Tobias Hankel

"Shoot him! I don't want to! I said, shoot him, you weakling. He's a Satan. He didn't do anything. I won't tell you another time, boy. Shoot him!"

Tobias Hankel was a serial killer who appeared in Season Two of Criminal Minds.

Background
Tobias originally had a happy upbringing and was a straight A student. When his mother left his father, Charles, for another man, he became abusive towards Tobias, quoting biblical scripture and used the Bible as a punishment guide. Charles once branded a cross on Tobias's forehead with a red hot poker. On another occasion, he "'baptized" Tobias by nearly drowning him in the tub. He would also take Tobias hunting against his will. Later, Charles became very painfully ill, eventually ordering Tobias to kill him in order to put an end to it. Tobias argued "Thou shalt not kill" which Charles countered with "Honor thy father". In the end, Tobias killed him and placed the body in a large walk-in freezer under their house. While his father had been around, Tobias had been addicted to the drug dilaudid and would cut it with psychadelic drugs. He later went to Narcotics Anonymous and, with the help of his sponsor, became clean. This substance abuse, combined with the moral dilemma of killing his father, caused Tobias' mind to fracture and split into three different personalities: his own, his father's as a way to keep him alive, and that of Raphael, a ruthless angel hellbent on doing God's will. At some point, he got a job as a tech support and would use his job to gain entry to the webcams of potential victims.

The Big Game
Tobias is first seen at the house of a couple whom "Raphael" chose to kill because of their excessive wealth. While waiting for another couple that was present inside the house to leave, the Tobias and Raphael personalities argue over their right to commit murder, but the Tobias personality immediately surrenders. When the second couple leaves, Tobias gains entry to the house just as the couple goes upstairs. About to follow them, the Tobias personality takes dominant control and he calls 911, alerting the 911 operator of the couple's impending doom in a panicked tone before the Raphael personality takes control and Tobias rushes upstairs to murder the couple, recording the entire scene. The couple's death leads to the summoning of the BAU. Tobias is later seen looking through the webcam of the aforementioned couple, as Morgan looks back at the crime scene.

When reviews of the posted video of the couple's grisly death aren't what he originally expected, Tobias later enters the home of a woman "Raphael" chose to kill because they witnessed her committing adultery via her webcam. Calling 911 as the Raphael personality, Tobias calmly tells the 911 operator of what he is about to do and then goes upstairs. The BAU arrives to find the man the woman was cheating with dead and the woman missing.

Later, the BAU finds a posted video of the woman held captive, and they watch helplessly as she is torn apart by three dogs. One of the local policemen recognizes the dogs from another case in which a man, Tobias, was a witness. JJ and Reid go to Tobias's to question him, but he doesn't supply much important information to them and thwarts Reid's entry inside his house in a suspicious manner. When Reid spots Tobias's webcams, he concludes that he is the UnSub and he and JJ split up when Tobias flees. JJ goes inside the nearby barnhouse to find herself standing on the remains of the adulterous woman and facing the dogs that killed her. Meanwhile, Reid, in the middle of a cornfield, hears Tobias arguing with his father's personality before slapping himself, thinking his father slapped him. Upon hearing JJ's screams, Reid attempts to run out of the cornfield, only to be overpowered by Tobias and held at gunpoint. Reid watches in shock as the Tobias and Charles personalities argue again.

Revelations
The rest of the BAU team arrives at the Hankel farm to find a traumatized JJ in the barn beside the corpses of the three dogs, all of which she shot, but no sign of Tobias or Reid. They set up a base at the farm to begin investigating the bank of computers, realizing they are the source of the live feeds showing the murders. They also realize that Tobias has taken Reid, but they don't know where. Tobias is later seen driving in his pickup truck with an unconscious Reid on the floorboards, reminiscing of a time in which his father took him hunting against his own will. He then deliberately stops and asks for directions, dropping a huge clue he knows the police will pick up on. He then drives in the opposite direction, effectively losing anyone who might follow.

When Reid regains consciousness, it is evening and he is sitting in a wooden chair in the middle of a rusty cabin. His wrists are handcuffed in front with a leather strap between them binding him to the chair. He is confronted by Tobias, who has been waiting for him to wake up. After introducing himself as the Raphael personality, he immediately shows him one bullet, calling it "God's Will." Tobias places the bullet in his revolver and spins the chamber, and aims it at Reid and pulls the trigger. It is a blank.

It is daylight when Tobias returns to the cabin with firewood gathered from the grounds. Reid realizes from one abusive exchange that he is not Raphael or Tobias, and attempts to placate him fail when Reid is accused of lying. Reid denies this, saying he is neither a liar nor a sinner. Angered, Tobias strips Reid of his shoes and one sock, and tortures Reid by beating the sole of his foot to extract a confession of sin from him. This is the first step towards Tobias's justification of murder: once the sin is confessed, the sinner can be executed. Reid's attempts to stave off the inevitable by quoting Bible scripture don't succeed, receiving only the reply, "the Devil knows how to read, too".

When the Tobias personality takes control, he tries to ease Reid's pain by injecting him with dilaudid. The drug causes Reid to have flashbacks of his childhood.

Later, Tobias, as the Raphael personality, kills another couple in their home, then returns to the cabin. As the Charles personality, he sets up a camera and beats Reid, streaming the video feed to the rest of the BAU team back at Tobias's home. Tobias as the Charles' personality then shoves Reid, still tied to the chair, to the floor. As a result, Reid begins convulsing and is unable to breathe. The Tobias personality takes over again and revives Reid. He (as Raphael this time) compares the BAU team to the seven Archangels of the book of Revelations in the Bible. He orders Reid to choose one of his teammates to die. Reid chooses Hotch, calling him a classic narcissist, and misquotes a verse from Genesis in order to send the BAU a clue to his whereabouts.

Reid then has a flashback about him sending his mother to the asylum. Tobias, as Charles, tells him that he has dishonored his mother and broken one of the Commandments. Tobias then drags Reid to a cemetery and forces him to dig his own grave, but is distracted by the arrival of the BAU, who had realized where Tobias was keeping Spencer due to Reid's aforementioned tip-off. Realizing that they were there, Reid pretended to be too weak to keep digging the grave, causing Tobias to become frustrated, causing the Charles personality to take over again and snatch the shovel off of Reid, calling him weak. Then, when Charles was distracted, Reid grabbed his gun. The Charles personality, who apparantly didn't know that the three personalities were not separate people, told Spencer that he could not shoot all of them because there was only one bullet in the gun he was holding. However, Reid, knowing the error of that statement, pulled the trigger. The personalities of Charles and Raphael were killed instantly; Tobias just had time to thank Spencer for killing them and hope that he would be reunited with his dead mother. Spencer also had time to apologize to him for what had happened. Just before leaving, Reid takes with him Tobias's dilaudid.

Season Four
Tobias would later appear in a flashback in the episode Conflicted, where Reid encounters a serial killer who suffers from the same psychological condition as Tobias did.

Modus Operandi
The Raphael personality would target people he perceived as violating the laws of God, having spied on them in advance using the webcams of their computers, which he had gotten access to either through his job as tech support or by hacking into them. Striking at night, he would discreetly enter their homes, wearing latex gloves so as to not leave behind any prints, call 911 to tell them about the murders and use some biblical quote to explain what the victims were "guilty" of, and kill them by quickly slashing their major aeortas, not unlike the way hunters kill their game. Having had the webcams record the killings, he would then post the videos online as warnings (though most viewers came to think of them as "cool").

Known Victims

 * Charles Hankel
 * Dennis and Lacy Kyle
 * Unnamed handyman
 * Helen Douglas
 * Jennifer Jareau
 * Pam and Mike Hayes
 * Aaron Hotchner
 * Spencer Reid

Appearances

 * Season Two
 * The Big Game
 * Revelations
 * Fear and Loathing
 * Jones
 * Season Four
 * Conflicted

Trivia

 * Tobias Hankel's website, www.tobitnet.com, is actually a reference to The Book of Tobit; (known as the Book of Tobias in Hebrew) of the Catholic and Orthodox Bible where Raphael is sent from God as a human to heal Tobias.