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| “ | Recognize me yet? I made it easy for you. | „ |
| ~ Kestler harassing a victim he's stalking. |
Willie Kestler is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode “Perennials”. Kessler is a rampaging killer of people he fears are after him based on paranoid delusions about reincarnation and his supposed related history.
He was portrayed by Bill Tangradi.
Biography[]
Early Life and Crimes[]
Kessler was born on January 19, 1988 at Hobson Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His mother Beverly was rushed to the hospital for delivery of Kestler through an emergency C-section. Serial killer Russell Smith, who was shot by police, was in the adjacent bed while medical teams were trying to resuscitate him. The moment Kestler was born, Smith died while staring at Beverly and her newborn son. Beverly’s father Bill witnessed everything, believing Smith’s soul transferred into Kessler from the uncanny coincidence. When Kestler lost his mother at age five, Bill finally lost it, especially having to care for a young Kessler, and started brutalizing and terrorizing him for years. Bill would yell such profanities referencing the circumstances of Kestler’s birth, including saying he was “the Devil” and “had the soul of a killer”. Before Bill died in the late 2000s, he confided in Kessler what he hated him so much, down to every detail of what happened when he was born. Albeit scarred even more, Kestler ended up wanting answers, researching reincarnation out of his curiosity.
What finally pushed him to take on the same delusion was when his car careened off a road in Chandler, Arizona, and crashed. Keslter was paranoid his breaks were cut, but the police found no evidence, also not heeding Kestler’s regular returns to the station when he was afraid he was being targeted. Kestler finally snapped, afraid one of the women Smith killed, all of them prostitutes, was reincarnated through someone else who was threatening his life out of revenge. After finding the names and times of death of each woman, Kestler created a hit list of “reincarnates” through the most likely people who were born on the same day in hospitals he scoured through record after record of. Kestler set out to kill them in same fashion as Smith: forcing them to bite on a stick, then hammering an ice pick into their brain stems. Kestler left behind one final touch, covering each victim with maggots and animal hair, which was reportedly an ancient custom to prevent another reincarnation. As Kestler grew more unhinged, he started changing his appearance to mirror Smith, to take on his persona and scare the innocent people he targeted.
"Perennials"[]
After killing Charlie Clayton, who Kestler assumed for a “reincarnated” Taylor Lynn Crover, in Gulfport, Mississippi, Kessler found and confronted Nina Skinner, born when Patricia Johnson was killed, in a religious sect in Citronelle, Alabama. Kessler demanded she admit her “real” name, as Nina went by “Floressa” once she joined the sect, but she gave her name and was too confused and terrified to understand Kestler. Kessler was angry, forced her to bite on a stick while laying on her stomach, and fatally impaled her per Smith’s M.O. Kestler then went back to his hotel room and cut his cheek, as Smith had a scar that Kestler was trying to imitate. He then travels to Pensacola, Florida, harassing waitress Brianna Wells at her workplace. He tried to hint he saw her as the “reincarnate” of Carol Hensen, it she was merely disturbed and asked her colleagues to cover her shift temporarily. Once she was done for the day, she went back to her car, where Kestler already broke in. He made her bite another gag and killed her before exiting the car and leaving.
Kessler then went looking for Ted Sissler in the same city, but only finds his wife Jane and Kyle Owens, a college student renting his room in the house. Threatening them both, Kestler is shocked to hear Ted passed away from cancer. After Kessler extracts Ted’s date and location of death, Kyle and Jane are tied up while Kessler uses their computer to sift through hospital records, eventually finding 10-year-old Aidan Donahue. Kessler tracks Aidan to his school, snatches him when the day ends for the kids, and holds him captive in the hotel room Kestler’s staying at. Kessler goes into a long, composed explanation of his history, which Aidan is horrified by and only sees him as crazy over. He appears to be ready to try and kill Aidan, around the same time the BAU realizes his motive and cross-reference it with Smith and his crimes to find out who he is. When the police arrive, Aidan’s unharmed, Kestler telling him he’ll come after him again “in 20 years” before fleeing.
Kessler rushes to Escambia Memorial Hospital, looking for the maternity ward, in the interest of killing himself and “becoming” one of the babies once he dies. When the nurse at the desk refuses him entry, Kestler shoots the nurse twice, kills a guard with a shot to his head, and threatens and menaces everyone out of the word to be alone with the infant children. The agents arrive just as he picks up a baby. With the agents ordering him to put the baby down, Kestler does so, just before firing two shots. Agent Derek Morgan is hit in his protective vest and bruised, Kestler being shot by return fire. Much to his horror, whe Kessler drops a small tin filled with maggots, one crawls on his arm, resulting in Kessler muttering in terror of his own actions being turned against him karmically in the last moment of his life slipping away.
Quotes[]
| “ | It's that voice in your head. The one you can't figure out. [...] Maybe it's not as loud for you as it was for me. For a long time I didn't understand. It was like...there was me...then there was another me. | „ |
| ~ Kestler's insanity |
| “ | It's not that I want to. Maybe I am Russell Smith. But it didn't mean I had to be a killer again. [...] I mean, the whole point of reincarnation is that you're supposed to come back and be better than you were before. Work on your karma. What I'm doing now, it's self-defense. | „ |
| ~ Kestler threatening Aidan |
Trivia[]
- Kestler is inspired by multiple real-life and fictional serial killers:
- Stephen Griffiths, a.k.a. “The Crossbow Cannibal”, a serial killer of women in prostitution in the interest of his crime spree being a totem to his murder idol, fellow serial killer of women in prostitution Peter Sutcliffe, a.k.a. “The Yorkshire Ripper”, the inspiration for Smith.
- Vasily Smirnov, a.k.a. "The Gatchin Psychopath", a Soviet killer/rapist with a signature of hammering nails into the heads of the people he murdered, killing five people in total.
- Herbert Mullen, a serial/spree killer with paranoid delusions involving human sacrifice, who studied religion and spirituality in college, and was responsible for becoming more violent and massacring more people as his crimes progressed.
- Alex Dunkleman, the main hidden antagonist of the film My Soul to Take, a teen reincarnation of a serial killer known as “The Riverton Ripper”, resulting in him slaughtering his friends.
- Gerald Demus, the main antagonist of the film Resurrection, a religiously paranois serial killer who failed his esoteric intentions of the murders and took a baby hostage in a shootout to the death.
External Links[]
- Willie Kestler on the Criminal Minds Wiki
