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Donald and Linda Collins are the secondary antagonists of the Criminal Minds episode "A Family Affair". The Collins are the parents of Jeffrey Collins, a bitter, paralyzed serial killer of prostitutes who his parents clean up after to protect.
Donald was portrayed by William Russ, while Linda was portrayed by Kathy Baker.
Biography[]
The Collins family had a codependent dynamic where they buried their secrets, but they still tried to be supportive of each other. Donald was secretly troubled by alcoholism, but Linda prevented everyone from finding out. She doted on Jeffrey, a rising high school football star, and did all she could to support his career, encouraging Donald to watch his games as well. Their family was destroyed when Donald was behind the wheel of their car and they had an accident, which reduced Jeffrey to paraplegia and ended his career. As Linda couldn't repair Jeffrey's injuries, she lied she was behind the wheel to prevent Donald from embarrassment and legal punishment. Jeffrey grew angry and depressed at both his parents, Donald for reducing him to a wheelchair and still drinking after the fact, but more openly toward Linda due to her considering the family's reputation over their relationships and trying to keep Jeffrey codependent on her.
While Jeffrey was at Georgia State, he stabbed Ginger Palmont, a college student he solicited through her escort service, in 2007. When returning to Donald and Linda in 2012, Jeffrey wanted to kill more women to take his rage against Linda out on them, so since Linda wanted to see Jeffrey placated and Donald was too lethargic to protest, they picked up more sex workers for Jeffrey to kill. He slashed three more women in the family's home, Donald and Linda moving their bodies and Linda posing them as if for laying them in coffins out of maternal instinct. While the murders were going on, Jeffrey was defiant about taking his medicine and constantly fighting with his parents. Linda just wanted to make him feel better with little demands, but Donald was the most distant and unresponsive, which Linda fights him over. Jeffrey constantly rejected Linda's efforts for affection and swats his bottle of pills from her hand. He wants to stab her for trying to slip them in his sandwich, but Jeffrey relents.
Jeffrey's demands for murder become more frequent and enraged, but Donald and Linda stopped after the last woman he killed, Julie Harmon, escaped being killed by Jeffrey and ended up being bludgeoned by Donald. Jeffrey was livid, but their dynamics were shaken up badly enough Donald called it quits. Linda still wouldn't turn on Jeffrey, but Donald, seeing press conferences on the crimes, became increasingly suicidal. After relenting shooting himself in the house when Linda caught him, he left after a dinner with his family and Jeffrey's physical therapist, Erika Taylor, ramming his car into a pole to kill himself. He died with a suicide note in his pocket confessing to the murders, which the FBI saw through. When Erika finds a bloody necklace from one of the women Jeffrey killed, Linda takes her hostage at gunpoint. The BAU stop Linda from killing Erika by informing her and Jeffrey of Donald's death. Linda hesitates, then tries to shoot Jeffrey to prevent him from going to prison. She is shot dead by the agents instead, and Jeffrey somberly looks at her when she's dead as he is arrested.
