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| “ | Wait 'til you see this. | „ |
| ~ Bates menacing his victims as he sets a fire to kill them. |
John David Bates is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Sick Day". He is a murderous pyromaniac who kidnaps children and kills them in fires he sets.
He was portrayed by Eric Murdoch.
Biography[]
Early life[]
As a child, Bates was obsessed with two things: fire, and killing his older sister, Trisha. When he was 12, he set fire to his family's house with Trisha trapped inside, but she managed to survive. Two years later, he did it again, again without success. After his second attempt on his sister's life, his parents disowned him and sent him into foster care to keep Trisha safe.
As an adult, Bates got a job at a repair company that specialized in pyrotechnics, so he could make a living from his obsession with fire. At some point during his career, he suffered an accident that left him with burn scars up and down his arms.
He also remained obsessed with his sister, and sent her an email pretending to ask for forgiveness and reconciliation to lure her in to kill her. Trisha rejected him, however, and deleted her email so he would not find her.
Trisha's rejection served as a trigger for Bates' long-repressed homicidal urges, and he killed a teenage girl named Lisa Ruiz who reminded him of his sister by burning down her house while she was inside. Six months later, he killed a young boy named James Jefferson in the same fashion in a fit of self-hatred, as James reminded him of himself at that age. Two years later, Bates returned home after kidnapping Hannah Robertson and Max Wesserman, burning them alive simultaneously in a warehouse where he stayed lingering behind to watch their murders and the two of them see each other in pain and fear, in order to act out a fantasy of killing Trisha and himself using his favorite method, fire.
"Sick Day"[]
After Bates' latest murders attract the attention of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), Bates decides to move toward his endgame: Killing Trisha and himself for real.
He kidnaps a teenage girl named Francesca Bates and tortures her by burning her with a hot poker. He then follows BAU Agents Jennifer Jareau and Luke Alvez to Francesca's house, where they are interviewing Francesca's mother, Renee, and 12-year-old brother, Roberto. After Jareau and Alvez leave, Bates breaks into the house, knocks Renee unconscious, and kidnaps Roberto.
In an attempt to find Roberto, the BAU profiles the killer as a a white man in his 20s who works with fire and targets teenage girls and preteen boys because they remind him of an older sister and himself, respectively. Reasoning that he had probably tried to harm his sister with fire as a child, they ask technical analyst Penelope Garcia to look for records of house fires involving preteen boys with older sisters, cross-referenced with young men who work with fire. She ultimately finds Bates, and the other agents go after him.
Meanwhile, Bates kidnaps Trisha and breaks her ankles so she cannot run away. He then ties Trisha, Francesca, and Roberto up in the basement of a warehouse, douses it with gasoline, and sets it on fire, intending to die with his victims. Fortunately, Roberto is able to call 9-11 on his cell phone before it dies, allowing Garcia to catch the signal and send it to Jareau and Alvez, alerting them to their location. Jareau and Alvez rush into the burning building, and Bates flees. Alvez goes after him while Jareau frees Trisha and Roberto; however, she is too late to save Francesca, who is killed when the debris collapses on her from an explosion. They take Bates into custody, and he is imprisoned for life for several counts of murder.
Trivia[]
- Bates is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Pedro Lopez, a.k.a. “The Monster of the Andes”, a Colombian serial killer who was thrown out of the house for sexually assaulting his sister, then started killing high-risk children while moving across the country, even into Ecuador and Peru.
- Joseph Duncan, a serial killer/rapist, mostly of boys, escalating to slaughtering everyone in a household and kidnapping the two youngest children. Duncan killed the brother, burning his corpse, and sexually abused the sister.
- Edmund Kemper, a.k.a. "The Co-Ed Killer", a serial killer of women and girls with a previous record of shooting his grandparents, having been abused by his motjer for threatening his sisters and killed his mother at the end of his spree.
- Mauricio Silva, a.k.a. "The Monster", a serial killer of runaway teens in California with a previous manslaughter conviction, ending his spree with murdering his half-sister.
- Austin Messner, the killer of his baby sister by an accidental house fire.
External Links[]
- John David Bates on the Criminal Minds Wiki
