Garner

Portrayed by Charles Haid (voice) and Charley Rossman.

Episode(s): "The Fisher King" part 1+2.

Alias: Sir Kneighf, The Fisher King

; Frank Breitkopf

Portrayed by Keith Carradine.

Episode(s): "No Way Out" part 1+2.

Alias: None

Born in the 1950s, Frank was the son of a German immigrant, Mary Louise Breitkopf. He never knew his father. Frank was born highly intelligent and, thus, had very special needs, forcing his mother to take three jobs, including prostitution. Whenever a "customer" arrived, Frank ended up witnessing every time his mother slept with them. This turned him into a sexual sadist. When he was presumably in his 20s, he left home with a car and a trailer and started traveling around North America, killing people by sedating them with ketamine, a horse tranquilizer that renders the sedated person unable to move, but fully conscious and able to feel pain, and dismembering them alive inside his trailer which contained a soundproof makeshift autopsy room with a stainless steel table, a large number of cutting tools and images of the human body.

An early victim was Jane, who was 19-22 years old at the time and was caught on I-80 in Golconda, Nevada. When he was about to cut her open, however, she looked him in the eyes and felt calm. Since Frank got off on the fear in his victims' eyes, he completely lost interest in killing her and fell in love with her. After that, he sedated her completely and took her home.

Following that, he continued killing. He killed runaways, criminals and people that hardly anyone would miss, mostly women. He kept records of his killings in a small notebook. He took a rib bone from all of his victims and used them as parts in wind chimes and whistles, as well as ear rings, keys and other possessions of his victims and dumped the body parts in the wilderness. He then left these as gifts for Jane whenever he returned to Golconda.

In 2007, he was caught by the BAU at a diner in Golconda he frequently visited. He had hijacked a school bus full of children and parked it in the middle of the desert. He bargained with local authorities and was allowed to leave with Jane, who had fallen in love with him as well, in exchange for revealing the location of the children to Gideon. The team wasn't able to track him down.

Some time later, Jane left Frank after he had tried to kill her. He sought out Gideon to get her back, and then killed an old college friend of Gideon's who had been waiting for Gideon in his apartment. Frank then stole a list of people Gideon had saved in the line of work and planned to kill them. He was only able to kill Rebecca Bryant who was saved in "The Fisher King" before the others were taken into protective custody. Eventually, he kidnapped Tracy Belle (Elle Fanning) who was saved in "The Boogeyman" to swap her for Jane. He met the team at a train station. At the same time, a part of the team had located Frank's childhood home in Manhattan, New York where he had hidden Tracy. There they also found Mary Breitkopf's decayed body covered in flower bouquets. Cornered, Frank convinced Jane to join him again. They both then committed suicide by jumping in front of a departing train.

; Tobias Hankel

Portrayed by James Van Der Beek.

Episode(s): "The Big Game" and "Revelations"

Alias: Raphael

; Jason Clark Battle

Portrayed by Bailey Chase.

Episode(s): "Lucky" and "Penelope".

Alias: James "Colby" Baylor

; William Lee

Portrayed by Jason London.

Episode(s): "Aftermath"

Alias: None

William Lee (28) was a power-reassurance serial rapist in Dayton, Ohio. He worked at a marketing firm, First Hand Media, at the time of "Aftermath". Before that he'd had 12 jobs over 10 years since finishing high school. He lived with his mother until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer six months prior to "Aftermath". That's when he decided to "start a family" before she died, something that he was incapable of due to social incompetence. First, he raped an uncertain number of students of a religious college over a five week period. Since abortion is considered a sin, the risk of the victims aborting was low. When the only victim he was able to successfully impregnate committed suicide because of unwillingness to give birth to the child, he stopped his rapes for a week, then chose another type of victims: career women around the age of 35 visiting a fertility clinic which First Hand Media bought statistical information from. Since the women he raped were planning to have a baby, the risk of them aborting was still low. He waited for them in their homes, then tied them up while threatening them with a gun and raped them.

In "Aftermath", when the BAU team, Elle was particularly affected by Lee, since he waited for the victims in their homes, just like Randall Garner when he shot her in "The Fisher King; Part 1" and the fact that Lee was a sex offender. When Lee ran out of potential victims, the team planned an undercover operation in which Elle was to pretend being a potential victim. The plan was to allow Lee to break into the house Elle was using. When that happened, she would arrest him for breaking and entering thus giving the police access to his DNA and having him charged for all of his known rapes. When the plan was in progress, however, she became nervous, panicked and left the house to arrest him while he was still in his car.

Having no legal cause to keep Lee in custody or get a DNA sample from him, the police had to let him go. This made Elle furious, driving her to confront Lee outside his home. He confessed to the rapes for her, although he didn't see them as sexual assaults, but "dates". He also told Elle he believed she deliberately panicked so he would walk and continue raping. This drove Elle to kill him. When the authorities arrived, she claimed Lee had drawn a weapon and was threatening her, so she shot him in self-defence. The police accepted the story, although the team was uncertain.

; The Footpath Killer

Portrayed by Lukas Haas.

Episode(s): "Extreme Aggressor" and "Compulsion" (all flashbacks)

Alias: Real name never revealed to the viewers

The Footpath Killer was featured in the first to episodes of the series. He killed people on hiking roads in woods in Virginia using excessive violence and killing them by putting a bullet in their heads. His trademark was leaving close-up face photos of his victims at the scene. In the first, Gideon holds a lecture about him. At the end of that episode he was seen at a gas station owned by the Footpath Killer. According to Gideon's profile, he was in his late 20s, worked a menial job, owned an American-made truck in a state of disrepair and would likely speak with a severe stutter. When Gideon saw him, he knew it was the Footpath Killer.

Knowing Gideon was some kind of law enforcement officer, the Footpath Killer threatened him with a shotgun and was planning to kill him too. When they were alone, Gideon started to mock him about his stutter, making him let his guard down. He was then knocked out and arrested.

The Footpath Killer was likely partially based on real-life serial killer Robert Hansen who hunted prostitutes in woods with a 223-caliber rifle. According to the profile made by John E. Douglas, he would stutter severely. This was proven correct.

; Jonny McHale

Portrayed by Frankie Muniz.

Episode: "True Night"

Alias: True Night (his comic book creation was actually a reflection of him the whole time).

Jonny McHale was a comic book artist who was supposed to be engaged to a woman named Vicki. One night while walking home from a midnight stroll, they were ambushed by a group of thugs called the 23 Street Gang. They forced Jonny to watch his fiancee as she was tortured to death before they eviscerated him.

After six months of mental anguish, it is clear to the viewers that he is suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder, combined with psychotic breaks. He murders several of the gang members at a time, with every kill becoming more violent. He has no recollection of his murders, or the attack on him and his late fiancee, although his violent crimes make it to his comic book pages. Jonny would even leave messages on Vicki's cell, only to hear her voice recording before the beep.

Jonny's press agent, his fans, and a neighbor recognize his erratic, aggressive behavior. So they report Jonny to the police after Agent Jareau released his criminal profile to the public. His latest attack was on Glen Hill, the man responsible for the Jonny's misery, in which he abducted the gang leader after Jonny massacres his gang. He also has no memory of the abduction. But Jonny eventually confesses and reveals Glen's location when the authorities remind him of his late fiancee, and his crimes. The agents are too late to save Glen, who is found mutilated while tied to a chair.

The ending scene shows Jonny in a padded room at a disclosed mental institution. He has sketches of Vicki all over his wall. And he still tries to call Vicki, but will only hear her voice recording.

The episode, along with Jonny as the central character, was played out in a graphic novel style fashion. It also allowed the viewers to show the world through the eyes of the unsub, with the FBI team as secondary characters. Jonny's abilities, which include a high tolerance for pain, unpredictability, and ruthlessness all stem from his psychotic breaks. He is the show's first unsub who was not a bad guy, but rather an average working person who is portrayed as an anti-hero.

References