Criminal Minds’ 10 Most Memorable UnSubs (So Far)

The popular CBS procedural Criminal Minds will air its 200th episode tonight. That’s 200 hours of watching the FBI’s best and brightest, the Behavioural Analysis Unit (BAU), pursue the most wretched examples of scum and villainy from one corner of the United States to the other. Amongst the BAU’s quarries are serial killers, kidnappers, stalkers, terrorists and other predators, but on the occasion of the show’s bicentennial we asked ourselves, who are the worst of the worst in terms of the show’s Unknown Subjects, or UnSubs? Or, more to the point, which of the various UnSubs made a big enough impact to standout from the pact? To celebrate the 200th episode tonight, we're running down Criminal Minds' 10 most memorable UnSubs (so far). 10. Tobias Hankel (James Van Der Beek), Season 2 Who would have guessed Dawson was capable of such villainy? In Criminal Minds’ two-part Super Bowl episode we meet Tobias Hankel, a gentle man dragged into his father’s religious mania by punishing so-called sinners in epically Biblical ways. The catch is that Tobias has multiple personality issues, with his father, himself and the archangel Raphael all taking up residence in his head. Tobias is a bit more sympathetic than the average UnSub, driven to drugs by his old-timey religious father and indoctrinated in Old Testament justice, but he still kidnapped everyone’s favorite genius Dr. Reid, who was simultaneously tortured (by “the father”) and then given drugs (by Tobias) to dull the pain. The memory of being Tobias’ captive still casts a long shadow on the good doctor, but Tobias himself was killed when the rest of the team saved Reid. 9. Rhett (Robert Knepper), Season 6 If you made a list of character actors ideally suited to play serial killers or other types of criminals, Prison Break’s Robert Knepper is one of those guys. His filmography is filled with roles where he’s played one kind of bad guy or another, and Knepper easily stepped into the role of Rhett, a man who kidnaps women in order to re-enact some movie from the 1950s that means something to him. There’s a hint of Psycho in Rhett as he’s controlled by his domineering mother from beyond the grave, which also revisits a recurring Criminal Minds theme of the brutal effect of truly bad parenting on their messed up kids even after the parents died. The episode’s MVP though is technical analyst Garcia, who has to get out from behind her computers and sell the spectacle of the crimes to an eager press in order to flush out Rhett. 8. Samantha Malcolm (Jennifer Hasty), Season 5 Not all of the UnSubs that were chased in Criminal Minds are necessarily evil. To wit, in "The Uncanny Valley" we meet Samantha Malcolm, a disturbed woman who kidnaps petite-sized women in their 20s and chemically immobilizes them to turn them into life-size dolls. What drives a woman to do this? Well, being sexually abused by your psychiatrist father helps, and in a shocking twist the father is played by Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Cmdr Riker Jonathan Frakes, which isn’t the first time a member of the Enterprise-D crew played a Criminal Minds bad guy by the way. Eventually, the team puts together that Samantha’s collecting women to fill the role of the dolls her father gave her after abusing her, and manages to save three more victims in the process. Sadly though, this wouldn’t be the last time an UnSub turned people into living dolls. 7. Joe Smith (Eddie Cibrian), Season 3 He had such an ordinary name, but there was nothing ordinary about the crimes of Joe Smith. A Milwaukee contractor, Smith was dying of a terminal illness and decided to teach his son the hard lessons of the world by getting the boy to lure in women that he would then take to his basement workshop. There, he would chop out their hearts and display those hearts in lovely, homemade wooden boxes. At least he’s a serial killer of the dainty variety; very Martha Stewart in terms of his misdeeds. The combination of the disease and his wife leaving him forced Joe’s mind to go off the rails, so to speak, so what impact did all this killing have on the son? It’s implied at the end of the episode that he lured the school nurse to be his father’s next victim, and did so without Smith’s permission or prodding. If there’s one thing worse than a serial killer with a kid, it’s a kid voluntarily taking up the family business. 6. Adam Rain (Brad Dourif), Season 8 In another example of obsession with dolls gone all wrong, the eighth season of Criminal Minds introduced us to Adam Rain. Adam had a pretty horrible life. Not only was his father was murdered in an armed robbery, but Adam also spent years in a coma until he suddenly came to with the IQ of an average 10-year-old. Like some of the other actors mentioned on this list, it seemed inevitable that Brad Dourif would play an UnSub. He's the guy who embodies the killer doll Chucky from the Child’s Play series, after all. Adam Rain is more an innocent led astray than a sadistic killer though. He turned victims into marionettes so that he could relive the armed robbery that his father was killed in, this time re-writing the ending so that his father’s puppet duo could save him before he’s killed. Every now and then, we get an UnSub that’s more sick than sickening, and Adam Rain might certainly fit that bill. 5. Mason Turner (Garret Dillahunt), Season 4 Based loosely on the crimes of British Columbia serial killer Robert Pickton, the BAU found something truly insidious in the case of Mason Turner, a quadriplegic doctor performing heinous experiments on homeless people taken from the streets of Detroit. If you’re familiar with the case of Pickton then you know how Turner had the bodies disposed of, and you have some idea of just how many bodies the FBI ended up discovering. Adding another odd element to the case was Mason’s relationship with his brother Lucas, whose mental handicap, large-size and strength drew comparisons to Of Mice and Men’s Lennie. According to Mason, Lucas was the reason for his disability, and thus he turned his brother into his cat’s paw to commit the murders. In the end, Mason is killed by the brother of one of his victims, and Lucas is killed by a SWAT team. 4. Willie Kestler (Bill Tangradi), Season 8 Here’s a pretty messed up idea: you’re born via C-section after being two weeks overdue, your mom dies when you’re 5 and the grandfather that raises you is abusive and accuses you of having the devil inside you. Why? Because you were born in a hospital bed next to a shot up serial who died seconds before your birth. Willie Kestler was so messed up that he began thinking he was the reincarnation of sexual sadist Russell Smith, and then he decided to start killing the people he believed were the reincarnation of Smith’s victims, you know, before they could get revenge on him. If that wasn’t nutty enough, he subscribed to theory of resurrection that said that the soul of the departed jumps into the nearest newly born lifef orm, so he brings insect larvae to all his kills. In the end, Kestler died how he lived, shot dead next to a bug. 3. “The Prince of Darkness” (Tim Curry), Season 5/6 Another actor that seemed bound to end up an UnSub is Tim Curry, who’s played more than his fair share of villains over the years, but few quite as ugly and brutal as the Night Stalker wannabe, “The Prince of Darkness.” The Prince cut a bloody swath from one end of the country to another, but during an L.A. heat wave, he returns to the west coast and his old stomping grounds. As it turns out, it’s not just bloody violence that’s pushing the Prince, but the fact that he was left out of a story about a hero cop in Los Angeles whose parents were a couple of the Prince’s earliest victims. It’s to Curry’s credit that he’s able to manifest one of the most memorable and grotesque serial killers that show’s profilers ever pursued (and that’s saying something). He's “rotten inside and out” as observed by the group. The cliffhanger of season 5 wasn’t the question of whether or not the BAU would catch him, but rather how any punishment could fit a character so vile? 2. Frank (Keith Carradine), Season 2 The old adage about being wary of strangers proved particularly telling in the case of Frank, a faceless, nearly nameless serial killer who moved across the highways of the United States in a trailer rigged for mobile dissection. Agent Gideon surmised that Frank maybe the most prolific serial killer of all time, with body parts strewn about nationwide with the same cutting pattern, and a body count well into the triple digits. Frank also has the distinction – so to speak – of pushing Gideon over the edge. The BAU’s most talented profiler basically gives up after Frank kills a good friend of Gideon’s in his own apartment and then jumps in front of a train with a mentally disturbed woman who thought Frank was in lover with her. It was one of the rare instances that an UnSub escaped justice, and considering the capacity of Frank’s transgressions, that may be the worst crime of all. 1. “The Reaper” (C. Thomas Howell), Season 4/5 Killing people is easy, getting away with it is hard. Even harder though is convincing the police to give up in their pursuit of you. The case of the Boston Reaper was the first case that Agent Hotchner prosecuted as a BAU boss, but the FBI was told by the local cops to pack up and go home after the case went cold. The only thing is though, the case didn’t go cold. The Reaper had made a pact with the lead detective. “I’ll stop hunting them, if you stop hunting me,” he said. Years later, The Reaper returned and tried to make the same deal with Hotch, but Hotch, being an upstanding man of character, refused. The Reaper then turned the tables by going after Hotch’s family, and in spite of the intense BAU manhunt he was able to kill Hotch’s estranged wife before the agent eventually pummelled him to death. Although The Reaper was shrewd and clever and obsessed with his own infamy, in the end, he undid himself by making it too personal. He should have seen enough cop shows to know that as soon as you go after an agent’s family, you're initiating the countdown to your own demise. That concludes our list, but if you feel like we've missed anyone feel free to take to the comments and let us know who your favorite Criminal Minds UnSubs are.