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| “ | I will kill her, I swear to God! | „ |
| ~ Andew Meeks threatening a hostage. |
Andrew Meeks is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "A Badge and a Gun". He is a serial killer who gets his victims into his power by impersonating an FBI agent.
He was portrayed by Carmine Giovinazzo.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Meeks was physically and emotionally abused by his stepfather, who beat him as punishment for wetting his bed and humiliated him by forcing him to wear his soiled underwear over his face. By the time he was in his teens, Meeks was prone to violent outbursts and harbored a violent obsession with getting back at people he felt had wronged him.
When he was in high school, a group of girls pulled a prank on him by luring him to the school gym and rolling him up in a gym mattress, nearly suffocating him. The incident triggered in Meeks a severe form of claustrophilia, sexual arousal from being confined in tight spaces. Soon afterward, Meeks attacked and nearly killed the male classmate who had helped the girls play the prank, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempted murder.
While in prison, he improved his verbal and social skills in order to survive, and got a spider web tattoo on his neck. During a parole hearing, a prison psychiatrist diagnosed Meeks with antisocial personality disorder and recommended that he be institutionalized. The judge heading the parole board was taken in by Meeks' charm and intelligence, however, and granted him early release in order to relieve prison overcrowding.
As a condition of his release, Meeks enrolled in a rehabilitation program called New Start, headed by retired FBI Agent Ed Sulzbach, who took Meeks under his wing and got him a job as a janitor. Meeks coveted the power and respect that Sulzbach commanded as an FBI agent, and read everything he could about FBI procedure and investigation methods. Eventually, however, Sulzbach read the prison psychiatrist's report and realized that Meeks had been conning him, and tried to get his parole revoked. Enraged, Meeks killed Sulzbach with his own gun, and forged FBI credentials.
Using Sulzbach's police scanner, Meeks began trolling high-crime areas for potential victims, believing that police would assume the murders were committed by gangs or petty criminals. He then used the forged credentials and his charm to con his way into women's homes, where he would then overpower them and smother them to death.
"A Badge and a Gun"[]
Meeks kills Gertrude Smiles and Isabella Jayne on the same day, within hours of each other, and immediately starts stalking his next intended victim, Patricia Brannon. He shows up at Brannon's door claiming to be an FBI agent and tells her that a robbery/murder had been committed a few blocks away, and then says that he wants to ask her a few questions. Brannon lets him inside her house, but becomes suspicious when he starts sweating and nervously fidgeting with his tie. He asks her for a glass of water, knocks her out from behind while her back is turned, and smothers her to death with his shirt. He next goes to see Mary Lenahan, another woman he has been stalking, and uses the same ruse to get inside her apartment, where he kills her by smothering her with a shower curtain.
Meanwhile, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) investigates the murders, profiling the killer as a charismatic sociopath with an extensive criminal record who gets access to his victims by using fake or stolen FBI credentials to impersonate an agent. Since the murders occurred in high-crime areas, they theorize that the killer chose those areas so police would believe his murders were unconnected and had been committed by gangs or small-time criminals; they also theorize that he uses a police scanner. Because the killer is fascinated both by violence and law enforcement, the BAU decides to work with local police to stage a crime scene in hopes that he would feel compelled to drive by it.
Sure enough. Meeks responds to a police report of a home invasion and drives by it to get a glimpse, unaware that the police and the BAU are watching. He gets out of his car and advances on a woman who appears to be checking her mail - who is, in fact, an undercover police officer - and is stopped by Detective Bob Oliver, who asks Meeks what he is doing. Meeks identifies himself as an FBI agent, but Oliver asks to see his credentials. Meeks panics and shoots Oliver, who is unharmed because he is wearing body armor. Oliver then shoots Meeks in the stomach, and the badly wounded killer gets into his car and flees.
Meeks drives through a DUI checkpoint, where he is pulled over by Officer Jim Gray, who recognizes him from an all-points bulletin issued right after he shot Oliver. Cornered, Meeks staggers to the car in front of him and takes the woman behind the wheel hostage at gunpoint. BAU Agents Jennifer Jareau and Spencer Reid, responding to the APB, arrive at the scene. Jareau, who has learned of Meeks' childhood trauma thanks to records found by BAU Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia, tells him that his hostage is terrified, and asks him if he remembers how terrifying it had been to be rolled up in a mattress back in high school. This only makes Meeks angrier, however, so he pushes the woman away and opens fire on Jareau and Reid, who survive by taking cover. Reid then shoots Meeks twice in the chest, killing him instantly.
Trivia[]
- Meeks is inspired by multiple real-life killers:
- The Boston Strangler and prime suspect Albert DeSalvo, an unidentfied American serial killer case of women murdered in their home by asphyxiation, involving a suspect once pretending to be a cop to get into a home to rape a woman, the killings occurring in a city with high crime rates at the time of the murders.
- Gordon Cummins, a.k.a. "The Blackout Ripper" a British spree killer of women during wartime blackouts in WW2, with a similar evasion from police to Meeks.
- Edmund Kemper, a.k.a. "The Co-Ed Killer", a serial killer of women and girls sent to an institution for killing his grandparents, and abused by his mother as a child. Kemper was rejected by the police academy, but known to the cops, and he killed women to project his rage toward his mother on them.
- Carroll Cole, an American serial killer of women with a history of domestic abuse and humiliation in his childhood, along with the murder of a classmate in early grade school.
External links[]
- Andrew Meeks on the Criminal Minds Wiki
