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| “ | I make a promise to watch after these boys. In many ways, they're my own. | „ |
| ~ Massey hypocritically expressing love for his cadets after letting one of them die. |
Colonel Ron Massey is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy". He is the commanding officer of the Somerville Military Academy who is indirectly responsible for the suicide of cadet Bailey Shelton and the murders committed by his father, Chris Shelton.
He was portrayed by the late René Auberjonois.
Biography[]
A retired Army colonel, Massey is the leader of the Somerville Military Academy, a military school for boys with discipline problems. He runs the academy according to a philosophy of discipline and order above all else, and secretly takes pleasure in encouraging his cadets to harm each other. He puts the boys on a point system, with the most points going to the the most aggressive cadets. His favorite cadet is a sadist named Tucker Calhoun, who regularly bullies and abuses the younger, smaller cadets, with Massey's tacit approval.
When Calhoun's favorite target, cadet Bailey Shelton, commits suicide after a particularly brutal beating from Calhoun, Massey and his right-hand man Lieutenant Shockley Tawes decide to protect Calhoun by telling Chase's father Chris that cadet Josh Redding had led the bullying against his son, when in fact he had been his protector. This sets his father off into a murderous rage, and he kills the boys who had targeted his son, including Calhoun. He forces them to carve the words "We're sorry" into a tree branch before hanging them, making it look like a mass suicide.
"Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"[]
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) is called in to investigating the apparent mass suicide, Massey tries to steer them toward Redding, who has apparently gone AWOL after a wilderness survival training session, as a suspect. The BAU discovers that Redding did not have enough points to take part in wilderness training, but Massey says that the boy "needed the challenge".
The BAU agents find out that Calhoun had been tormenting Chase, and that Redding had been protecting him, which does not fit the image of a bully that Massey is trying to tar him with. Eventually, they learn that Massey had sent Redding out into the woods after telling Chase's father that Redding had driven his son to commit suicide, all in order to provoke him into hunting and killing the boy. They discover the dead body of Chase's father, having fallen into a homemade spear trap, and theorize that, when Chase's father had unexpectedly killed the other boys, Massey had sent Tawes out to kill him with the kind of trap that he had learned to make while serving in Vietnam. Luckily, they save Redding just in time, and arrest Tawes.
Upon returning to Somerville headquarters, BAU agent Derek Morgan arrests Massey for conspiracy to commit murder. As Massey is taken into custody, Redding gives him a sarcastic salute.
External Links[]
- Colonel Ron Massey on the Criminal Minds Wiki
