The witching hour was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep, deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves. Roald Dahl.Voit's introduction quote.
You know, there was a time where I would have gotten a real rush out of this. Just escaping the benign minutia of everyday life with the exhilaration of murder. Now, it just kind of keeps me level. Especially when people let me down. But you're not gonna let me down, are you? No. Ugh, I thought I could let other people do it for me, but apparently, people cannot follow instructions. You tell 'em not to leave a body, they go and make a whole scene. You tell them not to kill anyone that can be linked to them, and they murder a former lover. I don't understand what is so difficult about following a few simple rules. I mean, it's not hard. I did it...with you.Voit pontificating to his latest victim.
Elias Jasper Voit, born Lee Duval and also known as Sicarius, is the main antagonist of the Paramount+ series Criminal Minds: Evolution, the sequel to the original Criminal Minds series on CBS. He is the leader of a cult of serial killers who have been operating since the COVID-19 pandemic.
He was portrayed by Zach Gilford, who also portrayed Kevin Wilcox and James Miller in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Background
Elias Voit, originally named Lee Duval, had a mother, Teresa, who was also his half-sister, possibly from being raped by their father and impregnating her. Elias faced tragic loss when Teresa and their father perished in a fire he inadvertently caused, leading him into the care of his uncle, Cyrus Lebrun. Cyrus beat Elias, locked him in a closet for days while passing meals to him through the door, and left dead animals for Elias to wake up to to terrorize him. Cyrus was an arms trafficker who killed as part of his enterprises, as well as women he raped for his own pleasure. Cyrus made Elias his accomplice from torturing him, from disposing of remains to surveying investigating police. Elias grew to study criminal sciences and history to understand his experiences, including reading books by FBI veteran and profiler David Rossi.
Elias stood up to Cyrus when one captive woman, Maria Jones, pleaded for mercy and to be released. Elias agreed, but as Maria believed shed be threatened by him to, she stabbed his shoulder with a hunting knife snd tried to kill him. Cyrus took the knife and stabbed Maria to death, hitting Elias after for his disobedience. Elias decided he was finished, so he packed a Haberman suitcase and prepared to leave. Cyrus tried to kill Elias to stop him, but Elias nearly killed him with an arm over his throat. Elias relentsd to not be like him, leaving Curys behind, Cyrus saying he'd make Elias return to him and that Elias had no one else in his life.
Elias took a false name from a fsther and son whi died in a car crash, grew to work in network security, settled in Seattle, and married a woman named Sydney, who he promised he'd make a better family for than her abusive father did. Sydney and he had two daughter, first Holly, then Harlow, Holly being a teenager by the events of Elias' introduction.
Elias, in the meantime, became his own serial killer. His spree started in the Pacific Northwest, where in the mountains of Yakima County, he kept a storage container to make his lair, holding low-class victims captive to experiment on violently so he could build his M.O. of torturing people to death. He kept decaying remains, weapons, restraints, maps, anatomical reference books, and more supplies in the unit. As Elias grew more brazen and wanted more blood and pain, he commandeered a storm shelter in Whitfield County, Georgia, stocking the same supplies and setups in the location. There, he went across the Bible Belt in a wider radius and _targeted average and high-class victims for the same kidnappings and torture-murders, their remains also kept in the shelter. He lied to his family his nationwide travels for his murders were for hia job so they never knew the truth. To care for the family after his daughters were born, Elias took breaks around the times of each of their births.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Voit was low on funds to continue his crimes and care for his family. He decided his bedt grt-rich-quick scheme was a nationwide network of serial murderers, who would pay him and swear to secrecy in exchange for him feeding their fantasies. His biggest donor was Benjamin Reeves, a senator's son who founded a D.C. dating app in part for Voit to have an encrypted server for him to develop networking sites he lured candidates through. He strategically placed kits for killings across the country, supplying for specific M.O.s of who he profiled would be useful to build his network or be patsies at the risk the authroties closed in overtime. One patsy was Arthur Kiel, who Voit kidnapped victims for so Kiel was a compliant killer to murder liabilities at Voit's direction.
Voit realizes Tyler Green, the brother of one of his victims, Alison Green, posed as a devotee to track the network and find answers on Alison's disappearance. Tyler remembered Voit was Alison's abusive boyfriend, when Voit still went by Lee. Voit strung Tyler along to see what he would do as a preparation for Voit bolstering his clandestine operations further, even harassing Tyler by messing with how Alison's son was left without a mother.
In Criminal Minds: Evolution
Season 1
Voit is first introduced in a flashback to 2005, where he holds of his earliest victims, John Harris, captive. After remarking on his scars on his arms from a suicide attempt, Voit slashes him to death. In 2022, the FBI are called to the Washington State storage unit once it's found, the BAU pushing to keep it in their jurisdiction. The agents track an at large killer, Rory Gilcrest, only to be baffled when he committed suicide, something outside his profile. It was revealed Gilcrest was a follower of Voit, as a Haberman kit that Voit gave him his weapons through match a Haberman at the storage unit. Voit was later seen burying yet another kit in an isolated location. The BAU closed in on him by tracking his other accomplices, but they all began killing themselves as well. One accomplice, Robert Harris, broke Voit's rules by not taking a break and _targeting someone he held a grudge against, Voit being seen personally calling him to push him to suicide, leaving a potential victim alive. Most of Voit's other kits he planned to activate were seized by the FBI when embedded trackers were activated to recover then all. When Tyler received his kit, he took the bait and was arrested by the FBI, Voit watching the whole ordeal before disappearing. The FBI realized he was no psychopath, but instead Agent Penelope Garcia's informant who sent her data on the network's server.
Voit knew his Georgia storm shelter would be tracked, so he prepared to rig it with bombs and destroy all the evidence while he was covering his tracks. In the meantime, he had abducted a German Shepard named Moose, who belonged to a hardware store cashier he met when he gathered his supplies. He tortured Moose into being inclined to murder for Voit's later crimes. This was all aside from his personal and daily life, which was collapsing from multiple directions: he struggled to be present for Holly when she entered her teen years, he hated the father of a boy Holly had a crush on, and his company laid him off, taking away his primary income. He leaned on Reeves to be his primary financier by the time he would wipe the network to get away scot free, having to quell Reeves' outrage to make him agree to the plan. But his homicidal rage was so bad, not only did he imagine killing his family and people around him too much, he made Moose maul to death a man named Brandon Jones, who resembled the abrasive father he hates. Voit then killed Moose with a barbiturate overdose.
As his marriage was unraveling and he grew more aggressive with his entire family, he rushed his evasion of justice by sending Reeves his kit so his murders would pressure D.C. to leave him to take the rap for Voit's crimes. It almost worked, as Voit wiped his online server, blew the storm shelter up, and shot Reeves to disguise his death as a suicide. However, Lebrun's murder of Maria was tied to Voit's crimes, which led to Voit poisoning Lebrun after not seeing him for decades. Voit became so desperate, knowing his risk of arrest, that he kidnapped Ramona Havener, a real estate agent he pretended was Sydney to practice how he'd tell her his crimes. He tried to make Kiel kill her, but the plan failed. However, as Voit threatened his accomplices would hunt her and her family if she talked, she refused to cooperate.
Once Voit was identified after the FBI canvassed Seattle, he went to the field office there for voluntary questioning by Agent David Rossi. He went from admiring Rossi's books to taunting him by saying the material could inspire murder if he wasn't careful. He surrendered devices with no digital trace to his networks, but in particular, he focused on driving his family paranoid to make them complient, lying he was a white-collar whistlebloeer and the law was corrupt. When Rossi tried to get to Sydney, Voit posted a video of Rosis following the family on an extremist website. The family was relocated to a cabin in the Rockies, while Voit waited for Rossi back at the Voit family household. He knocked Rossi out and planned to kill him back at his Washington State storage unit site, but Tyler shot at Voir and stopped him. Voit severely wounded Tyler by firing back, also harassing him with how he hanged Alison while also threatening her son during her captivity. Tyler was reacued, but Rossi was imprisoned in another storm shelter and livestreamed to the FBI as a barganing chip.
Voit couldn't keep his family from questioning him, as Holly lost trust in him and Sydney found items related to his murders. He resorted to taking them hostage, refusing calls from the FBI in regards to surrendering the family. As added incentive, he directly threatened Deputy Director Doug Bailey with his knowledge of a classified government embarrassment: "Gold Star". It led to the Department of Justice contemplating an acceptable loss alternative of raiding the cabin. Bailey was sent in to negotiate with Voit, but Voit killed him with one shot to his head. He then opened fire on responding law enforcement, wounding Detective William LaMontagne, Jr., Agent Jennifer Jareau's husband. He was protected by a bulletproof vest, thankfully. When the Voir girls escaped, Voit tried to shoot Sydney when pulling her back in, but he had emptied his gun by that point and Sydney lived when Voit pulled the trigger without ammo. Defeated, Voit surrendered, reading his own Miranda rights as he was cuffed and taken away. Since Rossi wasn't found, it took Aydney making Voit give up his location, resulting in his successful rescue. Voir was imprisoned in maximum security while his case was prepared for trial.
However, the episode ended with him being taken straight to FBI headquarters, a mystery visitor ready to speak with him in interrogation.
Season 2
The visitor is the director of the FBI himself, Ray Madison. Voit manipulates the narrative of his crimes and threatens the release of info he knows about Gold Star if he doesn't have charges against him dropped. All he gets is charges reduced for kidnapping Rossi, which infuriates and appals the BAU. In the meantime, he reports directly to the DOJ for answers on the case when it's tied to a group of expertly trained killers, but all he does is string everyone. His lawyer misogynist Vincent Orlov, eventually negotiates the plea deal. It's revealed Voit knows about the case because the killers reached him on his network, Voit investigating the remaining information from there.
The BAU hope they can get it thrown out by making him cooperate in the Gold Star case, hoping he slips up and admits his crimes. It goes awry, as he reveals Agent Emily Prentiss hid from the team there was a deepfake site making porn of Agent Jareau due to her public liaison work, which had coding Voit used in his servers. The agency becomes desperate enough Voit is transferred to headquarters, where he's to call the killers. He tricks them into a meeting, while also tapping out "North Star" in Morse code as part of how he's using the killers to arrange a vendetta against the BAU.
Voit, however, can't keep influence over his family, who are devastated by their Witness Protection arrangement. It's bad enough Holly cuts herself as an outlet for her trauma. Voit tries to bully Sydney into making gim in chsrge of the family from prison, but she makes him agree for their reunion to be the last time the family meet. Voir agrees, but he cant bring yimself to aay it to Holly and Harlow. Harlow is delighted to see Voit again, but Holly wants Voit to read her letter confronting him about his crimes. He tries to deny everything, but as she snuck a knife disguised as lip balm into the prison, she tries to stab him for all he did to the family. Holly is stopped and removed, but she's not charged, and the family get more stable placement shortly thereafter. Voit is especially shaken, as he worries his daughters could end up like him.
At the meeting during the sting, Voit waits for the killers, only to be nearly mowed down by an arms desler they made drive a van while strapped to a bomb. The bomb has a phone, where one killer confronts Voit, but he convinces her to not want him dead. The other killer pretends to be a cop to get in the police vehicle Voit is returned to so he can hear Voit's lies about "North Star". After Voit's return, he reveals a paper Rossi and Agent Jason Gideon wrote about how to make paychopaths out of children was uses by a criminal network to torture the killers into mercenaries. This was qhole Voir blackmailed Orlov into digginf up another kill kit, after which he made Orlov give it to the killers. It contained a GPS tracker to another storm shelter, where Voit arranged a diarama to brainwash the killers further into wanting to agents dead.
The director still arranges for Voit's transfer to a lower security prison, as well as his lease vack to headquarters when the killers kidnap Agent Prentiss. The final reveal is one of the killers is Bailey's brother Pete, who Bailey was rushing to get out of the network before Voit endangered his life. Voit sets off much of the team during theur search of the base of operations, even harassing Agent Jareau over the deepfake porn site. Jareau taunts Voit back, saying she knows with the deepfakes needing a model, she decuded he took nude photos of Sydney while she slept. Prentiss is eventually rescued, and Voit is returned to prison. Two inmates corner Voit in the laundry room and stab him, leaving his ultimate fate unknown.
Victims List
- 1992, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: His unnamed parents (killed in an apartment fire caused by him)
- Early 2000's, Falls Lake, North Carolina: Cyrus Lebrun (his uncle; assaulted and attempted to strangle before relenting)
- Killed 12 unnamed victims in numerous unspecified locations.
- Killed 27 victims in the northwestern U.S. between 2005 and 2020 through various means. Named ones include:
- 2005: John Harris (abducted and slashed all over)
- 2007: Carmen Gomez
- Unspecified dates:
- Kalen Jones
- Adolpho Mietz
- Blake Jenson
- Ryan Whelman
- Carl Bentwell
- Derrick Sesper (poured Sicarius spiders down his throat)
- Paula Finch
- Evan Thomas, 23 (strangled)
- Emerson Daniels
- Leslie Pickmower
- Susan Abel
- Rayna Hines
- Ronald Mays
- Martin (first name indiscernible)
- Evelyn James
- Alex Medfield
- Leonard Boomer
- Robin Millard
- Hayden Patters
- Iden Jabari
- Roslyn Emmert
- An unnamed woman (name indiscernible)
- Patrick Rayne
- Peyton Graves
- Amari (last name indiscernible)
- Killed 17 victims in the southeastern U.S. through various means. Named ones include:
- 2007, Virginia: Alison Green, 23
- 2014, Brentwood, Tennessee: Louise Murphy (poured crab spiders down her throat)
- Unspecified dates:
- Arden Jenkins
- Avery Mullin
- Seneca Jordan
- Morgan Faulk
- Desiree Caldwell
- Eric Ruskin
- Darcy Cole
- Rumi Canton
- Ardie Baldwin
- Austen Penway
- Riley Groves
- Angel Vasquez
- Alex Killian
- An unnamed woman (name indiscernible)
- An unnamed man (name indiscernible)
- 2022:
- Brandon Jones (resembled his neighbor; abducted, strung up, and mauled to death by Moose)
- Moose (abducted and tortured into homicidal rage; later poisoned with pentobarbital)
- December:
- Senator Martha Reeves (held at gunpoint; was killed by her son Benjamin)
- Whitfield County, Georgia:
- Attempted to kill the following with a bomb in his shipping container:
- Luke Alvez (injured)
- Jennifer Jareau (injured)
- Benjamin Reeves (his accomplice; shot in the head)
- Attempted to kill the following with a bomb in his shipping container:
- Falls Lake, North Carolina: Cyrus Lebrun (poisoned his IV with naproxen)
- Indio, California: Ramona Havener, 36 (abducted; was later almost killed by Arthur Kiel)
- Seattle, Washington: David Rossi (kidnapped; was rescued)
- Yakima, Washington: Tyler Green (attempted; shot several times)
- Burney, California
- Douglas Bailey (shot in the head)
- William LaMontagne, Jr. (attempted; shot several times; uninjured due to bulletproof vest)
- Holly and Harlow Voit (his daughters; attempted, but they escaped with the FBI)
- Sydney Voit (his wife; attempted, but ran out of bullets at the last minute)
Trivia
- Voit is inspired by multiple real-life and fictional criminals:
- Israel Keyes, an indiscriminate serial killer and career criminal responsible for nationwide sprees across America, most still unsolved and not fully traced. He also left "kill kits" across the country for his crimes.
- Adam Worth, a.k.a. "The Napoleon of Crime", a criminal mastermind with a network of accomplices for numerous organized crime operations.
- Samuel Little, a.k.a. "The Choke and Stroke Killer", a serial killer/rapist of women across the United States, confessing to dozens of murders while in police custody, which were matched by FBI and other nationwide law enforcement collaborations.
- Todd Kohlhepp, a.k.a. "The Amazon Review Killer", an indiscriminate nationwide serial killer with a history of Internet activity regarding his crimes, as well as buried victims on his property, held women captive to rape, who were later rescued, and wasn't caught for a decade and a half.
- Bryan Kohnberger, a mass murderer of college students in Idaho with an academic hiatory of criminology courses who was later tracked and arrested by the FBI. Kohnberger was suspected of numerous othee killings in other states.
- Richard Kuklinski, a.k.a. "The Iceman", a serial killer and freelance hitman with a wife and children, an abusive father he longed to murder, a histoty of animal cruelty, and he and his family were completely funded by his crimes.
- John Christie, a.k.a. "The Rillington Place Strangler", a serial killer/rapist of women and girls, including his own wife and the wife and daughter of Timothy Evans, who was wrongfully hanged for the crimes.
- David Parker Ray, a.k.a. "The Toy Box Killer", a serial rapist and suspected serial killer who held women captive in his mobile trailer to rape and torture with accomplices, the trailer being equipped with torture devices, restraints, and anatomical diagrams. Ray is suspected of dozens of murders nationwide, but he didd of a heart attack a yesr sfter his arrest, leaving the majority of his case cold.
- Rodney Alcala, a.k.a. "The Dating Game Killer", a serial killer/rapist with a storage unit filled with evidence in Washington State, who was investigated by the FBI to track all his murders across the country.
- Ted Bundy, one of America's most hated serial killers, a serial killer/rapist of women and girls with a mother who was raised as his sister when he gave birth to him out of wedlock. Bundy operated in the Pacific Northwest and Bible Belt, hid victims' remains in the mountains of Washington State, and once arrested, he planned prison escapes and denied his crimes in the same breaths as he revealed details about them, including when consulting on other criminal cases.
- Edmund Kemper, a.k.a. "The Co-Ed Killer", a serial killer of women and girls with an abusive mother who locked him in the basement, butchered the women he killed to take his frustrations against his mother out of them, and even kept some of their remains at his house. He killed his mother at the end of his spree.
- Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. "The Night Stalker", a serial killer/rapist with a violently abusive father, a cousin who was a serial killer/rapist of his own, from who Ramirez learned his M.O., and who primarily _targeted couples in their homes he crept into, with an obsession for wanting power from his crimes.
- Matthew Muller, a kidnapper and rapist with schizophrenia, holding a woman captive after breaking into her home and restraining her husband, which the police didn't believe at first. The woman was ofiginally afraid to reveal details of the kidnapping from Muller threatening her.
- James Winkles, a serial killer caught after luring a real estate agent through one of her appointments for a kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder, only for the woman toneacape and Winkles to be arrested.
- Ward Weaver III, a budding serial killer/rapist with a father, Ward Weaver, Jr., with his own prolific murder spree. Hus daughter would later be arrested for the assault of a security guard.
- The killers of Seth Rich, a congressional page who was shot in the streets of D.C. His family protested against the conspiraciy theories over his unsolved killing, as they weren't left to grieve and honor him with respect from the public.
- Larry Davis, a serial killer of drug dealers who skated buy on most charges against him, including shooting and injuring cops out to arrest him by lying that they were dirty and part of hia own drug business. He was later convicted on one charge of murder and shanked to death in prison.
- Joe Carroll, the main antagonist of the crime drama The Following, a serial killer amassing a mob of murderous followers organized to get revenge on the FBI agent responsible for arresting Carroll in the first place.
- Voit is the first Criminal Minds antagonist to be introduced as the main antagonist of a series instead of an episode. The two main antagonists of the original series, The Reaper and Mr. Scratch, were introduced as the main antagonist of an episode before becoming the show's most notorious unsubs and Big Bads.
External Links
- Elias Voit on the Criminal Minds Wiki
