| “ | What'd I tell you? Never let your guard down. | ” |
— Damien to Jade, his first lines
| ||
Damien Booth, also known as Gold Star, was a prolific serial killer, hitman, stalker, enucleator, vigilante and one-time cop killer who appeared as one of the main antagonists of Criminal Minds: Evolution Season Two, alongside Jade Waters.
Background
"I've been told that I'm delusional my whole life. This isn't new."
- Damien to Dr. Jill Gideon
Not very much information is known about Damien's past prior to the events of the "Gold Star" killings. What is known however is that he was one of five children in the Gold Star program at Stuart House who were sexually and psychologically tortured by the staff as early experiments of being made into child soldiers. These crimes were overseen by Frank Church, the CEO of Aida Limited, a private security firm. Damien bonded closest with Jade Waters, and they became a couple.
To ensure that Damien and the other children didn't disobey him, Church brainwashed them and subjugated their minds with extremist conspiracy theories, even going as far as ordering Booth to kill his foster father. Years later after the closure of Stuart House, Church orders Damien and the other children of the Gold Star program to murder all the people involved with the events of the abuse to tie up loose ends. Church knew the killers would be liabilities, so he discreetly hired a Strike Team of mercenaries to murder them all when they were no longer useful. The group realized the plan first, so Damien killed most of the mercenaries once he found them, mutilating them by gouging out their eyes.
On Criminal Minds: Evolution
Damien then tortured Gwen Bertoli to death in front of Officer Don Bertoli, who carried her into his precinct. He was in such a state of shock, the first chance he got, he grabbed a cop’s gun and shot himself. Damien then killed Detective Isaac Sanchez, cutting out his tongue and taking his badge. He would reconvene with Jade and give her the badge, after she killed her father Rick and other deputies who worked at Stuart House. After they had sex, Damien called Elias Voit, an incarcerated serial killer and crime network founder, to get more information. While tapping "North Star" in Morse code, he arranged a meeting in a public park with Damien and Jade, Damon needing to convince Jade that Voit could be trusted. When they saw the FBI was to attend, they strapped a bomb to arms dealer Eddie Dayton and made him try to run Voit down in a bulletproof van. While the bomb was being diffused, Jade called Voit to confront him, to which he said he was the only one with the information she was looking for. Damien then posed as an officer to get in the cruiser Voit was in and asked him about "North Star". From there, Voit fed Damien lies about the FBI, which he and Jade began to believe while they went after the rest of the targets. They then went off the grid, hiding out at campsites, during which Damien consoled Jade during her nightmares of being raped by Church and promised her vengeance.
After killing Dr. Hank Dosela, they met with Voit’s lawyer, Vincent Orlov, Damien shooting at his feet to warn him not to do anything they don’t warrant. Orlov gave Damien and Jade a GPS tracker, which was to lead to a storm shelter with more answers. Damien wanted to get to Dr. Jill Gideon to kill her, but she already had security at her house. Once Jill sent them off to leave herself open as bait, Damien took her at gunpoint and abducted her. Jill took him to Jason Gideon’s cabin. She revealed he wrote the paper, Jill gave it to Stuart House, and they tortured Damien into the killer he was today. Damien believed she was treating him like he was crazy, but she commiserated with him and apologized for her part in his trauma that made him a killer. Damien dropped his gun and surrendered, then saw a laser guide from a rifle held by Jade. Damien didn’t want to live with his crimes by going to prison, so he signaled Jade to shoot him out of mercy, and much to both Jill’s and Jade’s grief, he died. Jade was devastated and tried to wage a campaign of violence against the FBI with the remaining Gold Stars, but they showed her the truth, and she and the only other living conspirator, Pete Bailey, surrendered to arrest. Church, on the other hand, lost his life to Jade when she shot him after remembering his crimes against her.
Modus Operandi
Following his subjugation of torture at Stuart House, Damien would hunt down former staff members who he believed were responsible for the torment. His methods of murder varied, though the most common variables were that the murders were staged to look like accidents or suicides. As he grew bolder in killing, he switched up to shooting his victims and leaving behind gold star-etched bullet casings within their guns (if they had any) as well as gouging out their eyes.
Profile
It's unclear whether or not an official profile was made for Damien, seeing as how the BAU focused on the entire Gold Star program as a whole.
Known Victims
Personal Victims
- c. 2015, Salt Lake City, Utah: Brooks Larson (his foster father; Frank Church ordered Damien to kill him as an alleged pedophile)
- Killed up to eleven victims throughout the northeastern U.S., six before December 2022 and four after February 2023.[1] They are:
- Connecticut: Amelia Kane (staged as an overdose)
- Rhode Island: Dr. Braden Welsh (broke his neck; staged as a slip and fall)
- Maryland: Dr. Christopher Rensel (staged as a car accident)
- Virginia: Julia Trofan
- New Jersey: Lyle Hullen
- Martin Natalez
- New Jersey: Nina Tayamo
- Pennsylvania: Sally Sanwell
- Massachusetts: Sherwin Barnell
- New Hampshire: Stanley Cheswick
- An unnamed victim
- Delaware: Unnamed victim
- Massachusetts: Unnamed victim
- New Hampshire: Unnamed victim
- New Jersey: Two unnamed victims
- Pennsylvania: Unnamed victim
- Virginia: Unnamed victim
- 2022:
- Washington, D.C.: Trevor Carlyle, 29 (the Strike Team leader; his body was found in January 2023)
- c. December 8, Annapolis, Maryland: Gerald Fulton, 38 (Strike Team member; assigned to kill Dana)
- December 14, Norfolk, Virginia: Sean Riggs, 35 (Strike Team member; assigned to kill Pete)
- December 2022-January 2023, Millsboro, Delaware: Arturo Mendez, 27 (Strike Team member; assigned to kill Aiden)
- January, 2023:
- Bristow, Virginia:
- Officer Don Bertoli, 40 (Strike Team member; assigned to kill him; held hostage and psychologically tortured; was released; he later committed suicide following an induced catatonic state)
- Gwen Bertoli, 41 (Don's wife; gouged her eyes out and shot in the chest)
- Woodbridge, Virginia: Detective Isaac Sanchez, 34 (Strike Team member; assigned to kill Jade; shot in the chest, cut out his tongue, and left him for dead; also stole his badge)
- Davenport, Iowa:
- Eddie Dayton (an arms dealer; attacked alongside Jade; knocked out and strapped a bomb to him; was rescued)
- Elias Voit (attempted; forced Eddie Dayton to run him down with a van, but he failed; Jade later attempted to blow him up)
- Berkeley Springs, West Virginia:
- Dr. Hank Dosela (killed by Jade; helped stage his death as a suicide by hanging)
- Virginia:
- Shenandoah County: Vincent Orlov (Voit's lawyer; fired a warning shot at with a sniper rifle on Jade's signal)
- The situation at Gideon's cabin:
- Jill Gideon (stalked; abducted from her home, held hostage and threatened to shoot, but relented; was released)
- Bristow, Virginia:
Proxy Victims
- 2023: The following were attacked by Don Bertoli during his suicide:
- Two unnamed police officers (assaulted)
- An unnamed police officer (assaulted and stole his gun)
- David Rossi and Emily Prentiss (both briefly held at gunpoint)
Appearances
Criminal Minds: Evolution
Season One
- "Dead End" (mentioned)
Season Two
- "Gold Star" (uncredited; face was not seen)
- "Contagion" (mentioned)
- "Kingdom of the Blind"
- "Conspiracy vs. Theory"
- "Message in a Bottle" (mentioned)
- "North Star"
- "Stars & Stripes" (flashbacks)
- "Save the Children" (flashbacks)
References
- ↑ In one scene, Damien's partner, Jade Waters, is shown to have six eye tattoos representing her victims. This means it is possible that two of the murders were carried out by her, as she only had four named victims to this point.