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| “ | They like it when they get to share me. | „ |
| ~ Wilkinson about his victims. |
Robert Wilkinson is the overarching antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Birthright". He is a serial killer of teenage girls and the father of Charlie Wilkinson, who is inspired by his memory to become a serial killer as well.
He was portrayed by Matt Hoffman.
Biography[]
Robert Wilkinson was born around 1952. A farmer, Robert lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with his wife Mary, who left him in 1979 after becoming pregnant, fearing for her and her baby's safety due to Robert being violent when he drinks. At the time, Robert spent several days in jail after being arrested three times for DUIs. His wife abandoning him caused him to snap and prompt him to abduct a troubled girl named Karen Foley, whom he tortured and raped for days, keeping her captive in his barn and a small cave on the outskirts of his property.
Karen finally escaped one night after Robert forgot to chain her up prior to passing out drunk. Unbeknownst to him, she was pregnant with his child, whom she named Stephen after giving birth to him. Her family did not believe her story about being kidnapped, as she had run away several times before.
Robert, meanwhile, began kidnapping teenage girls, having become addicted to the power he held over Karen. As with Karen, he held them prisoner in his barn, raping and torturing them for weeks. This time, however, he killed them with an axe to make sure they would not escape. He would then dismember the bodies and dump the remains at Civil War re-enactment site near his farm.
He murdered a total of five girls before Mary returned to the farm, and discovered what he had done. Knowing Robert would eventually kill her and Charlie, Mary killed him by pushing him into his own combine harvester, and made it look like an accident.
Decades later, Mary would discover that her efforts to protect Charlie from his father were in vain; he had become a serial killer in his own right, having inherited his father's psychopathy and grown up to hate her and all other women because she lied to him about who his father was.
Trivia[]
- Robert is inspired by multiple real-life and fictional criminals:
- Larry Hall, an imprisoned American murderer and suspected serial killer infamous for leaving victims dead at Civil War historic sites across the country. Jailhouse informants tried get his confessions on dozens of suspected murders nationwide, and all of Hall's confessions have since been recanted.
- The late Ivan Milat, a.k.a. "The Backpacker Murderer", an Australian serial killer/rapist of backpackers in rural New South Wales who were tortured to death in public parks, the women being raped. Milat's nephew Matthew also committed murder.
- The late David Meirhofer, a serial killer of children at the center of one of the FBI's earliest offender profiling cases. Meirhofer reduced victims to bone fragments and committed suicide in police custody.
- The late Gordon Stewart Northcott, a.k.a. “The Wineville Chicken Cook Murderer”, a serial killer/rapist of boys he held hostage, several of them at a time, using his equally brutalized nephew as a lure, before he murdered them and butchered their remains.
- Ward Weaver, Jr., a serial killer/rapist with a son, Ward Weaver III, who raped and murdered two teenage girls.
- The late Richard Speck, a serial rapist later escalating to mass murder of numerous nurses in a college dorm, caught once one of them escaped when he wasn't looking and gave identifying information of him.
- Joel Rifkin, a serial killer of women in prostitution who were reduced to dismembered remains, coinciding with the murders of Robert Shulman, one of the inspirations for Charlie.
- The late John Allen Muhammad, one of the "D.C. Snipers", a serial killer of random strangers who had an accomplice in a teenager, Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the inspirations for Charlie.
- Joe St. George, the main antagonist of Dolores Claiborne, a pedophile guilty of sexually abusing his daughter, who buried the memories in adulthood, and was later killed by his wife to stop him, disguising his death as an accident. The death of her employer leads to the family secrets being unearthed.
- Gottfried Vanger, the overarching antagonist of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a serial killer/rapist of women dying in a drowning when attempting to murder his daughter, only for his son Martin to become a serial killer after Gottfried's death.
External links[]
- Robert Wilkinson on the Criminal Minds Wiki
