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| “ | Keep Estelle out of this! She's 23 years old! A mother! She deserves to live! | „ |
| ~ Frank Cosgrove about his daughter. |
Frank Cosgrove is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Anonymous". He is a spree killer who murders people so his daughter can have a better chance of receiving a liver transplant.
He was portrayed by Ray Abruzzo.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Cosgrove is a widower whose 23-year-old daughter, Estelle, is a recovering drug addict with a young son named Timmy. Estelle's years of intravenous drug abuse damaged her liver, resulting in her suffering from cholestasis and needing a liver transplant. Cosgrove tried to donate part of his, but was rejected as a donor because he had high blood pressure. Desperate to save her life, Cosgrove began planning to kill people in hopes that they would be a match for her transplant. He used his job as a clerk for the DMV to find potential matches, choosing victims who are registered as organ donors.
"Anonymous"[]
One night while driving home from work, Cosgrove happens upon Betty Wright, who had been badly injured in a car accident. Cosgrove drives her to a hospital in hopes of saving her, but when he sees a bracelet on her wrist identifying her as an organ donor, he shoots her dead in the hope that Estelle will get her liver. When Wright's liver goes to someone else, Cosgrove finds another victim, Cliff Daniels, and shoots him dead, making it look like a mugging. He leaves Daniels' body in front of a church to ensure that their delivery service will get him to a hospital in time to harvest his organs, but the service does not show up.
To make sure that his next victim, Victor Hall, will get to the hospital in time to harvest his liver, Cosgrove calls 9-11 and reports the shooting just before committing it. However, Hall dies before the paramedics arrive. He breaks into the house of his next victim, Dale Crawford, but before shooting him sees that he is an alcoholic and a heroin addict, meaning that his liver will be too damaged to transplant. He kills Crawford anyway in a fit of rage, emptying the entire clip of his weapon into his body.
The same day, Cosgrove finds Estelle passed out on his kitchen floor, and takes her to a hospital. He meets Estelle's friend and fellow cholestasis sufferer Keith Doheny, who is higher up on the transplant list than she is. He kills Doheny, but Estelle is passed over at the last second for the liver that would have gone to him, enraging Cosgrove. He begins stalking a new victim, Carol Murray, after seeing from her driver's license that she is an organ donor.
Meanwhile, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) investigates the murders, profiling the killer as a man in his 50s who is targeting organ donors and making sure that his victims receive medical attention quickly enough for their internal organs to be viable for harvest, meaning that either he or a loved one is in need of a transplant. From his access to organ donor records, they theorize that the killer likely works at the DMV. BAU Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia cross-references local DMV employees with organ transplant lists, and finds Cosgrove.
BAU agents Derek Morgan and Jennifer Jareau, flanked by local police, go to the DMV to arrest Cosgrove just as he is about to kill Murray. When they try to get Cosgrove to stand down, he justifies his actions by saying that Estelle deserves to live, but Jareau replies that killing people will not save her. Realizing that she is right, Cosgrove apologizes to Murray and lets her go, and then commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. His liver is then donated to Estelle, saving her life.
Trivia[]
- Cosgrove is inspired by multiple real-life and fictional criminals:
- Charles William Davis, Jr., a serial killer/rapist of women in Baltimore, working in ambulance dispatch and placing anonymous calls to authorities to lead them to the women he murdered before he was arrested.
- John Quincy Archibald, the protagonist villain of the thriller film John Q., a desperate father who takes hostages in a hospital so his son can get the heart transplant he needs to save his life. Archibald, in turn, is inspired by a real Canadian man who pretended to wield a gun in a hospital and issuing similar demands, before he was tragically shot.
External Links[]
- Frank Cosgrove on the Criminal Minds Wiki
