Thomas Yates

"Agent Rossi...Nice to meet you after all these years..."

Thomas "Tommy" Yates, a.k.a. "The Womb Raider", is a now-incarcerated, prolific serial killer who appeared in Season Seven in Criminal Minds, mostly through flashbacks.

Background
In May 1966, Yates's mother, then-16-year-old Georgina Yates, was raped by an unidentified man who was apparently never caught, and this resulted in her pregnancy with him. Eventually, Georgina gave birth to Yates, during which she had to have an emergency hysterectomy; while the birth was successful, she died from hemorrhaging. As a result, Yates was put under the care of his maternal grandparents, Trudy and Roy. This didn't turn out well for Yates, as he was physically and psychologically abused by Trudy, who viewed him as a demonic bastard; a flashback shows her shoving him down a flight of stairs, as well as forcing him to put on a dress and then locking him outside the house. She also starved him and made him sleep in a doghouse. In school, Yates was also heavily bullied and he began setting fires (making him eligible for one of the signs of the Macdonald triad) and getting himself expelled from two schools. One day, when he was fifteen years old, he eventually became enraged while being bullied and killed his tormentor, stabbing him to death and also kicking him repeatedly. He was tried as a juvenile and forced to spend three years in juvie hall, plus an additional seven years in prison, before being released on parole. As an adult, Yates acquired an unspecified day-laborer job and began serial killing throughout the West Coast, traveling down the area starting with Seattle. He targeted women who lived either high-risk or low-risk lifestyles, alternating between the two types for unknown reasons.

Profiling 101
After killing for at least seventeen years, during which he claimed a minimum of 101 victims, Yates returned to Seattle in 2009 after Trudy contracted lung cancer and was placed in hospital care. There, he murdered a prostitute named Rochelle Jenkins. The BAU, who had been devotedly following his case, were subsequently called in. Meanwhile, Yates abducted a soccer mom named Grace Powell. However, after Garcia found Georgina's hospital records and Prentiss and JJ interviewed Trudy at the hospital, the BAU were able to find Yates holding Grace captive in the storage container holding Trudy's old belongings. Grace is rescued by paramedics and Rossi arrest Yates, but not before he taunts the agent, as Rossi was the first BAU agent following his case. During interrogation, Yates constantly refused to answer questions given to him by the BAU, staying silent the entire time. Eventually, he was found guilty of his crimes and put on death-row.

The following year, however, he spoke up for the first time to the BAU, specifically to Rossi, when he gave him a list of forty of his victims, those who haven't been found by authorities, and reveals there are actually 101 victims. He then offered a deal to give the name of an undiscovered victim of his annually, on a day of his choosing, in exchange for the upturning of his death penalty as well as his relocation to the East Coast (his grandmother had passed away while he was in prison, and as such, there was no reason for him to remain on the West Coast anymore). Rossi accepts the deal after the BAU is able to find all forty victims. By the end of the episode, in the present day, Rossi visits Yates, who had been conveniently relocated near Quantico. Yates gives him the name of another victim and the location of the corpse before Rossi leaves. The "special day" he has chosen to disclose another victim is revealed to be Rossi's birthday. As a parting gift, Yates sings the 'Happy Birthday' song eerily.

Modus Operandi
Yates targeted Caucasian women who surrogates for his grandmother, targeting high-risk victims such as prostitutes and drug addicts, then shift his focus to low-risk victims like college students and soccer moms, with the victims always in the same age range as him. It was initially believed that Yates killed two women every time he struck. When it was discovered that Yates, by his own account, claimed hundreds of lives, it can be assumed that he never followed such a pattern as rigidly as originally thought or only did so occasionally. He would kill in different cities on the West Coast.

He abducted and restrained his victims by their wrists and ankles for days, starving and dehydrating them endlessly in order to keep them weak, referencing how his grandmother would starve him as a child. They were then killed by stabs directed at the genital area with a knife. When he disposed of the victims, Yates would dump the bodies of his high-risk victims as if they were trash, while he took some time to bury the bodies of his low-risk victims. Initially, he would repeatedly stab his victims' reproductive organs, but as he evolved, he began fatally removing said organs completely, referencing his mother being forced to have a hysterectomy and subsequently dying when she was giving birth to him. He also escalated to removing his victims' vocal chords post-mortem.

Profile
The unsub is a white male in his early- to mid-thirties and is antisocial and has low self-esteem, so he probably keeps to himself. He needed money, so he is most likely a day laborer, with a menial and temporary job, such as a janitor or a handyman. He is personal enough to get a job wherever he went, but unassuming enough to not stick out. He held and restrained his victims for days, so the unsub would need a contained space to do that. However, he is also mobile, which means he has his own transport, most likely a truck or van. When he is on the move and not settled, he would most likely live outside the vehicle. He always started with a high-risk victim first, like a prostitute or a runaway, then moved on to a low-risk victim, so it is likely his next victim would be a soccer mom in her 30s. The fact that he buried the bodies of his low-risk victims, compared to how he dumped the bodies of his high-risk victims, suggests he felt more connected towards them and expressed pity and remorse when it came to their deaths. The removal of the victims' reproductive organs may indicate that he feels a great deal of self-loathing and wishes that he was never born or had a traumatic life-changing event associated with his birth. He could have hated his own mother, as the strained mother-child relationship is a hallmark for many killers. The removal of the vocal cords was symbolic of his own silence, since he was raised to believe he was worthless and unwanted, so he never had a voice of his own. His victims became surrogates for his rage and a means by which to exact his revenge.

Real-Life Comparison
According to Virgil Williams, Yates was based on real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. This is a correct revelation, as both killers were physically and psychologically abused by their mother figures (Lucas by his own mother, Yates his maternal grandmother), in which one of the punishments inflicted upon them was forced dressing into girls' clothing. Both also continuously gave confessions to hundreds of unsolved murders in various parts of the country (Lucas's confessions were usually limited to the eastern states while Yates's murders were committed in the western ones), though Yates was sincere and truthful while almost all of Lucas' confessions, for various reasons, were found to be false; some called it a hoax by law enforcement to clear up a number of unsolved crimes, though Lucas may have lied simply for the fame or some other personal reason. Like Lucas (at least during his confirmed murders), Yates also killed his victims by stabbing them. Both also claimed to have killed in multiple states (though it was only confirmed in Yates's case).

Yates is also similar to Daniel Camargo Barbosa. Both were prolific serial killers who targeted women, had mothers who died when they were young, were abused by maternal figures (Yates was abused by his grandmother; Barbosa was abused by his stepmother), and were forced to were girl's clothing as part of their abuse.

Known Victims
"It's actually 101 names. And I remember all of them."


 * Unspecified date and location in 1981: Unnamed school bully
 * At least 101 victims, all killed within at least 17 years all over the West Coast.
 * Unspecified dates:
 * Victims whose names were seen on Rossi's list (limited to only 40) are:
 * Alyssa Grassian
 * Uma Kegolman
 * Violet Makanui
 * Mitry Moyer
 * Piper Shuster
 * Chloe Cheswitt
 * Bianca Carmody
 * Inez Mortimer
 * Macey Wannamaker
 * Bristol Evatt
 * Nina Grisdale
 * Heidi Navone
 * Alison Bayfield
 * Laura Fairwick
 * Sally Gilford
 * Natasha Hillbridge
 * Joy Lampshire
 * Pargrave
 * Fiona Stallworth
 * Elaine Trangen
 * Holly Vaughner
 * Tania Miller
 * Jessica Tifford
 * Scarlet Sprouse
 * Donne Millworth
 * Teresa Kensington
 * Paige Howfield
 * Sarah Thomas
 * Gina Riverton
 * Marlowe Aldermann
 * Courtney Shandon
 * Karen Toluca
 * Victoria Cosale
 * Kate Corningham
 * Lily Traymore
 * Carmen Campecho
 * Ivy Sunderman
 * Lola Winemiller
 * Eureka, California: Charlotte Davis
 * 1992, Seattle, Washington :
 * Rachel Moore
 * Tina Dyson
 * 1997, San Francisco, California :
 * Unnamed victim
 * Unnamed victim
 * 2005, Los Angeles, California: Lana Cooper
 * 2009, Seattle, Washington:
 * Rochelle Jenkins
 * Grace Powell

Appearances

 * Season Seven
 * "Profiling 101"
 * Season Eleven
 * "Pariahville"