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| “ | You'll never understand what I did. But out there... my followers... they understand. | „ |
| ~ Johnson as he is taken into custody. |
Robert Johnson is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "The Internet is Forever". He is a sexual sadist who records himself torturing and murdering women and puts the recordings of his crimes on the Internet for his "fans" to enjoy.
He is portrayed by Reece Rios.
Early life[]
Johnson is a skilled computer programmer and Internet designer; he is also a sadistic psychopath and sex addict who derives sexual pleasure from torturing and murdering women, and by being watched while he does it.
In 2002, he was arrested for possessing torture videos, and spent two years in a halfway house. After his release, he got a job installing fire optic cable under another name; he was eventually fired, however, after his employer found out he had been installing free cable without authorization, and using it to spy on people.
Soon afterward, he began murdering women with facial symmetry resembling his, using the "free cable" ruse to access their homes and implant miniature cameras so he would know when it was safe to break in; when his homicidal urges became too strong to ignore, he would break into their homes and strangle them, live-streaming the murders to a select list of customers, to whom he would send video recordings of the murders as leverage to make sure they did not turn him in to the police. He put his victims' bodies in a walk-in freezer he rented from businessman (and customer) Austin Chapman, and made it look as if his victims were still alive by hacking their social media and posting about going on vacation.
In "The Internet is Forever"[]
By the time the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) start investigating Johnson's murders, he has killed three women. He watches them hold a press conference about his crimes as he stalks his next intended victim, Allison Kitteridge; agitated, he forgoes the usual caution he typically employs during a murder, and forgets to take the fiber optic cable with him after he kills her. He then sends a mass email to his followers announcing his next murder. He then kidnaps Lucy Masters and takes her to the freezer, leaving a mini-camera on her TV set.
Meanwhile, the BAU profiles the killer as targeting women whose faces resemble his as a way of saying, "This is what I look like", and uses a ruse to install cameras in their houses to live-stream the murders. They also theorize that the killer has a background in IT and a criminal record reflecting it. Johnson learns of their profile from another BAU press conference, and becomes obsessed with "performing" for them. To that end, he remotely activates Masters' TV when the BAU is investigating her apartment so they can see a bound and gagged Masters at his mercy.
BAU technical analyst Penelope Garcia, who had taken Johnson's crimes personally because of her own Internet prowess, cuts off his Internet connection, disrupting his "show". Moments later, the rest of the BAU team, led to Johnson's hideout by Garcia, burst in and arrest him.
Trivia[]
- Johnson is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Philip Markoff, a.k.a. “The Craigslist Killer”, a career criminal targeting women with personal ads, killing one of them, before he committed suicide in jail.
- The “Boston Strangler” and prime suspect Albert DeSalvo, DeSalvo using a ruse of being an electrician to get into women’s homes and sexually assault them, confessing to the infamous series of in-home strangulation murders of women.
- Richard Grissom, an American serial killer convicted of the murders of three missing women, who were reportedly kept dead in a storage unit.
External links[]
- Robert Johnson at the Criminal Minds Wiki
