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“ | This is what's best. You'll see. I'm doing this out of love. | „ |
~ Knight before he attempts another murder. |
Douglas Knight is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Broken Wing". He is an "angel of death" serial killer who preys on addicts, believing that he is putting them out of their misery.
He was portrayed by Tui Asau.
Biography[]
Early life[]
In 2013, Knight married a woman named Daphne, a heroin addict who eventually died of an overdose. Her death inspired Knight to practice nursing in rehab programs, but he saw many of his patients relapse into addiction. Knight decided that his patients, and addicts in general, were better off dead, so he decided to kill them to "put the out of their misery".
Knight worked through a freelance temp agency that put him in addiction clinics on a short-term basis so he would not be connected to the patients he murdered. He offered people getting sober in the programs his phone number and said he could call them in times of crisis. Once he was in their homes, he drugged their coffee with benzodiazepines to make them tired and pliable, and then fatally injected them with homemade analgesic opiates, making their deaths look like heroin overdoses. Knight's signature as a serial killer was his compulsion to tattoo a single angel wing on his victims' right shoulders - a reference to his vision of himself as an "angel of mercy" - with ink that was only visible under UV light, and then tattoo a matching wing with the victim's initials on his own back. By the time of the episode, Knight had murdered 38 people.
Knight began trolling for victims at his latest assignment, a rehabilitation clinic run by Robert Smith, a quack doctor and con artist who is using the addicts he treats in a scam to bilk their insurance companies.
In "Broken Wing"[]
Daryl Wright, a recovering alcoholic who works as a substance abuse therapist, loses seven patients over a few months to heroin overdoses, even though heroin was not their drug of choice. Suspecting foul play, he approaches his ex-wife, Dr. Tara Lewis, a member of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), for help. She presents the victims' post-mortem toxicology reports to the rest of the BAU team, who agree to investigate. Meanwhile, Knight kills his latest victim, recovering meth addict Bonnie Sullivan, with a heroin overdose.
The next day, Knight watches as Smith kicks Clay Miller out of the program because his insurance has run out. Knight then isolates Miller in his room and drugs him. When an overdose doesn't kill him, Knight suffocates Miller by covering his mouth and nose until he stops breathing.
BAU Agents David Rossi and Matt Simmons examine Miller's corpse and find a UV ink tattoo of an angel wing on his shoulder, just like the other victims. Technical analyst Penelope Garcia, meanwhile, unearths Smith's criminal record, while also discovering that Wright's dead patients were all enrolled in Smith's program. The BAU briefly suspects that Smith is the killer and arrest him, but after he says that the addicts he treats are nothing but cash cows to him, they realize that he has no motive to kill his patients, so they let him go. They keep Smith's patient records, however, and realize that the killer works in Smith's clinic. Garcia cross-references nurses and caregivers in the area who work through temp agencies with people who have the distinctive angel tattoo, and she finds Knight.
After Smith kicks his patient Molly Witt out of his program as punishment for assisting the FBI, Knight offers her a ride home. Once they arrive, he makes her a cup of coffee laced with benzodiazapine, which makes her so groggy that he easily overpowers her and prepares to inject a heroin overdose into her arm. Before he can, however, Simmons and Supervisory Agent Emily Prentiss burst in, having learned his whereabouts from Smith's repentant partner-in-crime Keith Brennan. Prentiss tries to talk Knight down by empathizing with him about the death of his wife and the frustration and anger he feels watching the addicts he is trying to help relapse into substance abuse; she then says Molly deserves a chance to get better. In an uncharacteristic show of real mercy, Knight lets Molly go and allows Prentiss and Simmons to arrest him.
While he is being processed, Knight takes his shirt off and tearfully reveals what he says is his "beautiful" array of tattooed wings on his back, 40 in all that Agent Luke Alvez photographs as evidence. Knight is later incarcerated for life for his crimes.
Trivia[]
- Knight is inspired by multiple real-life and fictional serial killers:
- Charles Cullen, a former nurse and the worst serial killer in New Jersey history, who fatally poisoned dozens of his patients.
- Dorothea Puente, a.k.a. "The Death House Landlady", a serial killer of elderly patients in a care facility she ran, all by poisoning so she could rob and embezzle from them. Knight, in comparison, worked at the facility where he murdered, but the head of the facility was corrupt and committed embezzlement on his patients.
- Frederick Mors, an Austrian-American serial killer of patients in his nursing home of employment.
- The late Harold Shipman, Britain's worst serial killer, a doctor who administered fatal drug overdoses to hundreds of his patients.
- The late John Bodkin Adams, a physician tried and acquitted of killing hundreds of his patients.
- The late Gilbert Paul Jordan, a.k.a. "The Boozing Barber", a serial killer of women who force-fed them alcohol until they died.
- Elizabeth Wettlaufer, a registered nurse who murdered eight senior citizens in retirement homes in Ontario, Canada, between 2007 and 2016.
- The late Donald Harvey, a former hospital orderly who murdered between 37 and 47 of his patients by poisoning or other means like smothering them to death, claiming that he wanted to "ease their pain".
- David Strine, the main antagonist of the film Unsane, a stalker and serial killer guilty of following a woman he harassed to a psych ward where a similar embezzlement scheme was being conducted, and Strine tried to kill to get to the woman he was after.
External links[]
- Douglas Knight on the Criminal Minds Wiki