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| “ | It won't be much longer. It's almost time for the slaughter. | „ |
| ~ Cormac taunting his latest victim. |
Cormac Burton is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Keeper". He is a serial killer who murders men who remind him of his abusive father.
He is portrayed by Dusty Sorg.
Early life[]
Cormac and his older brother Todd were born into a dysfunctional family in Dillon, Virginia; their parents were both alcoholics, and their father, Curtis, regularly beat them and their mother, Amy. After Amy died of cirrhosis of the liver, Curtis' abuse grew even worse, to the point that he would force his sons to wear muzzles and sleep in the mud with the family's pigs, and then slaughter the pigs right in front of them. He also took Cormac's dog and forced Todd to help him take it to the woods and leave it to die.
The abuse warped both Todd and Cormac, sending the former spiraling into mental illness and turning the latter into a sociopath. Todd became homeless, but Cormac held down a job at a sporting goods store until 2015, when Curtis died of a heart attack. Cormac abruptly quit his job and started wandering the woods of the Appalachian Trail, looking for male hikers who reminded him of his hated father. He would kidnap them and hold them prisoner in his father's old barn, and then torture and kill them. He also murdered Kaylie Fleming, a teenage girl who witnessed one of his murders, to stop her from going to the police.
He left their bodies scattered along the trail, where Todd found them. Sensing that his brother was responsible for the murders, Todd dismembered the bodies and scattering them across the trail so they could not be identified and connected to Cormac. Eventually, he developed a delusion that he was leaving food out for his dog, which he named Cormac and conflated with his brother's long-dead pet.
In "Keeper"[]
After local police find the remains of Cormac's latest victim, they call in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BAU), who finds Todd carrying body parts in a bag and arrest him. By now completely delusional, Todd repeatedly asks for his "dog" Cormac, despite no evidence showing such an animal exists. Meanwhile, Curtis kidnaps Howard Walker and holds him prisoner in the barn, chaining him to the floor. As Walker begs for mercy, Cormac tells him about what his father did to him as if Walker is his father, and brandishes a machete.
While trying to interrogate Todd, BAU Agent Emily Prentiss realizes that the "Cormac" he refers to is a person, not an animal, and from Todd's choice of words in describing him intuits that he is a family member. Technical analyst Penelope Garcia researches the Burton family and learns of their tragic history, as well as Cormac's sudden disappearance "off the grid". The rest of the BAU realize that Cormac committed the murders, and that Todd is trying to protect him by dismembering and dispersing the bodies.
They find Cormac's farm and burst in to arrest him just as he is about to kill Walker. Seeing that he is caught, Cormac surrenders, and is imprisoned for life for murder and kidnapping.
Trivia[]
- Cormac is inspired by multiple real-life serial killers:
- Juan Corona, a.k.a. “The Machete Murderer”, a Mexican serial killer/rapist of men in America also using the namesake weapon his moniker is derived from, as well as burying their remains the same way.
- Robert Pickton, a.k.a. "The Pig Farm Killer", a serial killer/rapist of women in prostitution who were held captive and butchered at the farm, how many women killed ranging in the dozens. Pickton had a yunoger brother, an abusive father, and grief over a calf he raised, only for the calf to be killed.
- Alexander Skrynnik, a Soviet serial killer who was briefly confused for being Nikolai Dzhumagaliev, another active serial killer in the same region.
- Rodney Halbower, a.k.a. "The Gypsy Hill Killer", a serial killer/rapist of women and girls in isolated nature, albeit bearing a more striking resemblance to Todd.
- Danny Rolling, a.k.a. “The Gainesville Ripper”, an American serial killer/rapist of college women resembling his mother, with a history of being beaten by his father along with his brothers, mother, and dog, his dog who the father killed.
External links[]
- Cormac Burton on the Criminal Minds Wiki
