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| “ | It was all for you. I did everything you said. | „ |
| ~ Barlow to Antonia Slade. |
Claude Barlow is the secondary antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Devil's Backbone". He is the accomplice, pawn, and former patient of serial killer Antonia Slade, who abducts and attempts to kill several young boys as part of a plan to get her released from prison.
He was portrayed by Jason Denuszek.
Early life[]
Barlow exhibited violent, antisocial behavior from a young age, so his parents put him in therapy with child psychologist Antonia Slade, who had sessions with him twice a week for three years. Barlow became obsessed with her and, when she moved her practice to Virginia, followed her there under another name and tried to break into her office. Slade got a restraining order against him, but that only intensified his obsession. When Slade was imprisoned for the murder of nine teenage boys, he tried repeatedly to visit her in prison, but she refused to see him.
As an adult, Barlow became a computer programmer and used his skills to generate coded messages to Slade, which she began responding to after realizing that he could help her with her plan to be released from prison. She instructed him to kidnap two boys using her exact modus operandi in order to create reasonable doubt about her guilt in the crimes she was incarcerated for. He obeyed her without question, kidnapping Adam Morrissey and Jimmy Bennett and holding them captive in a shed on his property.
In "Devil's Backbone"[]
Two years after the kidnappings, Slade sends Barlow a coded message to kill Adam and Jimmy. He drives them out to a lakeside forest in the middle of the night. He leaves Adam in a shed near the lake, and forces Jimmy at gunpoint to walk toward the water, intent on killing him.
Before he can harm Adam, however, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) arrives in the forest, having learned of his part in Slade's plot from Slade herself; she betrayed him to the BAU in return for a transfer to a better prison facility. Agent Spencer Reid orders Barlow to let the boys go, but Barlow demands to talk to Slade. When Reid tells him that Slade gave him up, Barlow becomes enraged and threatens to kill Adam unless he can see her.
At that moment, Slade, who had accompanied the BAU to show them where to find Barlow, steps out of the BAU's van and tells Barlow to let Adam go so she can tell him something. Barlow releases Adam and tells Slade that he did everything she told him to do; she replies that she knows that, and then she whispers in Barlow's ear. Barlow bursts into tears and commits suicide by shooting himself in the mouth.
Trivia[]
- It is never revealed what, exactly, Slade said to Barlow to drive him to suicide.
External links[]
- Claude Barlow on the Criminal Minds Wiki
