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Dorothy and Karl Elgin are the overarching antagonists of the Criminal Minds episode “Starter Home”. The Elgins are a possessive family over their younger relatives, turning to serial murder to create the lives they want to paint for the kids in their house to stay dependent.

Dorothy was portrayed by Rosemary Alexander, and Karl was portrayed by an uncredited actor.

Biography[]

Background[]

Dorothy and Karl were paranoid shut-ins in Varnville, South Carolina, highly possessive and restrictive of their daughter LeeAnne, who would defy her parents as a consequence. LeeAnne privately dated a boy named Steven Milburn, and together, they sired a son. The Elgin parents completely isolated LeeAnne in the house, even when she was giving birth to her son, even tying her to her bed to keep her from running away. LeeAnne, terrified of what her parents would do to her baby, ran away to the Milburns. She planned to flee and wanted Steve to join, but the Milburns wouldn’t allow it, even going so far as making LeeAnne leave her son with them to be raised. LeeAnne fled to Georgia, found a spouse, and had children of their own. Not even the Milburns stood a chance, as Karl found out the truth and shot the entire family dead in a murder-suicide staging before taking the baby boy back. Dorothy and Elgin became dangerously neurotic as a result of LeeAnne’s absence, so needing a new “daughter” and wanting their grandson to have a “mother”, they habitually kidnapped runaway teens and young women looking like LeeAnne to care for their grandson. The girls were forced to write letters to their families to lie about their captivity in a positive light, but Dorothy was too obsessed to send them and kept every letter. Too provoked over each of the girls in the house, as she still missed LeeAnne and wanted her back, Dorothy killed each captive by poisoning her, then buried the girls in the walls and floors of their house to be slowly mummified. When one girl was murdered, the Elgins would find another girl to repeat the cycle all over again, repeating the habitual crimes with a total of seven girls, who all died. It wouldn’t last forever, as Karl died from natural causes and Dorothy, her mind reduced to dementia, would be committed to a nursing home when she was found sundowning when she was found alone outside of town late at night. Left without parents to be in charge of his life and victims to care for him, the son, whose name was never specified if he had one, and who was reduced to codependency and the mindset of a child despite being a young adult, continued the crimes of his parents to find replacement “mothers”. The son would find middle-aged women in the town this time, to treat him like their young son, and when displeased, he’d kill them by burying them alive under floorboards of the shack he held them captive in and emaciating them to death. The son killed three women in such fashions, burying them also in the family house with the girls, except for one woman, who was kept in the shack for unspecified reasons.

On Starter Home[]

The murders were discovered when the couple who bought the Elgins’ home found one of the murdered girls when going through the home when preparing it for renovation. The cadaver dog had major reactions to scents all over the house, finding the eight other women and girls buried there. While the police work to identify them all and brief the media, they find out the middle-aged women were freshly killed and they need to find another killer. They accurately assume Dorothy was behind the murders and the new killer must be another family member. Agents Tara Lewis and Spencer Reid go to speak to Dorothy, who’s absentmindedly sewing and picking at and kissing her finger. She once reacts with mentioning something that would allude to how she never saw the girls the Elgins held captive as LeeAnne. The agents later try to ask Dorothy about the phrase, then realize she’s investigating her and they’re onto her. When she sees an opportune moment, she grabs a fork and stabs herself in her neck, killing herself. The letters she held in her possession in her room reveal her family history, and the agents, putting a call out to the public for answers, eventually meet LeeAnne, who now goes by the surname of Garrity. She describes her traumatic life with her parents and, when she withholds her pregnancy, yet the agents tie the serial murders to the Milburn family massacre, what happened with her son. The descriptions make the agents realize Karl killed the Milburns and the boy was another captive of the whole time. LeeAnne is devastated to hear her baby and the Milburns never safe from her family, even more horrified her son is the new killer, taking after his parents from isolated exposure. The son is later arrested at the shack where he’s holding a fourth woman captive in an attempt to brainwash her, then kill her. The agents do her best to reassure LeeAnne none of the crimes are her fault, that she can reunite with her son after all the time she missed with him.

Trivia[]

• The Elgins are inspired by multiple real-life and fictional criminals:
  • Fred and Rosemary West, a British serial killer couple of teens and young women they lied about wanting to hire them as “nannies” for their daughters, raping and torturing the girls to death before burying them around the house and in their backyard. Fred committed suicide and Rosemary was imprisoned.
  • Ray and Faye Copeland, an elderly American serial killer couple responsible for killing drifting men they used for cons and murdered to dispose of them once they were done with them, burying the men on their farm. Faye would make quilts out of the clothes of the men Ray shot dead.
  • John Edward Robinson, a.k.a “The Internet Slave Master”, a serial killer of women he lured with fake job ads, only to kill them and bury them on his property simply for robbing them. He sent letters to their families to keep suspicions from arising, and he raised the baby child of one woman he murdered until he was arrested.
  • Holly Jones and her dead husband, the main antagonists of the film Prisoners, a traumatized couple of serial child killers, who held children captive and brainwashed them befoe murdering them, wanting the desth of their son to turn into revenge on families by scarring them.
  • The parents of Brahms Heelshire, the supporting antagonists of The Boy, who hired nannies to care for a doll resembling him while he hid in the walls and attic of their mansion. Brahms killed almost every nanny watching over him, and his parents committed suicide when they were done with him.