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| “ | I see a guy walking down the street with a stupid look on his face and I want to bash him over the head with a bottle. To me that's normal. It's weird to me that no one else feels that way. It's all I think about. I can't stop. | „ |
| ~ Eric Ryan Olson explaining his pathology. |
Eric Christian Olson is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Zoe's Reprise". He is a serial killer who emulates other, famous serial killers by copying their murders.
He was portrayed by the late Johnny Lewis, who also played Gabriel Duncan in Smallville.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Olson is a violent sociopath; for as long as he could remember, he has had urges to harm and kill people, more or less indiscriminately. At the age of twenty, he was arrested for attempted rape and spent three years in prison.
During his incarceration, he took correspondence courses in forensic science and criminology, both to better understand his own pathology and to learn how to kill without leaving evidence. His favorite author on the subject of serial killers was criminal profiler David Rossi.
Upon his release from prison, Olson began committing a series of murders based on the "style" of famous serial killers such as Jack the Ripper, David Berkowitz, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Because he preyed on multiple different types of victims and used different M.O.s, the police did not connect his murders to each other.
Olson took pictures of the crime scenes to relive the experience of committing the murders, and even decorates his apartment with them. He also had sex with his girlfriend, Linda Jones, at the crime scenes after the police left, as part of a sexual fantasy in which he rapes and chokes her to death. She permitted him to choke her during sex because he repeatedly kissed her on the forehead while he did it, which she believed meant that he loved her; it was in fact part of his pathology.
"Zoe's Reprise"[]
One night, Olson walks by the home of one of his victims to relive the experience of killing her, only to find criminology student Zoe Hawkes snooping around the building. They strike up a conversation, in which Zoe mentions that she believes that the rash of murders committed in the area recently are the work of one killer.
Thinking she is on to him, he advances on her, hits her on the head with a bottle, and strangles her to death with her own scarf. He kisses her on the forehead after she is dead. The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), led by Rossi, is called in to investigate after Rossi's business card is found in Zoe's pocket, her having met him at one of his book signings the very night of her death.
Olson, meanwhile, believes that he has finally "found his style" as a serial killer. He strangles his next victim, a female jogger, with a piece of wire, a detail he found in one of Rossi's books. He then dumps her body in a nearby river. Feeling unstoppable, he killed a homeless woman the following morning.
He spends the rest of the day drinking in the bar where Linda works, and they have sex in the bushes outside after she finishes her shift. The BAU interrupts them, however, having found Olson's DNA on Zoe's body and deduced that he is the killer.
They believe he is in the act of killing another victim, but are surprised to learn that Linda is his girlfriend. While in custody, Olson asks to speak to Rossi, saying he is "a big fan". He suggests that he has committed more than the eight murders the BAU has connected to him, and asks Rossi to profile him in return for the location of the other bodies.
To keep him talking while the other BAU agents search his apartment, Rossi claimed to know why Olson kisses his victims on the forehead while killing them - because he wants to feel the heat leave their bodies as they die. Rossi also theorizes that Olson was sickly as a child, and that his parents would kiss his forehead whenever he was ill to check his temperature.
Rossi says that the sensation of being kissed on the forehead was likely Olson's only experience of feeling loved. Rossi's team then messages him that they have enough physical evidence to convict Olson of four additional murders, leaving him nothing to bargain with. Knowing that he is now facing the death penalty, Olson let his guard down and tells Rossi that he has always had homicidal urges, and has no idea why. He then asked Rossi to interview him while he is on death row so he can be featured in Rossi's next book.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Olson is inspired by multiple real-life serial killers:
- Derek Brown, a British serial killer and copycat of unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, with a history of rape before his murders.
- Faryion Wardrip, an American serial killer/rapist of women in Texas who was released from prison for murder, tied to three more murders, and confessed to one police didn’t find in interrogation.
- Cody Legebokoff, a Canadian teenage serial killer of mothers who was caught once he drove back from killing a teenager, then was tied to three other women’s murders.
- Gary Ridgway, a.k.a. “The Green River Killer”, a serial killer and necrophiliac responsible for strangling women and girls in prostitution and vagrancy responsible for sexually brutalizing and degrading his wives.
- Robert Garrow a serial rapist and later a spree killer whose lawyers, after Garrow was shot dead, were tried in the "Buried Bodies case", where they were pressured to reveal the isolated locations where Garrow left people he killed.
- Charlie Brandt, a serial killer with admitted violent urges tied to numerous murders across Florida from matching M.O.s, having served prison time for killing his mother and committing suicide after killing his wife and nice, which started investigations.
- David Meirhofer, a serial killer tied to multiple killing he wasn't suspected of, as a plea bargain once he was arrested. Meirhofer was the first serial killer caught by the FBI through profiling.
External Links[]
- Eric Olson on the Criminal Minds Wiki
