10 Criminal Minds Unsubs With The Saddest Backstories Cbr

This article mentions potentially sensitive subjects such as murder, sexual assault, torture, harm against children, and police brutality. Criminal Minds is one of the most beloved police-centered shows of the modern era. It ran for 15 seasons before being canceled and almost immediately revived as Criminal Minds: Evolution. Nearly 20 years after the first episode, the show's fanbase is still going strong, with audiences generally knowing what to expect out of each episode. It's a police procedural series at its core, but unlike typical procedurals, Criminal Minds focuses solely on the perpetrators of violent crime. From kidnappings to serial killers, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit uses a blend of psychology, sociology, criminology, and behavioral sciences called criminal profiling to catch their Unknown Subjects or unsubs.

Just about every episode features a new unsub, and they generally fit squarely into the villain category. But, occasionally, there are unsubs featured that aren't villains at all, whether they're strictly victims or could be justified. Whenever those unsubs show up, it's nearly impossible for fans not to feel at least a little bad for them. Vincent Rowlings was featured as an antagonist in Criminal Minds Season 4, though he was never really an Unknown Subject. He is introduced early into the episode as the audience sees him from the start. His modus operandi was initially simple, as during the spring months only, he chose mostly blonde white women in their thirties.

He'd approach his targets in their homes or workplaces, stab them, and record the crime using cameras retrofitted to his glasses. His murders seem opportunistic, but they're all planned meticulously due to his OCD and severe compulsions. The BAU's invitation to investigate even came from Vincent himself, as he sent one of the videotapes of a murder where he wrote "help me" on a wall. The Criminal Minds team investigated some of the most gruesome fictional crimes on TV, but several of their cases were inspired by real crimes. Fresh off a double shift, salvage yard owner William Taylor picked up his 5-year-old daughter ​​Tatiana after a dance recital and drove home. Because he was so sleep-deprived from working long hours, he pulled over for a quick nap.

But, he underestimated his exhaustion, and ended up sleeping for hours instead of minutes. When he awoke, Tatiana was gone. He later recalled a mysterious man approaching him that night but people thought he’d imagined the encounter due to his sleep-deprived state. When her body was discovered a week later, William began abducting men, torturing them for days before ultimately killing them. Losing a child and not knowing what happened would make anyone snap. Unfortunately, the result of this was only more horrific tragedy.

This season 3 episode follows the BAU as they investigate a case of vigilante justice in Los Angeles. It ultimately leads them to Jonny McHale, a local comic book artist suffering from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, who blacks out during his vengeful killing spree. Six months prior, one of the best nights of his life turned into the worst. A gang attacked him and his pregnant fiancée Vickie, who’d he just proposed to minutes before. Jonny was forced to witness the torturous death and barely survived the incident himself. Even the team acknowledges that he’s one of the rare unsubs that only became a killer due to an awful, traumatic experience.

Growing up, Desi Gutierrez endured emotional and psychological abuse as well as severe neglect from her young mother Lara. She’d cruelly tell her daughter she was ugly and unwanted, locking her in a small shed full of snakes for hours on end. When Desi was 10, a “changed” Lara had her sister Tina, who, unlike Desi, was loved and cared for. As an adult, Desi became obsessed with snake-like body modification, even going as far as to split her tongue. She inflicts similar mods on unwitting women after they’re bitten by one of her venomous snakes. In the end, Desi kidnaps her sister and mother, the true objects of her hate.

She dies before enacting her full revenge but we’d say she made her point. After witnessing and videotaping his mother die at the hands of his father, young Vincent Rowlings grew up to be a killer himself. He stayed with his mom for almost a day and grew up rewatching the footage of her murder over and over, which was only bound to cause severe psychological distress. Vincent also has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), so he can’t keep himself from acting on the compulsion to kill. He shows remorse by sending messages to the police at the crime scenes, wanting someone to finally stop him. When he unintentionally kills one of his victims in front of her young son, Vincent feels a connection to him since they now share a rare thing in common.

Season 2 introduced one of “Criminal Minds’s” most memorable unsubs. After his mother left, Tobias Hankel was raised by his father who had become violent and used religion as a means of abuse. As Tobias got older, he became reliant on Dilaudid to cope. Things only worsened when his father got sick and, in order to put a merciful end to his suffering, he had his son assist him in dying. Tobias then developed a dissociative identity disorder with two alternate personalities – his father and an Archangel named Raphael. When the BAU catches up with him, he’s a serial killer who finds his victims through hacking, choosing people he deems sinners.

What Tobias does to Reid is unforgivable but we can’t help sympathizing with him after knowing his past. Shealyn Scott is a Senior Writer at Screen Rant. She has been writing for the site since 2024, focused on network, reality, streaming, and classic television. A creative writer, journalist, and lover of the written word in all its forms, Shealyn enjoys deconstructing scenes from her favorite shows, using context clues and historical precedent to predict major plot points (which,... As an award-winning student journalist, Shealyn spent her college years advocating for the humanities while studying English Literature. Her love of storytelling propelled her to expand her degree with minors in Writing and History, believing life to be a mere collection of stories that can be framed in as many ways as...

As a Senior member of the TV Team, Shealyn treats the series she covers like books, analyzing every line, camera angle, and lighting choice. Thankfully, her personal mission statement lines up perfectly with Screen Rant: every creative work deserves just as much thought from the viewer as it received from its creator. This article contains mentions of murder, sexual assault, and other horrific crimes. Years after its original series finale, Criminal Minds remains at the forefront of the crime procedural genre. The show is arguably the most popular episodic police drama in modern history, with hordes of viewers constantly seeking new alternatives to Criminal Minds. Though Criminal Minds: Evolution is already on season 3, the original series lingers as the gold standard to compare it against.

From the unforgettable cast to the unsettling cases, Criminal Minds captured something magical that can’t be easily replicated. Over the 15 seasons of Criminal Minds, the most iconic, and perhaps infamous, part of the show was the “unsub” (or “Unknown Subject”). Each episode began by displaying the unsub’s modus operandi as they claimed their newest victim, setting the stage for the rest of the story. The original series had over 300 episodes and over 300 unsubs to boot, but some stick out more than others for reasons ranging from their sickening killing style to the all-star actor that played... For a select few, there’s no explanation other than the unsub being disturbing. A psychiatrist treating people with extreme phobias, Michael O'Keefe's Stanley Howard used his patients’ fears against them.

From trapping a claustrophobic woman in a box to letting an aquaphobic man drown, Howard drew a perverse pleasure from watching people succumb to fear. What makes his abuse of power even more frightening is the reveal that he’s a husband and father, and his child is afraid of the dark. Howard could have posed a greater risk to his family were he not caught. The BAU doesn’t always get the job done (right away, at least). Over 15 seasons of the original run of Criminal Minds, the same UnSub did occasionally appear more than once. And in some cases, those offenders left a lasting impression on at least one member of the team.

When better to take a look back at those than on the 20th anniversary of the series premiere (September 22, 2005)? Since then, the series has returned for a continuation, Criminal Minds: Evolution, on Paramount+, and some of those UnSubs have certainly been memorable. But there’s nothing like going back to where it all started. And so, TV Insider has ranked the major UnSubs — some are Big Bads, while others will always be remembered by fans for the heinous acts they committed in their episodes — of the... Scroll down to see where killers like Mr. Scratch, Foyet, and Frank land.

Criminal Minds, Streaming Now, Hulu and Paramount+ This article discusses sensitive and disturbing topics, including torture, sexual assault, murder, suicide, kidnapping, and exploiting children. Criminal Minds follows the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, or BAU, which works on some of the most disturbing and prolific serial killers. The team uses behavioral analysis and profiling to investigate crimes and capture criminals. The show stood out from other police procedurals at the time by examining the psychology of the criminals and the more horrific aspects of police work. Criminal Minds is best known for its standout villains.

The BAU team calls them unknown subjects, or "unsubs," a catchy name for some dangerous people. The unsubs are all uniquely terrifying, with a variety of backstories and motivations for their crimes. While there are many unsubs from the show's fifteen seasons and its revival, titled Criminal Minds: Evolution, certain villains stand out as particularly dark. Updated on June 26, 2025, by Michael Colwander: Criminal Minds continues to produce frightening, dark, and at times tragic unsubs across its now 18-season run, with three of those seasons being Criminal Minds: Evolution. Throughout that run, the show's writers continue to impress with their creativity in finding new ways to horrify viewers with each unsub. This list was updated to include more of the darkest Criminal Minds unsubs.

Jon McHale (Frankie Muniz) was unsub in one of the saddest Criminal Minds episodes to date. It may be a bit ironic to call McHale a villain, as he was unknowingly a comic book-like vigilante "hero." However, he was the unsub the BAU was hunting down in "True Night" after... Through the darkest part of humanity, Criminal Minds spent nearly two decades exploring what makes humans tick. It did that through the unknown subjects that committed awful crimes and the committed FBI agents pursuing them. Every episode acted as a case-of-the-week format while longer mysteries could take whole seasons to unravel. While the Behavioral Analysis Unit always ultimately saved the day, some of the unsubs will live on in the minds of fans forever.

Many of the unknown subjects the BAU chase in Criminal Minds are considered the worst examples of humans, and what is scarier is that some of them are based on real people. Even the actors were often affected, as Mandy Patinkin famously left because of how the show left him feeling after filming. What makes some of the unsubs ingrained in a viewer's memory is when an actor takes the horrific nature of the character and gives it a life that sends shivers down a viewer's spine. Criminal Minds follows the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit as they hunt murderers across the country, but not every season is at the same standard. Nathan is one of the most compelling unsubs of the entire series. That's because he's not actually an unknown subject.

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