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| “ | You know what you can do with your Black wife and your Black friend? You can kiss my Black ass! | „ |
| ~ Charles Johnson cursing out David Rossi. |
Charles Johnson is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Strange Fruit". He is a serial killer who, over the course of 35 years, murders the men who beat and castrated him, as well as their children.
He was portrayed by Glynn Turman.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Johnson was born and raised in Virginia, and endured years of racist abuse and discrimination, both from his white neighbors and the police. When he was a senior in high school, he was falsely accused of raping a white girl, Audrey Collins, and attacked by a gang of six Klansmen, who beat and castrated him. As a result, he became obsessed with taking revenge against his attackers, and developed a violent hatred of white people in general. He began taking testosterone in order to perform sexually with his wife, Tina, but could not father children, so Tina conceived their son, Lyle, with sperm from a sperm bank.
In 1978, he received a letter from Audrey, who was dying of cancer, confessing to accusing him of rape to get out of trouble for breaking her curfew. His long-simmering rage finally unleashed, he tracked down two of his attackers, James Moses and another, unnamed man, beat them to death, and mutilated their genitals post-mortem. He then buried their bodies in his backyard. Years later, in 2003, Lyle started dating Mary Ann Beck, the daughter of Karl Beck, another of his assailants who had died of natural causes before Johnson could take his revenge. Her relationship to his attacker, as well as his disapproval of interracial relationships, once again provoked his rage, so he killed her, mutilated her genitals, and buried her in the backyard. He then murdered and disposed of Rachel Mills, whose father was also one of his attackers, in the same fashion.
He stopped killing after murdering Rachel, but his psychopathy came out in other ways; he grew cold and distant from Tina, and raised Lyle to hate and fear white people in positions of authority, which results in him repeatedly getting in trouble with the law.
"Strange Fruit"[]
When a construction workers fix a broken drainage pipe in Johnson's backyard, they uncover the skeletons of Beck and Mills, and call the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). When Johnson and Lyle, who own a construction business together, return from a job, the BAU is waiting for them, and takes them and Tina into custody after Lyle panics and runs.
At first, the BAU suspects Lyle of committing the murders, based on his criminal history and prior relationship with Beck. Eventually, however, police find the remains of two men who were murdered 35 years earlier, murdered in the same way. The BAU realizes that all four people were murdered by the same killer, which could not have been Lyle, who was only an infant when the first victims were killed. The elder Johnson becomes the focus of the investigation after he begins accusing Agent David Rossi of framing him and his son because of their race. Rossi comes to believe that the murders were motivated by racism, both Johnson's hatred of white people and the discrimination he suffered as a child.
Rossi engages Johnson by buying him lunch and telling him about the discrimination he suffered growing up as an Italian-American. Johnson taunts Rossi with ethnic slurs, and insinuates that he must have discriminated against Black people at some point. Rossi then surprises him by admitting to being peer pressured into bullying a Black classmate in high school, and says that one of his ex-wives is Black. This provokes Johnson's rage, and he throws a cup of soda at Rossi. Nevertheless, Johnson feels a connection to Rossi; when Agent Derek Morgan, who is Black, tries to interrogate Johnson, he dismisses Morgan as a "token" and demands to talk to Rossi.
Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia looks into Johnson's past and finds out about the attack and Lyle's conception. Rossi confronts Johnson about the attack, and promises noit to tell Lyle about his true parentage in return for a full confession. Defeated, Johnson writes out a list of all four of his victims, and goes to prison for the rest of his life.
Trivia[]
- Johnson is inspired by Anthony Garcia, a serial killer of medical school board members and their families and acquaintances as revenge for rejecting his license application, taking a break between murders for years.
- Johnson’s castration appears to be derived from the lynching of Emmett Till, which resulted from false reports of him sexually harassing a white woman and involved two men in her family torturing him to death.
External Links[]
- Charles Johnson on the Criminal Minds Wiki
