David Rossi

"My wife always said I had a flair for the dramatic." "Which one?" "All of them."

David Stephen Rossi is a Supervisory Special Agent and Unit Senior Agent at the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, Virginia. He is partially based upon real life former profiler John Douglas, like his previous counterpart Jason Gideon.

Background
Born in Commack, Long Island, New York, Rossi served in the U.S. Marine Corps and made it to the rank of Sergeant Major. While a Private, he served in the Vietnam War under Sergeant Harrison Scott, who he would later refer to as the person who taught him to be honest. During his service, Rossi earned several military awards, including the Purple Heart. When he was younger, he had some association with a local mafia through a good friend named Ray Finnegan, but he severed his ties to them when he left town. He also knew a girl named Emma Louise Taylor ever since he was twelve years old. He loved her, but due to his career, they never married; Emma later went on to marry future judge Boyd Schuller. After leaving the Corps, he was recruited by the FBI. A few years later, he played a part in founding the BAU. (Reckoner)

Rossi has been married and divorced three times. His first wife was named Carolyn. On July 16, 1983, following the conclusion of a case, Rossi discovered that Carolyn had packed his bags after he had forgotten their anniversary again as well as him forgetting other things. (Demons) Following his first divorce, he made an agreement with Carolyn that they would still help each other out when the other needed it. They had a son, James David, who was born on April 26, 1979, but died the same day. (Epilogue) His second wife was named Hayden Montgomery, who was a U.S. diplomat for the French embassy. Their marriage lasted for only one summer in the early 80s, after which the two divorced due to the demands of their respective jobs. However, Rossi was unaware that Hayden was pregnant with his child, which she refused to tell him about because she knew he would never be fit as a father due to his job. (Fate) Nothing is currently known about his third wife.

Rossi was in early retirement for nearly ten years until his voluntary return to the BAU in October 2007. He had retired in order to go on lectures and book tours but returned to settle some unfinished business which wasn't immediately specified. Upon joining the team, it is obvious that he has had a previous working relationship with both Hotch and Erin Strauss, the BAU's Section Chief. Unlike most of the other team members, Rossi is not intimidated by Strauss's personality, and he often calls her by her first name (much to her chagrin).

Season Three
In "Birthright", Rossi revealed to Sheriff John Caulfield his reasons for returning. He held out a charm bracelet with the names of three children from one of his first cases. The children had come into their parents' bedroom to find them in bed, covered in blood, and he promised them he would find out who did it. Each year on Christmas Eve, Rossi calls the children to let them know he hasn't forgotten them and he hasn't given up on solving the case of their parents' murders. He kept with this tradition through his return to the BAU, though none of the children had replied to his most recent calls. Rossi finally told Caulfield that the case had gone unsolved for 20 years and it was finally solved in "Damaged". He steps in as a hostage negotiator in "Minimal Loss" when fellow agents Reid and Prentiss are held hostage.

Season Five
In "Reckoner", much of his childhood, including Emma, was revealed. Rossi tells Hotch after closing a case on the plane that he should've married her when he left the U.S. Marines, but was recruited by the FBI, which got him 'obsessed with the chase, the hunt'. Also, despite what he tells Boyd Shuller, Emma's husband, he did not sleep with her. Despite his feelings for Emma, he did not attend her funeral.

Season Six
In "Remembrance of Things Past", Rossi gets back on the hunt for the Butcher, a brutal, sadistic serial killer active in the 1980s and 1990s in Bristol, Virginia, when bodies killed exactly like the old victims turn up in the same area. He had investigated the case during the first murders but was unsuccessful﻿ in catching The Butcher. He was, however, responsible for stopping his killing by narrowing down the geographic profile and alerting all possible victims in the area. The case stuck with Rossi for several years afterwards. He never wrote about it because he felt doing so would give the killer too much power. In the end of the episode, the killer, an elderly, Alzheimer-afflicted electrician named Lee Mullens, is caught. Upon getting home, Rossi, having suffered a writer's block earlier, begins writing his next book, presumably about the Butcher case.

Season Seven
In "Proof", he invited the rest of the team over to his house for a cooking lesson/dinner party, after receiving a "tempered" suggestion from Hotch when they talked about the tensions born between several team members due to the lies said to keep Prentiss safe.

In "From Childhood's Hour", Rossi meets up with Carolyn. He believed that she wanted them to get together again; he also seemed to be still in love with her. Rossi was later shocked to find out that she had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and she knew that she didn't have long left to live. She asked him to help her end her life on her own terms when her time came. Finally, in "Epilogue", Rossi decided that he wouldn't help Carolyn, but when he tells her this, she reveals that she had been expecting such an answer and, as a result, had taken a fatal dosage of pills before he arrived. Rossi is forced to stay by Carolyn's side when she dies, and she is buried next to James.

Season Eight
In "The Fallen", Rossi runs into his old Sergeant from Vietnam, Harrison Scott. Rossi is very saddened to see the man that "made him honest" homeless. Rossi learns what really happened when he got a concussion and sent home and the sacrifice that Anthony Hernandez, a fellow soldier, made to save them. Afterwards, Rossi and Scott present Hernandez's grandson, also a Marine, with the medal that his grandfather should have received all those years ago. He also tells Scott about New Directions, an organization dedicated to helping veterans get work. By the end of the episode, he dedicates his most recent book, Evil Never Rests, to Scott and Hernandez, "two men who saved me so I could save others."

In "The Replicator", it appears that Rossi had started a romantic relationship with BAU Section Chief Erin Strauss by the conclusion of the previous season. When Strauss is murdered by John Curtis, who had been stalking the BAU throughout the entire season, Rossi is most upset at this. This would later leave him vulnerable to an attack by Curtis, who sends him a letter laced with a hallucinogenic poison, which causes him to become delusional and hold Morgan at gunpoint. However, he lowers his guard after hallucinating Strauss, allowing Hotch to disarm him. Rossi is then taken to the hospital, where he recovers and leaves in time to intervene in Curtis's attack against the entire BAU team. He intentionally traps himself and Curtis inside a room filled with explosives, where they have a brief conversation about Curtis's motives and the fact that Curtis is an FBI agent, which contradicted the oath he took to protect his country. Then, Rossi manages to escape the room, leaving Curtis to die. He later attends a dinner honoring Strauss's memory.

Season Nine
In "Fatal", Rossi's memory of Strauss's death comes back to haunt him after he overhears a woman named Janice Cheswick being murdered by an unsub, seconds after he tells her on phone that she is going to be okay. Upon seeing Janice's body, Rossi expresses his anger towards the situation and hopes the unsub gets what he deserves.

On the Job
"People can't build without tools. And tools are passed down to us by others."

Like his predecessor Gideon, Rossi is an experienced agent that acts as the team's official profiler. He is adept at getting into the minds of criminals and works in tandem with Hotch to develop these profiles. He is also the glue that holds the team together, taking over as confidant and adviser to the team's personal and professional dilemmas.