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| “ | No one can stand in the way of the future! | „ |
| ~ Boles justifying his crimes. |
Robert Boles is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Future Perfect".
He is a serial killer who performs crude, unethical medical procedures on his victims. Boles does all of this in an effort to reverse the effects of his worst fear - growing old.
He is portrayed by Matt Burns.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Robert Boles exhibited antisocial behavior from a young age, to the point that his parents sent him to several therapists and home-schooled him to keep him for harming other children.
One day, his parents took him with them to a nursing home to visit his sick great-uncle. He got lost in the halls and stopped at a room he thought was his great-uncle's, but in fact belonged to one of his fellow residents. The resident, a wheelchair-bound old man in poor health, caught him staring and spitefully told the boy he would look like him one day. Terrified, Boles ran away, and developed an obsessive fear of growing old, believing that he would indeed meet the old man's fate - ending his days in a home, sick and alone.
As an adult, Boles attended medical school, determined to become a doctor so he could discover a way to extend the average lifespan and prevent the physical decline that comes with aging - in effect, to create a fountain of youth. He flunked out after one year, however, and drifted through a series of menial jobs before getting a steady job as an orderly at a Florida hospital specializing in cutting edge medical research. He took care of the hospital's elderly patients, but also began experimenting with animal DNA and pharmaceuticals stolen from the hospital to create a serum that he began secretly testing on his patients.
"Future Perfect"[]
Boles first tests his serum on two patients, a young woman named Cheyenne Pravato and an elderly man named George Henning, both suffering from neurodegenerative illnesses, and who both die as a result of Boles' experiments. He disposes of the bodies in a nearby swamp.
He later seduces a woman named Andrea Gambrell and lures her to a cemetery, where he knocks her out with his serum combined with a sedative. The same day, he kidnaps a homeless man named Harold McDermott, and takes him and Gembrell to his "laboratory" before going to work. After work, he experiments on McDermott, who has a seizure and dies as a result of being injected with Boles' serum. Enraged, Boles beats McDermott's dead body and destroys his jellyfish tank, getting water all over the floor.
After learning that one of the hospital's patients, Eileen Kebler, is dying, however, Boles decides to make her his next "test subject". He approaches her husband Ben and offers to treat Eileen with his serum, promising that it will help her in ways that traditional medicine cannot; Ben is suspicions, but desperate to save his wife, so he agrees. Boles injects Eileen with his serum, and promises to give her another injection in three days' time.
The next night, he steals more pharmaceuticals from the hospital, but Dr. Laura Braga catches him and calls security. Boles panics and hits her over the head with a hammer, killing her. He smuggles her corpse out of the hospital on a gurney and disposes of it in the swamp. He then returns to check on Gambrell, who tries to convince him to let her go by reasoning that there is no cure for aging and no reason to fear it, but this only makes him angry, however, and he renders her unconscious with another injection.
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) is called in by Florida authorities to assist with the investigation of Boles' first two murders. They profile the killer as a man in his mid-20s or early 30s with some medical training, who works in a nonessential capacity at the hospital. He is trying to create a cure for neurodegenerative illness, because he simply wants to "play God". His use of the scientific method in his experiments suggests a calm, methodical mind, but his using combinations of pharmaceuticals and animal DNA reveals fantastical, irrational thinking and an inflated ego. This dichotomy would show up in his everyday behavior; he is charming enough to get his victims to trust him, but also clashes with authority figures, most likely doctors, which would have prevented him from becoming one himself. Technical analyst Penelope Garcia looks for records of the hospital's non-medical personnel with histories of conflict with the medical establishment, and finds Boles.
Boles, meanwhile, gets a panicked phone call from Ben, saying that Eileen has had a bad reaction to the serum and is having trouble breathing. Boles tells him to take Eileen to the lab, giving him directions. He then preps Gambrell for surgery, intending to transplant her healthy organs into Eileen's body. He is interrupted by the BAU, however, who arrests him and takes him into custody as he rants about continuing his research in prison.
Trivia[]
- Boles is inspired by multiple real-life serial killers:
- William Burke and William Hare, a.k.a. "The Body Snatchers", a Scottish serial killer team asphyxiating people to sell their remains to be used in medical institutes for profit.
- H. H. Holmes, a.k.a. "The Beast of Chicago", a serial killer of multiple people he killed at his private industrial property and whose remains he sold to medical schools, having been foeced by bullies to have a skeleton's hands on his face, which he had conflicting reactions over.
- John Haigh, a.k.a. "The Acid Bath Murderer", a serial killer with a previous history of property crimes and frsud, later resorting to murder to squat in homes and empty bank accounts.
- Boles' crude experiments are inspired by an article on age reversal attempted through blood transfusions in mice.
External links[]
- Robert Boles on the Criminal Minds Wiki
