Anita and Roger Roycewood were a husband-and-wife abductor and killer team that appeared in Season Five of Criminal Minds.
Background
See sections on the Anita and Roger Roycewood pages
Mosley Lane
At the Winter Festival in Ashburn, Anita, after spotting a girl named Aimee Lynch, distracts her mother by screaming that she has lost her daughter. When Mrs. Lynch looks away, Aimee is grabbed by Roger, who escapes with the girl and Anita in their minivan, which is driven by Charlie. After taking Aimee home, Anita, after presumably knocking the girl out somehow, places her in an underground room, and dyes her hair darker. Shortly after Aimee wakes up, Anita discovers Stephen, another captive child, talking to her from his room through a hole in the wall. As Aimee and Mae Hall, Stephen's roommate, look on, Anita knocks Stephen away from the hole, and beats him unconscious when he begins screaming at her, which enrages Anita. Having decided Stephen has grown too uncontrollable, because of his behavior in the room and due to him refusing to help her find another child at the Winter Festival earlier, Anita kills him in the crematorium, placing the knocked out boy and some of his belongings in a cardboard box, which she burns. Sometime later, Roger collects what is left of Stephen and grinds it down to a fine powder, which he spreads on his rose bushes, telling an onlooking neighbor that he likes to think the roses represent the forgotten, like the young man whose remains he is sprinkling.
Upon returning home, Anita and Roger kick Charlie out of Aimee's room, doing the same to Mae when she sneaks in before dinner. After eating, Roger is approached by Morgan and Prentiss, who are investigating the disappearance of Aimee and the others. Roger feebly lies, saying Anita is out, when she is actually hiding downstairs with the children. As Roger and the agents talk, Anita orders Charlie and Mae to clean out their rooms, while she knocks Aimee out with an injection. Anita and the children then sneak out through a secret exit, and drive away in a hearse, while Roger tells the agents he cannot get a hold of Anita, and suggest they leave. Morgan responds by saying that is not going to happen, and implies that he knows Roger and Anita are the abductors, and that the authorities are on their way. At her funeral home, Anita fires up the crematorium, causing the children to realize that she intends to kill them, like she has done to so many before them. After burning the sack full of Charlie and Mae's meager belongings, Anita orders Charlie to place Aimee in a cardboard box. As Charlie does so, Mae goes into hysterics, and after Charlie does not respond to her orders to quiet the girl, Anita tries to do so herself, lunging at Mae. While backing Mae into a corner, Anita is stopped by Charlie, who threatens her with a gun he had found in her purse. Not taking Charlie seriously, Anita taunts him, but is killed mid-sentence when Charlie shoots her in the chest, just as Morgan and Prentiss burst in. At the Roycewood house, Hotch, JJ, and Rossi discover that Roger (who had been allowed to go the bathroom by his attending officer) had hanged himself.
Profile
The abduction of Aimee Lynch was originally treated as an isolated, independent crime. Pulling off an abduction like hers would require at least two perpetrators, meaning that a team of preferential, pedophilic offenders is responsible. The abduction was a high-risk one, being meticulously organized and planned, so the abductors likely intend to keep the child for a while. They possibly abducted or attempted to abduct at least one other child in the past year.
However, after the emergence of similarities between Aimee Lynch's abduction and that of Charlie Hillridge eight years ago, the profile was changed and the unsubs were described as a husband and wife team. Since he did the riskiest part (actually taking the child) of the abduction, the husband is probably subservient to the wife, who is likely not a mother (so the children she uses in her ruses are probably abductees) like most violent predisposed female offenders. The team later expanded the number of unsubs from two to three, since the couple would need someone to man the getaway vehicle, which was probably a minivan or something similar. It was speculated that the accomplice could be Charlie Hillridge, the first known victim, due to his body never being found, and because his biological mother claimed she had seen him with a woman matching the description of the female unsub only three years before. Since preferential offenders, which the unsubs were believed to be, typically dispose of their victims before they reach puberty, Charlie (if it is indeed him) could serve some other purposes, and be controlled due to either Stockholm syndrome, or threats ("get us another kid, and we won't kill you").
All of the known abductions took place in northern Virginia, so the unsubs likely work and live there, in a home that is isolated, and filled with seemingly excessive security measures. The unsubs probably have only one source of income, since one would need to stay home to keep a constant eye on the children. Taking care of that many children is not easy, so something may have gone wrong in the past, something bad enough to draw attention, like reports of domestic violence. If they feel the authorities are closing in, the unsubs will try to destroy any incriminating evidence, including any children they currently have.
Modus Operandi
Anita and Roger targeted Caucasian children between the ages of six and nine, abducting them annually in crowded, public places with little to no security present. To avoid the risk of having their crimes connected, they abducted the children from different cities in northern Virginia. They had a common signature for the abductions: Anita, after spotting a suitable child, would make a scene by pretending to have lost her own child (sometimes having another one with her) to distract bystanders. As Anita had the attention on her, Roger would then grab the selected child and duck into an idling van, driven by Charlie (after abducting him and later using him in their abductions), with Anita joining them moments later. Anita and Roger would keep the abducted children in a hallway hidden behind a hinged bookcase in their basement. The children would be renamed, have their appearance altered to some degree (Aimee Lynch had her hair dyed darker, for example), and would be physically, and possibly sexually, abused. As a child grew older, or simply became too ambivalent, Anita would drug them, put them in a cardboard box, and burn them alive in her family's crematorium, having Roger dispose of the ashes in his rose garden. As security precautions, almost everything in the house was locked, and security cameras were hidden near the entrances to the house.
Mutual Victims
Note: All of the dates denote when and where the victims were abducted
- Virginia:
- Unspecified date in 1999, Garrisonville: Karla Hartaway
- September 29, 2000, Rock Creek Park: Jake Wusman
- Unspecified date in 2001, Bowling Green: Ryan Dowerman
- March 3, 2002, Leesburg: Charlie Hillridge (Anita later attempted to kill him; he escaped on March 3, 2010)
- February 11, 2003, Arlington: Stephen Shepherd (killed by Anita on March 2, 2010)
- Unspecified date in 2004, Linden: Dylan Hedgecliff
- June 12, 2005, Purcellville: Danny Kenman
- April 4, 2006, Madison: Mae Hall (Anita later attempted to kill her; she escaped on March 3, 2010)
- September 6, 2007, Lueneburg: Kayla Pargrave
- June 13, 2008, Ashburn: Austin Manford
- Unspecified date in 2009, Fredericksburg: Hannah Bidon
- March 2, 2010, Ashburn: Aimee Lynch (Anita later attempted to kill her; she escaped the next day)