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| “ | Let me show you what it feels like to be sick like I am! | „ |
| ~ Leo Jenkins as he covers one of his victims with cockroaches. |
Leo Jenkins is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Itch". He is a delusional serial killer who believes that he is suffering from a skin disease that does not actually exist and kills people who refuse to help him.
He was portrayed by Jon Abrahams.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Jenkins was a former lab assistant at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. After he contracted shingles, his superiors injected him with a vaccine that deadened the nerves in his arm, causing an overwhelming phantom itch. He developed delusional parisitosis, a mental illness that caused him to believe that bugs were crawling under his skin. Specifically, he convinced himself that the CDC injected cockroach larvae into his arm.
He went to several skin specialists for treatment, all of whom told him there was nothing physically wrong with him. He then started attending a support group for people who believed they were suffering from Morgellons Syndrome, a skin disease that supposedly introduces parasites into the skin, and is not recognized by any medical or scientific authority. He also decided that the only way to make people believe he had the disorder was to show them how he felt, by covering them with insects.
Jenkins told investigative reporter Albert Stillman about his illness and begged him to write a story about the CDC poisoning him, but Stillman dismissed him as crazy. Enraged, Jenkins kidnapped Stillman and covered him with cockroaches to show him how he felt. Stillman's terror interacted with the opiate withdrawal he was going through, and resulted in him suffering a psychotic break. He escaped, hallucinating that he was still covered in insects.
"The Itch"[]
After a fleeing Stillman is struck and killed by a car, Jenkins returns to his basement and watches a recording of what he did to Stillman, all while hallucinating that there are bugs crawling under his skin. He extracts a sample of his own blood, which he hallucinates has turned black.
Jenkins then kidnaps entomologist Dr. William Suri, hoping that he will be able to cure him. Suri tells him that Morgellons Syndrome is not real, however, and that there is nothing wrong with his blood or skin. Jenkins once again becomes enraged, accusing Suri of corrupting his blood sample. He then covers Suri in cockroaches and seals him in a metal tube to show him what his illness was like. When Suri still refuses to believe that there is anything physically wrong with Jenkins, however, Jenkins shoots him dead. Suri and Stillman's deaths attract the attention of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), who start investigating the case.
Jenkins goes to a meeting of his support group, and is taken by another member, Jane Posner, who also believes that she is being poisoned by the government. They go on a date, and Jenkins takes a sample of her blood to analyze it for poisons, which he believes that he sees. He and Posner then become lovers. The next morning, the support group's leader, Lisa Randall, shows up at Posner's door to take her to a meeting, but Jenkins overhears her talking on her phone to BAU Agent Jennifer Jareau, who is investigating the group for ties to the killer, and becomes convinced that she is conspiring against him.
Jenkins kidnaps Randall and tortures her in his basement by covering her with spiders in order to make her tell him what she told Jareau. At that moment, however, BAU Agents David Rossi and Derek Morgan burst in, having deduced after interviewing Randall that Jenkins is the killer. Rossi distracts Jenkins by offering to cure his "condition"; he then shows Jenkins his own arm with his cell phone camera, revealing that there are no insects on or in it. Baffled, Jenkins asks Rossi how he did it, and lets his guard down long enough for Rossi to knock him out and arrest him. Jenkins is institutionalized, while Randall is finally cured of her delusions.
Trivia[]
- Jenkins is inspired by multiple real-life and fictional criminals:
- Ralph Tortorici, a man with paranoia schizophrenia who took a filled lecture hall at SUNY hostage and shot and severely injured a student, after having repeatedly alleged from his delusions that he had chip implants he feared the government was tracking him with.
- Peter Evans, the protagonist villain of the 2006 film Bug. Like Jenkins, Evans had paranoid delusions about nonexistent parasitosis and government conspiracies, eventually roping a woman, Agnes White, into his insanity.
External Links[]
- Leo Jenkins on the Criminal Minds Wiki
