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| “ | You know better than to bother me here. | „ |
| ~ Charlie Wilkinson threatening his wife. |
Charlie Wilkinson is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Birthright". He is a serial killer who commits murders modeled after the M.O. and signature of his father, who was also a serial killer.
He was portrayed by Curt Bonnem.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Wilkinson's father, Robert, was a serial killer of teenage girls in Fredericksburg, Virginia who was active in 1980s. Wilkinson's mother, Mary, discovered what her husband had done, she feared he would hurt their son, and so killed him by throwing him in a combine harvester in order to protect the boy.
It was too late to save him, however; he inherited his father's psychopathy and began torturing animals as a child. When he was 15, he put a cat in a bag, tied it to a tree, and beat it to death with a stick.
As an adult, Wilkinson discovered that his father had been a serial killer, and felt a kinship with him, finally understanding why he had felt homicidal urges his whole life. He studied his father's crimes and began killing himself, copying his father's M.O. to the last detail, as he would kidnap two teenage girls at once, imprison them in a remote barn his father had owned, rape and torture them for days, and kill and dismember them with an axe before dumping the remains in field used by Civil War re-enacters. By the time of the episode, he had murdered two young women.
In his daily life, Wilkinson was married to a woman named Chrissy, who was blissfully unaware of her husband's true nature, and had recently learned that she was pregnant with their child.
"Birthright"[]
After Wilkinson kills a third teenage girl and kidnaps two others, the police call in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to profile and help catch the killer. They at first believe that the original killer from the 1980s has resurfaced after years of inactivity, so they interview surviving victim Karen Foley about her ordeal 20 years earlier. They use this information and that gleaned from an interview with the original detective on the case to deduce that Robert Wilkinson committed the original murders, but learn of his death after talking with Mary. BAU Agents Derek Morgan and Spencer Reid realize that Wilkinson is the killer after searching his barn and finding the two missing girls chained up in the cellar.
Meanwhile, Chrissy learns from Karen and Mary what her husband has done, and goes to confront him, finding him drunk at the field he uses as his dumping ground. She pleads with him to stop drinking and hurting people, reminding him that he is about to be a father, but Wilkinson coldly rebuffs her, saying that he does not want children. He then warns her not to ask about what he does with the women, prompting Chrissy to call him "a sick son-of-a-bitch, just like your daddy". Enraged, Wilkinson advances on Chrissy, forcing her to shoot him dead in self-defense.
Trivia[]
- Wilkinson is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Alan Meirhofer, a serial rapist and the brother of serial killer David Meirhofer.
- Robert Shulman, a serial killer of women in prostitution who were reduced to dismembered remains, coinciding with the murders of serial killer Joel Rifkin, one of the inspirations for Robert.
- Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the "D.C. Snipers", a teenage murderer and the accomplice of serial killer John Allen Muhammad, one of the inspirations for Robert.
External Links[]
- Charlie Wilkinson on the Criminal Minds Wiki
