Nathan Harris

Nathan Harris was an incidental character who appeared in Sex, Birth, Death.

History
Nathan's father died when he was 9 years old, leaving him to be raised by his mother, a doctor and teacher at GW Medical School. For reasons unknown, he developed sexual sadistic impulses over time. Among other things, he mentioned killing a bird once and becoming sexually excited when he saw a pair of nude female cadavers used by his mother for teaching. When he grew older he started researching about sexual sadism in an attempt to understand his urges.

At the beginning of Sex, Birth, Death, he is a sophomore student at Morton School. A few weeks after attending a seminar on anger excitation by Spencer Reid, he came across the first victim of Ronald Weems, a serial killer targeting prostitutes. Feeling excited by the sight of her corpse, he waited for Reid at the subway station he usually took to the FBI. After asking a few increasingly disturbing questions, Nathan left. Reid drew a picture of him out of his memory and used it, combined with his memories of what Nathan said about himself and was dressed, to find his adress. When the BAU took him in for questioning, he was writing a short story featuring graphic descriptions of a prostitute being slashed to death which he claimed was the text for a graphic novel about Jack the Ripper.

After performing a psychological evaluation of Nathan, Gideon recommended to Nathan's mother that he be placed in medical care. She agreed to have him see someone on a daily basis, but refused to have him locked away. Later that day, Nathan disappeared. When his mother searched through his room, she found a pornographic magazine with pictures of mutilations pasted onto the fold-out pictures. The same night, Ronald Weems claimed another victim. Nathan was found at a church where he had reached a conclusion: the only way for him to prevent people from getting hurt in the future is to kill himself.

Nathan was held as a suspect for Ronald Weem's murders until he was identified and captured. By then, his mother had decided to have him institutionalized the next day. Only having one night in freedom left, Nathan solicited a prostitute with the intention to kill her. Alone with her, Nathan started to resist to his urges, produced a knife, placed one of Reid's business cards on a desk and slashed his wrists. The prostitute called Reid who arrived and managed to slow down Nathan's blood loss enough for the paramedics to save him. Reid later contemplated the consequences of Nathan's survival, which might endanger the lives of people in the future and asked Gideon : "What if next time he kills someone?". Gideon replied "Then you catch him".

Appearances
Season 2, episode 11: Sex, Birth, Death.