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The Gold Star Killers, also known simply as the Gold Stars or GS from 1 to 5, are the main antagonists of Season 2 of Criminal Minds: Evolution. The Gold Stars are a group of militia captives who were tortured and brainwashed as kids to become mercenaries and lead Frank Church's future army of child soldiers.
Portrayals[]
- Damien Booth was portrayed by David Garelik.
- Jade Waters was portrayed by Liana Liberato, who also portrayed Quinn Bailey in Scream 6.
- Aiden Keller was portrayed by Matthew Erick White.
- Dana Howe was portrayed by Nikko Austen Smith.
- Peter Bailey was portrayed by Alex Saxon.
Biography[]
Background[]
Military failure and private security contractor Frank Church had a God complex and dreamed of kidnapping kids all over the world and brainwashing them into being his army, as well as raping the girls among the kids to his pleasure. He operated out of his privste barracks in Maryland and leaned on far-right conspiracy theories as part of his campaign to maintain his influence. He saw an opportunity in a Utah facility known as Stuart House, which he pulled the strings of to find vulnerable kids to torture and rape into subservience, their trauma-induced violence being directed solely by him. He stole a theoretical paper from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, which Dr. Jill Gideon, widow of Agent Jason Gideon, reverse engineered in the hopes kids could be given therapy, not encouraged into murder. Church reverted the research into its original format, then gathered five at risk teens to hold captive and brutalize.
The kids included Jade Waters, the daughter of a sheriff's deputy that killed her mother, and Pete Bailey, the brother of FBI Deputy Director Doug Bailey. From flashbacks, one of the most recurrent means of torture at the facility was use of electrified prods. Pete was released to his family, who were Libertarians and baffled by Pete's trauma and brainwashing, but even in spite of fighting with Doug and espousing his conditioned delusions, Church found him a great success after testing his functioning outside the barracks. Jade bonded closest with Damien Booth, the leader of the kids, and they became a couple as soon as the brutality was over. Church indoctrinated the kids after they were broken down into believing he had nothing to do with the criminal operations, lying he stopped them, there were more kids like them in fictitious scenarios by his design, and that he trained them to kill such made-up networks. He even brought them back to their very cells to test their conditioning, which indeed was solidified after enough time for most of them. The only child too shattered was Aiden Keller, who tried to gouge the eyes of one of the orderlies who sexually abused him, which led to him being kicked out and left to fend for himself, even after developing severe schizophrenia. Once grown adults, while the Gold Stars were trained to believing they were hunting child trafficking networks, Church's first assignment for them was instead killing all his accomplices to cover his tracks, which the group was none the wiser of. They were disguised as accidents, suicides, and natural deaths to prevent investigation. In the meantime, Church made the Gold Stars out as heroes for the other kids captive in his barracks. He also plotted for numerous corrupt entrepreneurs and law officials to be another team of mercenaries, colloquially named the "Strike Team", to dispatch the Gold Stars once they became useless, but by means never specified, they all found out and got to the Strike Team first.
In Criminal Minds: Evolution[]
After killing three of the five Strike Team mercenaries, Booth targeted Officer Don Bertoli, taking the more sadistic approach of torturing his wife Gwen to death. Don broke free from his restraints and walked all the way to his department office with Gwen in his arms. He was detained, his colleagues in disbelief of his potential guilt, which the arriving BAU agreed upon. Sadly, Don was so traumatized and in shock that when he had a flashback during questioning, he fought everyone in the room, took one of his colleagues' sidearms, and killed himself. Agent Emily Prentiss already established a pattern, identifying the Strike Team through the similar M.O.s: their eyes were mutilated while they were alive, and a bullet with a golden star on the shell casing was in each of their guns. They accurately realized the victims were sent to kill the Gold Stars, but they were horrified when recently incarcerated serial killer Elias Voit received a reduced prison sentence by stringing along their superiors in the investigation. It was revealed Booth contacted Voit on his online network of killers, Voit leading them to believe the FBI was responsible ever since.
The agents were too late to stop Booth from killing Detective Issac Sanchez, who was instead mutilated by his tongue being cut out. Booth then stole Sanchez's badge before going underground again, hoping to give it to Waters, as she was killing sheriff's deputies tied to Stuart House. The BAU was sidetracked when Keller went back to Utah, killing former employee Timothy Leo and his wife Caroline at the abandoned property. He also held Nancy Taylor hostage and tortured her with one of the electrical prods, while muttering about his trauma and the delusions that shattered his psyche. The agents stopped him from killing Taylor, but as they wanted him alive, it was a blow when he made a movs to kill Taylor and the agents shot him dead. It seemed he was never involved because of his psychosis and messier M.O., but the agents would return to their original assumptions once connecting him through the crimes' paper trail.
Waters, in the meantime, was isolating sheriff's deputies throughout the Rockies by pretending she needed help with her car, then bludgeoning them to death and gouging their eyes with her own homemade tattoo needle. For each murder, she tattooed an eye on her arm with the same needle. Her father Rick tried to kidnap and kill her to shut her up, but she shot and mutilated him instead, at the very site where her mother was buried. Reconvening with Booth, who gave her Sanchez's badge, he and Waters called Voit, who tapped out a Morse code message, "North Star" which both was meant to fuel the couple's paranoia and led the FBI to the thesis, and eventually to Jill, who was appalled the paper was used for torture of children. Waters continued to suffer flashbacks to Church raping her, in spite of not remembering he was the rapist, so Booth was her rock.
Booth and Waters wasn't totally convinced of Voit's messages, so they strapped arms desler Eddie Dayton to a bomb and ordered him to mow Voit down with a bulletproof van. He was stopped, and the bomb was disarmed, but Wayers still called on a phone strapped to the device to challenge Voit. Voit convinced her to listen to him, so Booth later snuck into an armored car in disguise and questioned Voit about the conspiracy theory Voit was pushing them. The two of them went underground again, only to kill Dr. Hank Desola, Waters bludgeoning him with a shotgun. He was then hanged to stage his death, but the agents saw right through the setup. Voit's lawyer, Vincent Orlov, provided a GPS tracker to Waters and Booth, who were ready to shoot if he did anything funny. It was to lead to one of Voit's storm shelters for more information.
Jill was the last victim they were hunting, but she made her protection go away so she'd lure Booth to her. She lied there was a "boy" at the late Agent Gideon's cabin to get him to believe in her, and he agree to drive her there, albeit at gunpoint. There she revealed the "boy" was himself. She apologized for her role in the paper's development and exploitation, revealing it was written in the cabin, and successfully breaking Booth from his brainwashing once she reminded him of the truth. Booth was devastated, but he surrendered nevertheless. When it appeared he'd be arrested, he saw Waters aiming a laser guide from her rifle at him. Unable to bear the memory of his crimes, he signaled her to put him out of his misery and shoot him. Much to Waters' grief, she did, then prevented a chase by running the rifle on an automated program to make responders duck.
Ready for an endgame, Waters lured State Trooper Martin Sanz, knwoing he'd arrest her. Another one of the Gold Stars, Dana Howe, shot and injured him once arriving. Leaving Sanz alive, Waters told him to pass on to the FBI she wanted to be left alone, but her wording led the agents to realize Church was the one directing her crimes. By that point, Waters and Howe found the shelter Voit set up, where he accumulated all the info he couls on the BAU and painted the presentation to look like they were responsible for all of Church's crimes. As a final flip-off along with to cover their tracks, Waters and Howe rigged the shelter with explosives, killing three more state troopers when they entered. They returned to the barracks, where Church isolated Howe to shoot her dead. Waters was lauded as an icon by the kids, but one, Mila Sandoval, confided she remembered Church was the one that raped her. Waters finally faced the truth about him and was prepared to get more answers, especially after Church showed her her cell again, but she remembered he was the one who ordered her captivity. When she saw Mila was being prepared for another rape, she was tased and brutalized by Church instead to subjugate her again. It failed, as when she woke up after being untied, she killed two guards, made Mila run with the other kids, and set up explosives across the barracks. After the children were safely rescued by the agents, she blew the compunds up, kidnapping Church and Agent Prentiss with Pete Bailey.
Waters tried to make them both answer to the accusations she leveled, but Church denied his crimes and was shot dead by Waters. Prentiss demanded a "trial", which is when Pete introduced himself. Waters tried to shock a false confession out of Prentiss, as Pete blamed her for when Voit previously killed Doug. She wouldn't go along with it, so they both prepared to bomb and shoot he responders once they found their location. When Pete and Waters were shown footage of Voit confessing to the assassination, Pete made Wayers surrender with him. However, Waters wanted to shoot herself, heartbroken from all her trauma and loss. When Prentiss sympathized with her rape trauma, implying that's something they shared, she agreed to take Waters' full statement once she was in custody. Waters and Pete were arrested, and they said their goodbyes before being taken away: Waters reunited with Mila, and Pete reunited with his parents.
Trivia[]
- The Gold Star Killers are inspired by multiple real-life criminals and criminal cases:
- The followers of the QAnon conspiracy theories going to extents of violent crime, especially murders and attempted murders, as consequences of their collective paranoia.
- The Barrow Gang, a gang of outlaws and cop killers led by Bonnie and Clyde, who died in a standoff with law enforcement by a hail of bullets.
- The killers of Brian Wells, a pizza deliveryman who was strapped to a bomb, forced into a series of heists, and killed by the bomb when he didn't complete them due to being arrested.
- Eric and Kim Williams, a duo of serial shooters of law officials and their families as retribution for Eric's comviction for property crimes.
- The victims of the Diamond Ranch Academy, a dangerous and negligent disciplinary facility for teens, which resulted in the deaths of at least one of the children on site.
- Kristijan, the hidden antagonist of the Icelandic miniseries The Valhalla Murders, a serial killer of employees at a closed boys' reform facility, mutilating the victims' eyes postmortem, as revenge for the murder of his son by the rapist running the facility.