Travis James

Travis James was a serial killer who appeared in There's No Place Like Home.

Background
Travis grew up in a trailer park in Enid, Oklahoma with his mother, Jan, and older brother, Tucker. The same trailer park also housed a pedophile named Roscoe Gulch, who molested a number of young local boys, including Travis. Tucker did his best to protect his brother and was in several physical confrontations with Gulch. Along with Gulch's other victims, Travis would eventually testify against him at his trial in 2001, but he was acquitted anyway. The same day, while a tornado was approaching, Tucker went to Gulch's mobile home to confront him again and took Travis with him. They got into a fistfight, but Gulch managed to grab a pan and strike Tucker from behind when he was distracted by blaring tornado sirens. Travis sought shelter in an empty drainage pipe and watched as the tornado passed by, consuming the house along with Tucker and Gulch. Tucker was found in pieces so badly damaged by the storm that his identity had to be confirmed by DNA and dental records. Since his mother was also killed the tornado, Travis was placed in foster care. Starting with shoplifting in 2001, Travis built up an extensive criminal record for vandalism, possession of drugs, driving under the influence and finally prostitution over the years. In 2003, aged 13 or 14, he ran away from his foster home and began living in an old RV. In 2011, a tornado tore up the cemetery in which Tucker was buried, prompting Travis to start killing boys similar to him and taking their body parts to "rebuild" him, believing the same thing that killed him, a tornado, could also bring him back to life (Reid compares this delusion to Frankenstein).

Modus Operandi
Travis targeted male teenage runaways who made money through prostitution. All of them were also very protective of someone close to them. After abducting them using a simple ruse such as soliciting them, he would would feed them beer mixed with dextromethorphan, a kind of cough medicine, to tranquilize them, tie up their wrists and ankles with flex cuffs, gag them with suct tape and hold them captive in a lockable compartment of his RV. Upon hearing a tornado warning on the radio, he would drive with the boys towards it. When he was close enough, he would drag them outside and kill them with a single strike on the head with a tire iron. Post-mortem, he would dismember them with an axe for their body parts, planning to assemble enough parts to recreate Tucker, and then stitch the parts together, keeping it in another compartment of the RV filled with ice to preserve the cadaver.

Known Victims

 * Jason Meredith
 * Eric Genelle
 * Unnamed victim
 * Shaun Rutledge

Appearance

 * Season Seven
 * "There's No Place Like Home"