Ronald Boyd

"Now how can someone be missing if they ain't supposed to be here in the first damn place?"

Deputy Ronald Boyd was a serial killer (later spree killer) who appeared in Season Five of Criminal Minds.

Background
Not much is know about Ronald's life prior to Rite of Passage. His father, Fred Boyd, was a foreman for Golden Harvest, a grain and feed company, died in one of their barns due to an accident when he was younger. While a teenager, he had an accident with an ATV which left lasting injury to his leg.

A Rite of Passage
Boyd was first seen riding his ATV, pursuing an illegal immigrant. He caught and decapitated the immigrant, and put his head into a cooler with two others. When the BAU is called in, he assists them in the investigation, in which the main suspect is Omar Morales, a member of the Lugo Cartel, a Mexican drug cartel. Boyd watches on as Morales states that decapitation isn't his style and describes how he disassembles his victims, which is rather more gruesome than his decapitation method. The following night, he kills another illegal immigrant and leaves his head at Sheriff Ruiz's house. The BAU tracks down the group of illegal immigrants the latest victim was escaping with before being killed. When one of the immigrants, a child, mentions seeing "The Sun" during his travel, something that intrigues Ruiz, Boyd decides to lure her into a trap, as she is beginning to catch on on him. He takes Ruiz to a barn owned by Golden Harvest, which is abandoned, alone, kills her, and disassembles her in a fashion similar to Morales's aforementioned vivisection method in hopes of framing Morales and the Lugo Cartel, dumping the pieces far away from the barn. However, when he and a fellow deputy, Gentry, go to arrest Morales at the Lugo Cartel headquarters, he devolves, shooting and killing any members that come across him before killing Morales. He then murders Gentry, who witnessed the entire shooting, and receives a call on Gentry's cell. Pretending to be Gentry, Boyd is notified that the BAU are onto him. He flees back to the Golden Harvest barn, and gets ready for the BAU to arrive. He busts out on his four-wheeler, and fires at the BAU. Derek Morgan shoots him right off the ATV, and though he is not seen or even mentioned again, he is most likely dead.

Profile
Boyd was profiled as being a "human predator", basically a hunter, whose killings are about power and control. He waits for his victims to get separated from the herd and then wears them down for a long period of time. His need to do this, coupled with the fact that his victims were already old and/or ill, suggests that he may be physically weak, small, thin or possibly suffering from some sort of handicap and is incapable of taking them on in a fair fight. He creates chaos and then attacks and applies this pattern to his entire life. Because of this he is most likely not in any kind of relationship. If he is, it will be an abusive one, as he gets of on control. As he is an organized killer, he will be following the investigation.

Modus Operandi
Staking out a remote part of the desert close to a tunnel used by illegal aliens, Ronald, when a group of immigrants passed by, would single out the weakest member of the pack, usually the oldest, sickest or simply the slowest, and chase them for miles on his ATV. When the victim became completely exhausted, Ronald would kill them, take the body to his trailer, and behead it with a machete. Ronald would bury the remains on his property, though after Eva Ruiz became sheriff, he began leaving the heads around Terlingua, to taunt her. Similar to how George Foyet wore a black mask to intimidate his victims, Ronald wore a motorcycle helmet with a skull-motif (presumably referencing Santa Muerte) to terrorize his prey.

When he devolved into a spree killer, Ronald, in a botched attempt to frame the Lugo Cartel, attacked several members with a shotgun, killed Gentry with a revolver, and attacked the BAU with a machine gun he had mounted on an ATV.

Known Victims

 * Numerous unnamed illegal immigrants killed prior to the episode
 * An unnamed illegal immigrant
 * An unnamed illegal immigrant
 * Sheriff Eva Ruiz
 * Unnamed mechanic
 * Jose
 * Omar Morales
 * Deputy Clyde Gentry
 * David Rossi and Aaron Hotchner
 * Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss

Appearances

 * Season Five
 * "A Rite of Passage"