Michael Earlson

"Hello agent Cole."

Michael Earlson is a pedophile who appeared in Season Two of Criminal Minds.

Background
Having a record of sexual offenses already, Michael abducted one-year old Dustin Powers in Newark, New York in 1999, took the boy to Mount Pleasant, Virginia, and raised him to believe he was his father, all the while molesting him and placing pictures and videos depicting the sexual abuse online. When Dustin reached the age of six, Michael enrolled him in a local school under the name "Charlie Sparks" and also had Dustin participate in a boy's group run by the church. When the IIU began to close in on him (with Agent Katie Cole even encountering him), Michael took Dustin out of school and the boy's group and stopped posting on the Internet for a year.

P911
When Dustin turned seven, Michael sealed him in a hidden room in his house, monitoring him via a camera mounted to the wall of the room. Having lost interest in the boy, Michael decided to sell him in an online action on his website, Fantasy Land, sending links to the auction to other pedophiles, with one named mehtevas (a school principal named Hayden Rawlings, whose screen name spelled backwards reads Save Them) bidding $8,000 dollars. After several hours pass, with Hayden still in the lead, Michael gets a message from him saying that it looks like no one will outbid him and that he should just end the auction early. Moments after receiving the message, Michael sees a news broadcast showing Hayden being arrested and realizes the message was really sent by the authorities in an attempt to trap him.

Cutting off the auction, Michael reopens it a short while later when the news gives out fake information made up by the FBI about the search for Dustin being conducted in Alexandria, a town some distance away. When the auction ends, Michael breaks Dustin out of the room with a sledgehammer, places him in a large suitcase, and heads out the door, off to meet the auction winner. Just as he begins pulling out of his driveway, Michael is surrounded by the BAU, who arrest him and rescue Dustin. Michael is last seen in an interrogation room, smirking at Agent Cole through the one-way mirror.

Profile
Michael was a preferential pedophile, meaning he would actively target children with specific traits he found appealing. The fact that he went from allowing Dustin to go to school to keeping him locked inside a tiny space suggests that he came very close to being caught in the past.

Modus Operandi
Michael would record his sexual abuse of Dustin either through photographs or videos, which he would upload to the Internet. Originally, Michael was fairly carefree with Dustin, allowing him to do things like attend school, but, after an encounter with the IIU, he stopped letting the boy go out in public.

Known Victims

 * Unspecified crime(s) which placed him in the Sex Offender Registry
 * Dustin Powers

Appearances

 * Season Two
 * "P911"