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“ | They don't understand, I'm trying to help. If they would just do their jobs, I wouldn't need to do it for them. | „ |
~ Danny Stokes condemning the police and rationalizing his murders. |
Daniel Lee "Danny" Stokes is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Protection". He is a schizophrenic vigilante who murders small-time criminals and those he believes pose a threat to his neighbors Patricia and Milena Valdez, who are both, in fact, hallucinations of two of his victims.
He was portrayed by Joe Adler.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Born in 1991, Stokes suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, which he inherited from his mother, Miriam. In 2014, Miriam, who worked as a landlady, was murdered by David Ruiz, the ex-husband of one of her tenants, Patricia Valdez, who lived in Miriam's building with her daughter Milena. Stokes blamed Valdez for his mother's death, and murdered her and her daughter. He then buried their bodies in the front yard of his house.
The loss of his mother and the guilt of killing Patricia and Milena sent Stokes into a deep depression, and he stopped taking his medication and started drinking heavily. He also began hallucinating that Patricia and Milena were still alive, and confided in them as mother and little sister figures. "They" entreated him to find and kill Ruiz, so he began going out at night armed with a .45 caliber pistol, killing anyone he believed was committing a crime. His sanity eventually deteriorated to the point that he believed he was the "savior" of his neighborhood.
"Protection"[]
Stokes' first victim as a vigilante is a man who is soliciting a prostitute. Three days later, he kills another solicitor, as well as the prostitute whose services he is paying for. After the latter murders, he narrowly escapes from police officers who are patrolling the area, and runs back to his house, covered in blood. He gets drunk and hallucinates that Patricia and Milena help clean him up, and that Milena rubs his head when he suffers a migraine.
The following night, Stokes once again patrols his neighborhood looking for criminals to kill, and happens upon a black teenager who is trying to steal an elderly white woman's purse. Stokes shoots him several times, mortally wounding him. When the woman collapses and dies, Stokes believes he accidentally shot her, and tells the teenager that her death is his fault before shooting him dead and beating up his corpse. He is unaware that the woman, a retired schoolteacher, actually died of a heart attack, and that he hallucinated the teenager, who had in fact been her student and friend, trying to rob her. He later gets into an argument with Patricia, blaming her for Miriam's death, although he later apologizes and offers to cover her share of the rent.
A few days later, Stokes watches a televised press conference in which the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) profiles his murders as being committed by a young, mentally ill vigilante who is trying to avenge a violent crime committed against him and/or a loved one. Stokes is outraged, complaining to Milena that he is doing the police's jobs for them. He later goes out to a nightclub, where he sees Christopher DeLuca and his girlfriend Lindsay Cooper having sex in the adjoining alley. Believing that he is witnessing a rape, Stokes kills DeLuca as Cooper flees the scene. She later gives a description of the murderer to the police, who then send it to the BAU.
Working with the composite sketch and Cooper's description of his erratic behavior, the agents of the BAU theorize that the killer suffers from schizophrenia. Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia researches young men in the area who have been victims of violent crime and have been treated for schizophrenia. She eventually finds records of Miriam's murder and Stokes' history of using medications typically prescribed for schizophrenia. She also finds news reports of the unsolved murders of Patricia and Milena, and the other agents theorize that he killed them, as well.
The morning after committing the club murders, Stokes comes home to find what he believes to be a police officer at his front door. He panics and kills the man, only for Milena to reveal that he was in fact a mailman. She begs him to go to the police, but he refuses and forces her back into the house at gunpoint. Moments later, BAU Agents Derek Morgan, Jennifer Jareau, and Spencer Reid show up to arrest Stokes, flanked by local police. Stokes screams that he has hostages, while Jareau and Reid try to calm him down by telling him that Ruiz is in prison for another crime. This revelation breaks what little remains of Stokes' sanity, and he hallucinates that all of his victims are taunting him and telling him to kill himself. He then sees Milena and Patricia telling him that they love him, however, which convinces him to surrender rather than commit suicide. As the police take Stokes into custody, he watches officers dig up Patricia and Milena's bodies, and has a hallucination of them both bidding him farewell. He is then institutionalized.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Stokes is primarily inspired by multiple real-life and fictional criminals:
- William Masters, a.k.a. "The Tagger Vigilante", an American shooter of two graffiti artists in California, killing one of them, which caused statewide publicity and divided politics.
- Joseph Christopher, a.k.a. "The Midtown Slasher" and "The .22 Caliber Killer", a serial killer of men and boys of color who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
- Bernhard Goetz, a.k.a. "The Subway Vigilante", a mass shooter who kept a revolver with him after being mugged, with which he shot and killed four youths on the subway.
- Thana, the protagonist villain of the exploitation film Ms .45, who commits a series of vigilante murders after being raped.
External Links[]
- Danny Stokes on the Criminal Minds Wiki