Claire Bates

"Why are you just sitting at home when you should be out looking for your boy?"

Claire Bates is a child abductor and budding serial killer who appeared in Season Four of Criminal Minds.

History
Claire's early life is not elaborated upon, though she was presumably born and raised in Nevada. Severely unstable, Claire was arrested and institutionalized in 2004 when she, for unknown reasons, attacked a fellow secretary at the law firm where she worked, managing to bite off part of the woman's ear. Two years after she was institutionalized, Claire's father, Herbert, died of a heart attack, leaving Claire in possession of his vehicle and small house in Reno. At an unspecified point, Claire was released back into society, her mental illness kept in check by powerful anti-psychotic medication. After becoming pregnant in 2007 (the father of the child is never mentioned) Claire stopped taking her medication so as not to harm the baby, and successfully gave birth in 2008 to a boy, who she lost only a week later when social services deemed her an unfit parent. Her child being taken away caused Claire's psychosis to essentially go into overdrive, and she eventually came to believe her son had died. A few days after losing her son, Claire abducted a neighbor's five year-old boy, who her psychosis caused her to view as her own newborn. Keeping the boy, Ethan Hayes, locked in her house and feeding him nothing but breast milk, Claire smothered him with a pillow after a week, recreating the loss of her son, who was taken away after a seven day evaluation. Claire disposed of Ethan's dead body in the desert just outside of Las Vegas before taking another five year-old, Michael Bridges.

Claire subjected Michael to the same treatment as Ethan, whose funeral she attends. While at the service, Claire spots the BAU arresting a man named Walter Davis, who they mistakenly conclude is the unsub after they find him recording the burial. Calling Michael's parents shortly after Walter is released, using a voice-changer, Claire demands to speak to the agents and, when Michael's mother grabs the phone from Hotch and pleads for her son's safe return, Claire tells her she will never see Michael again. When the BAU storm her house after deducing she is the unsub, Claire rushes outside carrying something wrapped in a blanket, which the agents believe to be Michael. Setting some gasoline soaked logs she had piled earlier on fire, Claire ignores the agents' attempts to talk her down, responding to everything they say with, "My baby is dead!" Thinking Claire may be deranged enough to throw Michael into the fire, Morgan reluctantly prepares to shoot her when he is contacted by Reid, who had just found Michael in the house, safe and sound. Directly after Morgan gets Reid's message, Claire throws her bundle into the fire, revealing it was composed of nothing but children's toys, which she had presumably purchased for her baby. Claire is arrested, and presumably either incarcerated or put back into an institution.

Profile
The unsub was originally believed to be a male in his late twenties or mid thirties, as statistics show it is almost always men who take children, while women take newborns. Later, deeper analysis of one of unsub's phone calls caused the BAU to realize they were indeed dealing with a female unsub, due to the lack of bragging, the way she projected her own guilt on to the parents by demonizing them, and the heavy emphasis she gave on caregiving. Ethan Hayes appeared well taken care of, and showed no signs of torture or sexual abuse, implicating a remorseful unsub who, while they dumped the body in an attempt to separate themselves from what they had done, likely still visited it due how close it was placed to the main road. The quality of the clothing Ethan was in implicated an unsub of a middle class background, while the rigidness of her phone conversations and use of certain words ("locked down" instead of arrested, calling the three minute time limit of the calls "the rule") also implicated she may have been institutionalized in the past. The reason for this confinement could be the loss of a child around the same age as the abducted boys, though Reid later realized the unsub could merely be so unstable she simply saw the boys she took as babies.

Modus Operandi
Claire's abductions all seemed unplanned and random; she merely grabbed a boy when the opportunity presented itself. Keeping the abductee locked in her house, Claire treated them like an infant, even breast feeding them, explaining how her victims appeared starved yet were still somehow getting essential nutrients. While the child was in captivity, Claire would call the parents using a voice modifier and disposable cellphone, and taunt them, saying their son was much happier where he was now. After a week, Claire would smother the boy she had taken with a pillow, and in the middle of the night, drive out to the desert (just outside of Las Vegas) and dump the body, dressing and grooming it at the scene. The body was dumped only a short distance away from the road and was left completely uncovered, allowing Claire to "visit" it by just driving by.

Known Victims

 * Unnamed secretary
 * Ethan Hayes
 * Michael Bridges

Appearances

 * Season Four
 * "The Instincts"
 * "Memoriam"