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| “ | They say it's never as good as your first time. The truth is... the first time sucks. You don't know what you're doing. You're fumbling around. It's awkward. It does get better. I promise. | „ |
| ~ David Roy Turner teaching Toby Whitewood how to kill. |
David Roy Turner is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Apprenticeship".
He is an ephebophilic child molester and serial killer. Eventually, Turner takes a disturbed teenage boy under his wing as his "protégé" in murder.
He was portrayed by Matthew Lillard, who also played Stu Macher in Scream, Chet Sulloway in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the Lizard King in Axel: The Biggest Little Hero and William Afton in Five Nights at Freddy's.
Biography[]
Early life[]
An ephebophile, David Roy Turner was arrested in 2002 for raping a teenage male prostitute, and served four years in prison. His cellmate, Rudy Stein, was a serial killer who preyed on prostitutes, and taught Turner how to commit murder without getting caught. After Turner was released, he kept a correspondence with Stein via a prison pen pal program for five years, until Stein died of a stroke. Turner decided to honor Stein's "legacy" by teaching a teenage boy to kill using Stein's signature of biting his victims and beating them to death with a hammer. He also planned to make his student his sexual plaything.
He met 15-year-old Toby Whitewood as the boy was torturing a dog, and decided to make him his partner. When another boy, Jose Aguilar, fought Toby in an attempt to rescue the dog, Turner intervened on Toby's behalf and beats Jose up with a hammer. He then began Toby's "education", helping him evolve from killing animals to killing humans.
"The Apprenticeship"[]
Turner "trains" Toby how to kill by torturing and killing neighborhood dogs with him. When Turner feels Toby is ready, he sends the boy to a crime-ridden neighborhood, where he picks up prostitute Amanda Lopez, sexually assaults and beats her, and suffocates her to death with a plastic bag as Turner records it on his cell phone. He sends Toby photos of the murder with threatening text messages to "teach him a lesson" about being a more careful, efficient killer, and reassures him that he will get better at it in time. He then takes Toby with him and has him watch as he kills another prostitute, Vicky Thomas, this time knocking her out with a hammer before suffocating her.
The following night, Turner picks up prostitute Shawna Radford in his car, and talks Toby through the act of strangling her with a garrote before they beat her and suffocate her to death. He then takes Toby shopping at a hardware store to buy a killing kit, complete with wire and a hammer.
Meanwhile, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) starts investigating the murders, profiling the killer as young and inexperienced based on the sloppiness of the Lopez murder. After investigating the increasingly sophisticated Thomas and Radford murders, however, they come to believe they are looking a middle-aged man teaching an adolescent boy how to kill. They look for teenagers in the area who have been involved in violence toward animals, and Agents Derek Morgan and Spencer Reid interview Aguilar about his attackers, persuading him to give them a description of the teenage boy he saw torturing a dog. Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia finds Stein's and Turner's criminal records, and the BAU intuits that he is the older killer. They search his house and find scrapbooks chronicling Toby's animal kills, while Garcia gets into his laptop and finds emails between him and Toby, identifying the latter as the younger killer.
After Toby gets fired from his afterschool job at a pet store, he kidnaps his manager, Holly Riggio, and calls Turner, hoping to impress him. Turner is livid that Toby chose a victim who could be so easily connected to him, however, and says that he will kill her alone to clean up Toby's mess. When Toby finally rebels against Turner's authority, they get into a fight that ends with Toby knocking Turner unconscious with his own hammer. He regains consciousness as Toby is about to kill Holly, and chokes him to death. Just as he is about to kill her himself, however, the BAU arrives and holds him at gunpoint. Not wanting to go back to prison, he commits suicide by cop by lunging at the agents with his hammer, forcing Morgan to shoot him dead.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Turner is inspired by multiple real-life and fictional criminals:
- Darryl Donnell Turner, a.k.a. "The Princeton Place Killer", a serial killer/rapist of prostitutes active in D.C. shortly after Chander Matta, the inspiration for Whitewood.
- John Allen Muhammad, one of the "Beltway Snipers", a serial killer assisted by a teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo (an inspiration for Toby). Both were mentioned by Reid as a comparison.
- Dean Corll, a pedophile and serial killer/rapist targeting young boys, with the assistance of teenage boys as accomplice, at least one he raped. He was killed by the other accomplice, Elmer Wayne Henley (an inspiration for Whitewood).
- Lawrence Bittaker, one of the two “Toolbox Killers” along with Roy Norris, a duo of rapists and murderers with a partnership of kidnapping and torturing women and girls to death, often collaborating in the same violence during the brutality.
- Kurt Dussander, one of the protagonist villains of the novella and subsequent film Apt Pupil, a Nazi war criminal in hiding in America, sought after by sociopathic teenager Todd Bowden to teach him how to kill and get away with it.
External Links[]
- David Roy Turner on the Criminal Minds Wiki
