| “ | You said that it was to protect us. | ” |
— Chris
| ||
Christopher "Chris" Salters is a serial rapist, killer, abductor, and member of a pack of rapists that appeared in the Season Six episode of Criminal Minds, "Middle Man".
Background[]
Chris' father, a sheriff by the name of Jeff Salters, was an abusive bully at home who hit Chris to maintain discipline. His wife, fed up with this treatment, left him when Chris was a young adult. After that, Chris began racking up a criminal record for drug offenses and probably violent crimes as well. However, the record was sealed by Salters, who erased any evidence of his arrest to protect him. Later, when he was a freshman at college, he tried out for the track team and tried to join the Kappa Iota Phi fraternity, failing to join both. After that, he met Michael Kosina and started hanging out with him. Sometime later, they got involved in a bar fight that Michael started. They then began abducting exotic dancers, forcing them to dance and have sex with both of them. Chris later recruited Scott Kagan after their first hunt.
Middle Man[]
Chris, Scott, and Michael first appear wearing masks and chasing their latest victim, Meredith Joy, with their truck in a cornfield. Michael catches her, rapes, and kills her off-screen. Sometime after, they abduct another victim named Stephanie Wilson. One day, Chris is working at his bar when he sees on the news about the three dead girls. Then, Scott comes in demanding to know what Chris had gotten him into. They confront Michael, who shrugs and says coldly that he had to do it to protect the group. Later, when Scott begins to want out, Michael has Chris brought him out to a cornfield and beat him to punish him. He then gives him a baseball bat and orders him to kill Scott. Chris very reluctantly obliges and beats Scott to death. The following day, he begins to feel guilty about this and contemplates calling his father for help, but changes his mind at the last minute.
Michael, however, sees Chris on his cellphone and beats him for even thinking about turning himself in. Then they decide to finish business and get rid of Stephanie, but, at this time, the police are on to them and have them surrounded. Chris holds up his gun to the police, including Salters, while Michael uses Stephanie as leverage. Prentiss begins talking to Chris, trying to convince him that Michael is bad news by explaining that this isn't the first time he had a crew, that he killed them too, and that Michael was going to do the same thing to him. Chris and Michael argue about the former's loyalty towards him, and suddenly, Michael turns his gun on Chris, forcing his father to open fire on Michael, killing him. Chris shouts that he is not going to jail, to which his father tries to convince him that he will find him a good lawyer and figure out a way to get his sentence reduced. Chris then tries to commit suicide but is stopped by Salters, who shoots him in the arm. He is then moved into a police car and it is assumed that he was put away for the murder of Scott and for the women that he raped, though Salters tells Hotch that he will call in every connection he has to keep his son off death row.
Modus Operandi[]
"Wake up. You don't want to miss the show."
Targeting exotic dancers like Michael and Scott, Chris would help abduct them and rape them while they were blindfolded and handcuffed to a pole in Michael's house. When he killed Scott Kagan, he bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat under Michael's orders.
Known Victims[]
- Unspecified dates:
- Numerous unspecified drug crimes (and presumably other, more violent ones)
- An unspecified bar fight
- 2010:
- September 24: Kimberly Jukes (abducted and raped by him and Michael, then killed by Michael two days later)
- October 15: Amanda Frye (abducted and raped by him and the others, then killed by Michael two days later)
- October 29: Meredith Joy (abducted and raped by him and the others, then killed by Michael two days later)
- November 5: Stephanie Wilson (abducted, raped, and intended to kill; was rescued two days later)
- November 6-7: Scott Kagan (accomplice; assaulted and reluctantly bludgeoned with a baseball bat under Michael's orders)
- November 7: Held the following at gunpoint and threatened to shoot during the hideout standoff:
- Sheriff Jeff Salters (his father)
- Emily Prentiss
- Derek Morgan
- Spencer Reid
- Several unnamed Sheriff's Deputies
Notes[]
- Chris is similar to at least two unsubs from the show's past:
- Season One
- Cory Bridges ("The Popular Kids") - Both are killers who are the only child to Sheriffs who aided the BAU in their investigations into their son's crimes. Both also killed their victims by bludgeoning; also, Chris reluctantly murdering Scott is a callback to Cory's incidental murder of his second fatal victim in the sense that both kills were not premeditated.
- Season Three
- Owen Savage ("Elephant's Memory") - Both are killers who are the only child of a police officer who abused them and a mother who abandoned them in some way (Savage's mother died six years prior to the episode while Salters' mother abandoned him and his father), which shaped their volatility when they became criminals, reluctantly murdered at least one of their victims, had violent confrontations with their fathers (Savage killed his father, while Salters held his father at gunpoint during a standoff and was later shot by him to prevent him from committing suicide), and would later be incarcerated for their crimes (though Savage was a minor at the time of his murders, so he may have been institutionalized instead.)
- Season One
Appearances[]
- Season Six
- Season Eleven"
- "Entropy" (indirectly referenced)