Andrew Meeks

Andrew Meeks is a spree killer who appeared in Season Eleven of Criminal Minds.

Background
As a child, Meeks was abused by his stepfather as a child, who forced him to wear dirty underwear over his face while in public. While in high school, he was subjected to a prank in which a group of girls pretended to like him and a boy wrapped him inside a gym mattress, which nearly suffocated him. He later attempted to kill the boy, but was caught and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. During his sentence, he got a spiderweb tattoo on the left side of his neck. A prison psychologist who interviewed Meeks went on to describe him as having an extraordinary amount of latent rage in his report and recommended that he be placed in a psychiatric facility, but a judge paroled him in order to lessen prison overcrowding. Meeks was subsequently placed in a program called "New Start", which specializes in reintegrating recent parolees back into society, and met former FBI agent Ed Sulzbach, a volunteer who took Meeks under his wing and helped him find a job. When Sulzbach came across his prison file and saw the mental evaluation, he called a psychiatric facility in an attempt to get Meeks committed. Realizing this, Meeks killed Sulzbach and stole his FBI gear and credentials.

Modus Operandi
Meeks targeted random women living low-risk lifestyles who were surrogates for the girls who participated in the high school prank, selecting them after scouting neighborhoods where crimes that involved rape and/or murder took place, the details of which he obtained via a police radio stolen from Sulzbach. He would charm the victims at the doorsteps of their homes by posing as an FBI agent investigating the crimes. Once invited into the victim's home, he kept up the facade by asking questions pertaining to the investigation. When the victim was in a vulnerable position, Meeks attacked them from behind and put them in a chokehold, forcing them to lose consciousness. Afterwards, he would wrap their bodies in some sort of item, such as a curtain or carpet, and asphyxiate them to death once they regained consciousness. Once the victim was dead, Meeks left the body wrapped in the item, his signature.

Profile
The unsub is a white male in his early 40s who is posing as an FBI agent, using fake or stolen credentials as a ruse to gain entry into his victims' homes. He appears articulate, socially adept, and non-threatening. The spiderweb tattoo on his neck symbolizes a very long prison term, most likely for violent crimes. It was where he picked up his criminal sophistication and he was likely forced to develop his verbal skills in order to survive inside the prison. From this, he most likely has antisocial personality disorder. He may also suffer from an extreme form of bondage known as claustrophilia; although this is typically practiced by consenting partners, the unsub's antisocial nature has allowed him to turn it into his own method of killing. It is possible that he contracted claustrophilia during his prison sentence and is projecting his trauma onto his victims, or he suffered from it before his time in prison, perhaps during an event in his teenage years that antagonized his already latent deviance. He gets off on the power of impersonating a member of law enforcement as well as the respect and access that come with the credentials.

Known Victims

 * Unspecified date: Unnamed high-school classmate
 * 2016:
 * February 23:
 * Ed Sulzbach
 * Gertrude Smiles
 * February 24:
 * Isabella Jane
 * Patricia Brannon
 * Mary Lenahan
 * The attempted setup:
 * Unnamed undercover female police officer
 * Detective Bob Oliver
 * The DUI checkpoint standoff:
 * Unnamed woman
 * Jennifer Jareau
 * Officer Jim Gray

Appearances

 * Season Eleven
 * "A Badge and a Gun"