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| “ | What's underneath every decision to pick up the martini shaker, chop out a line, tie off an arm, is selfishness. Addicts are selfish, and though I don't hate my patients, I do hate their selfishness, and if they don't like that they can go off to their alley and die. | „ |
| ~ Smith berating his patients and their "selfishness". |
Robert Smith is the secondary antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Broken Wing". Smith is a con artist responsible for embezzlements of residents and patients of his fraudulent rehab programs, which serial killer Douglas Knight infiltrates for his murders and leaves Smith himself a suspect.
He was portrayed by Scott William Winters, who also portrayed Cyril O'Reily in Oz.
Biography[]
Smith acquired a business doctorate from non-accredited college tuition, but had a lengthy record from drugs to assault. he served time for manslaughter for beating a guy to death for telling him he was a "failure". Smith eventually came to resort to embezzlement scams, opening chains of incompetent rehab centers and programs that were never targeted for therapy. Instead, Smith stole from the insurance companies and kicked the patients out once their plans ran dry, guilting them into never fighting back, reporting him, or never returning once they left. A nurse, Knight, who lost his girlfriend Daphne to a drug overdose, was likely indoctrinated by Smith's lies while working at the centers and was killing the patients when they were removed or relapsing from endangerment.
Smith was highly uncooperative with the police when they visited him at his Sweetwater Springs Rehab Center, insulting the patients after they died, terrorizing anyone who was alive if they cooperated with the police, and throwing them out if they were liabilities. Smith was sought for arrest in the murders, and he tried to run before he was caught. He admitted only to his scams, saying murder was pointless if it kept him from money. As he couldn't be held on suspicion of murder, he was released. He kept trying to shut up his staff and patients when the team realized Knight was the killer, but one of his staff, Phil, was fed up and gave the agents directions right to where Knight almost killed yet another woman. Smith was likely investigated and incarcerated once again for robbery and reckless endangerment.
Trivia[]
- Smith is primarily inspired by Hu Wanlin, a Chinese quack and serial killer with a similar criminal record to Smith preceding his con scams, which involved fictitious medical remedies that killed over 100 people before his incarceration, which resulted in massive changes to Chinese medical and licensure laws.
- Smith's chain of rehab centers is inspired by the cracks in mental healthcare and addiction recovery resulting in embezzling and dangerous, unchecked and enabled public and private facilities and programs. The particular programs Smith runs evokes the corrupt hospital in the 2018 psychological thriller Unsane, where patients' insurance companies for as long as the patients are held hostage in the facility under false grounds. The film in turn was inspired by the insurance fraud reports against Universal Health Services.
External Links[]
- Robert Smith on the Criminal Minds Wiki.
