| “ | All I ever wanted was to SAVE THE CHILD-!!! | ” |
— Church's unfinished last words
| ||
Frank Church was a cult leader, ephebophilic serial rapist, unclassified killer, proxy killer, and the CEO of a private security firm known as Aida Limited who appeared as one of the two overarching antagonists (alongside Elias Voit) of the second season of Criminal Minds: Evolution.
Background
Born in Tacoma, Washington on February 27, 1975, Church enlisted in the U.S. Army after graduating from high school. He was described as a subpar soldier by his superiors and was reportedly disliked by his comrades. During his service, he was repeatedly reprimanded for his low effort and drive.
After serving three years as an Army private, Church left the military and enrolled in a community college, where he received a BA. Starting in 2003, he worked in a series of progressively higher-ranking positions at three different private security companies.
In 2010, Frank Church became the CEO of Aida Limited, a private security firm with ties to the U.S. government. Over the following years, the government brought Church up on various charges of criminal misconduct, accusing him and the company of profiteering and voiding their contract. He was able to use his connections to get the charges dropped. Since then, Church and Aida have become known worldwide for their security expertise.
Church used his own barracks to establish a highly secured, clandestine cult, his operations being focused on luring vulnerable children to hold captive on his barracks to brainwash them into servitude. He tortured the kids with electric prods, raped the girls under sedation, and overall trained them into being child soldiers, complete with extreme conspiracy theories to subjugate them to his influence.
To create grounds for federal-level embarrassment as a contingency of the law was to knock on his door, Church's early experiments on brutalizing at-risk children at a Utah facility named Stuart House were modeled off a paper by the BAU, where they wrote hypotheticals on turning children into psychopathic killers. It was provided by Dr. Jill Gideon, the ex-wife of Senior SSA Jason Gideon, as she was lied to that her reverse engineering of the paper would treat at-risk kids. Five teenagers known as the Gold Stars were tortured and sexually abused by the staff as early experiments, Church propagandizing them back at his cult as heroes while he broke every kid down. Local police would be paid off to not file missing persons reports and even scout for children to lure.
By the time Church solidified his campaign and closed Stuart House, he decides to test the kids by ordering them to kill all involved parties in the operations and tie up loose ends, twisting the narrative to be to hate their abusers and to hunt who he lied were targeting innocent children.
Criminal Minds: Evolution
Church was introduced when all the victims he ordered hits on were tied to Aida through payoffs from the company. Church was brought in for questioning, but he told the agents they were blowing smoke and insulted Prentiss for her efforts as a woman in her profession. The director of the FBI ordered the cessation of the interrogation, and Church was released. When Jade Waters and Dana Howe returned to the barracks, Church ordered Jade to join the kids training on the fields, while he executed Dana with a shot to her head. Church later verbally disciplined Mila Sandoval for exceeding aggression in her combat, saying her emotions were the enemy.
Mila then confided in Jade she remembered being raped in her nightmares, let alone that Church was responsible. Jade remembers Church raping her as a consequence and broke from his confidence, which he didn't catch onto at first due to his oblivious hubris. Church then showed Jade cells he kept children in to torture them, lying to her face they were part of "rescues" of the kids. But Jade decided to look for Mila when she was missing from her bed, seeing her unconscious and being prepared for Church to rape her again. Church's goons bashed her unconscious, then later restrained her to the same bondage Church used during the rapes. While Jade thrashed screaming, Church says she was his favorite and that shocking her unconscious was "for [her] own good".
The FBI agents in the meantime were prepared to raid the barracks without a warrant, which Church's armed guards were ordered to prevent by holding them off. Church was alerted that Jade told Mila to run off with the kids, who were all safely recovered by the agents. Jade then set off explosives at the complex, to kidnap Church and Prentiss with Pete Bailey, who zip-tied them to wheelchairs. Jade held a pistol on Church and asked if he wanted to challenge that he was a pedophile. Church just blamed the law, screaming he was "saving the children", before Jade shot him in his head, executing him. She wheeled him off and prepared to do the same to Prentiss, but Prentiss staved her and Pete off long enough to save her life and have them surrender to authorities.
Modus Operandi
During his years of overseeing the abuse and torture of children to be made into child soldiers at both his personal barracks and at Stuart House, Church would subject them through psychological, physical and sexual trauma (though he mostly reserved the sexual assaults toward the girls). To keep them compliant and to prevent them from disobeying him, Church would subject their minds to extremist conspiracy theories against the government.
Following the closure of Stuart House, Church ordered the five children in the Gold Star program to murder all the staff and people involved with the experiments in order to tie up loose ends. Unbeknownst to him, there was a likely chance that sooner or later, the Gold Stars would betray him and either kill him or lead the authorities to him, so he hired a Strike Team to execute them before they executed him.
When he executed Dana Howe, Church shot her in the head with a silenced pistol after distracting Jade by ordering her to join the children on the training fields.
Profile
"Miss Prentiss, your questions are textbook gumshoe intimidation. Which leaves me with a profound concern for the future of federal law enforcement. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised when good men like Deputy Director Douglas Bailey are cut down and women like you are championed."
- Church insulting Prentiss during his interrogation.
The person behind the Gold Star program is profiled as a pedophile, a slow burner who can fly under the radar. He would be patient, take years to groom his victims. He might have a history of abusing kids himself.
Real-Life Comparison
Church appears to be heavily inspired by Charles Manson - Both are cult leaders with military backgrounds and criminal records, brainwashed their followers with paranoid conspiracies theories, sexually abused their female cultists, and directed their cultists to commit murder out of their apocalyptic philosophies.
Church also appears to be inspired by Jim Jones - Both are cult leaders who gained political influence, established communes to isolate their cultists in, armed their cults with security armed with assault rifles, physically and sexually tortured their cultists into compliance, and ordered their cultists to attack and murder government employees.
Known Victims
Personal Victims
- Sexually assaulted and presumably killed numerous unnamed victims through his position as CEO of Aida Limited. Named ones include:
- Mila Sandoval (repeatedly raped and tortured)
- Jade Waters (repeatedly raped and tortured)
- 2023, Drisoll State Forest, Delaware: Dana Howe (shot in the back of the head with a silenced pistol; previously abused repeatedly )
Proxy Victims
- Presumably numerous other unnamed victims.
- 2015, Salt Lake City, Utah
- Brooks Larson (Damien Booth’s foster father; Booth killed him after Church brainwashed him into believing he was a pedophile)
- Damien Booth’s unnamed foster mother (possibly)
- At least eleven victims killed by Damien Booth to cover up the cult throughout the northeastern U.S.; six before December 2022 and four after February 2023:
- 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
- January, 2023:
- Deputy George Kelby (murdered by Jade under his orders)
- Deputy Adam Ulrich (bludgeoned with a tire iron and enucleated by Jade under his orders)
- Teresa Campos (stalked by Sebastian Gasper)
- Tyler Green (attempted to shoot by Sebastian Gasper)
- Intended to kill the following through the Strike Team:
- Damien Booth (assigned to Don Bertoli)
- Aiden Keller (assigned to Arturo Mendez)
- Pete Bailey (assigned to Sean Riggs)
- Dana Howe (assigned to Gerald Fulton)
- Jade Waters (assigned to Isaac Sanchez)