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| “ | Spend some time down there and you might learn your lesson. | „ |
| ~ John David Bidwell as he buries one of his victims alive. |
John David Bidwell is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Boxed In". He is a serial kidnapper who abducts young boys with discipline problems and locks them up in boxes in imitation of his abusive father.
He was portrayed by J. Michael Trautmann as an adult and by Austin Kane as a child.
Biography[]
Early life[]
John and his sister Sandra endured years of abuse from their father, Sam, a violent, alcoholic religious zealot who would punish his children for the slightest misbehavior by locking them up inside a wooden trunk, leaving them in the dark for hours. Their mother, Mary, tried to protect her children, but Sam would abuse and dominate her, as well.
On Halloween 2002, when John was 12, he got caught egging neighborhood houses, and Sam once again punished him by locking him up in the trunk. When Mary tried to intervene, Sam attacked her with a fireplace poker. Mary finally fought back, grabbing the fireplace poker and bludgeoning Sam to death with it. She let John out of the trunk, and made him help her bury Sam's body at a property owned by Sam's father.
While he was finally free of his father's abuse, however, it was too late to save John, as he grew up to be a sociopath who tortured animals and physically and emotionally abused his mother and sister. Mary called the police on him twice when he became violent with her, but both times dropped the charges.
In 2011, he got engaged, but his fiancée left him at the altar for another man. This trauma finally pushed him over the edge, and he dropped out of society, living in an underground bunker on his grandfather's property. Feeling worthless and small, he sought to regain a sense of power and control by kidnapping young boys who had discipline problems, and punishing them by locking them in a wooden trunk, just as his father did to him, and keeping them imprisoned for a year, after which time he released them. His first victim, Tommy Wilcox, whom he kidnapped on Halloween, died of malnutrition after John let him go. He kidnapped another boy, Joshua Parker, the following Halloween, but treated him better to keep him alive, feeding him regularly and even giving him vitamin supplements.
Boxed In[]
John releases Joshua into a pumpkin patch, where he is found, physically healthy but badly traumatized, by a family shopping for pumpkins for Halloween. The local police suspect that his kidnapper also took Tommy, so they contact the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to have them profile the offender. Meanwhile, John kidnaps Hunter Olsen after seeing him egging houses in his neighborhood, the same offense that his father punished him for. After nabbing him, throws the boy in a wooden trunk and buries it underground.
He later watches the BAU hold a televised press conference in which they profile the kidnapper as a fundamentalist vigilante who is obsessed with punishment. This angers him, as it reminds him of his father, so he throws a can of beer at his TV. He returns to his grandfather's property and listens to loud music in his car while Hunter screams for help. John flies into a rage, pulls Hunter out of the trunk, and gives him a fierce beating while berating him with the same kind of verbal abuse his father used on him.
Meanwhile, the BAU profiles the kidnapper as being fixated on Halloween because of a childhood trauma, probably related to parental abuse. Since all of the victims had histories of vandalism and had been released on a consistent timeline, the BAU agents theorize that the kidnapper is targeting boys who misbehave on Halloween to "discipline" them in the same way he had been "disciplined" as a child. They also theorize that he would have a long criminal history and problems with interpersonal relationships, and that the kidnappings had probably been set off by a major personal rejection. When they televise the profile, Sandra contacts them and says that her brother, John, fits their description of the kidnapper in every way, and also relates their abuse history.
The BAU interviews Mary, who furiously denies that John has hurt anyone. Agent David Rossi persuades her to tell him about Sam's abuse, and she tearfully admits to killing him and making John help her hide the body. She then tells them where they can find John, and they arrest him. When he refuses to say where he is holding Hunter, agent Jennifer Jareau brings in Mary, who apologizes for failing to stop Sam's abuse and pleads with him to reveal Hunter's location, saying that Hunter is just like he was as a boy and deserves better, just as John had. This strikes a chord in John, who reveals Hunter's location in time to save him. As he is taken into custody, he says goodbye to Mary one last time. He is then imprisoned.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- John is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Richard Ausley, a pedophile and rapist responsible for the kidnapping, false imprisonment, and repeated rapes of Paul Martin Andrews, who was rescued and later became a victims' advocate. Ausley was later murdered in prison, which Paul has said he didn't personally wish for to move on.
- Gerald Turner, Jr., a.k.a. "The Halloween Killer", a pedophile, rapist, and murderer responsible for the murder of Lisa Ann French, which resulted in changes in local legislation to prevent endangerment of children to sex offenders.
- Werner Mazurek, the murderer responsible for the fatal kidnapping of Ursula Herrmann, a.k.a. “The Girl in the Box”, where Ursula was trapped in a box in the woods with breathing pipes, food, and other materials, but died from poor air circulation in a poor attempt at a ransom kidnapping to pay off debts.
- Jimmy Lee Dykes, the perpetrator responsible for the 2013 Alabama bunker hostage crisis, where he shot a bud driver dead and kidnapped a five-year-old boy, holding him captive in a bunker rigged with explosives and getting into a standoff with the FBI while supplies were dropped through a ventilation pipe. Dykes was a war veteran with a history of reclusive isolation and mental instability. He was shot and killed to rescue the boy, who was recovered and treated safely.
- Beth Thomas, a child sociopath who, before she received therapy, battered her foster sibling and killed her adoptive family’s dog due to her birth father raping her.
- Holly Jones, the main antagonist of the film Prisoners, a serial killer/kidnapper of children along with her murdered husband, brainwashing kids in their captivity and provoking their families out of grief from the death of their son.
External Links[]
- John David Bidwell on the Criminal Minds Wiki
