This is all I have left. Do you understand? My husband hates me. There's nobody here that can help me with him. With this. With any of it. He's all I have.Linda mourning her life and admitting her crimes.
Robert and Linda Reimann are the main antagonists of the Criminal Minds episode “Cradle to Grave”. The Reimanns are a couple responsible for conspiring in the rapes and murders of numerous women in the interest of possessing their children to raise as their own.
Robert Reimann is portrayed by Eric Sundquist, and Linda Reimann is portrayed by Freida Jane.
Biography
Early Life and Crimes
Robert Reimann had a history of sexual violence against his partners. Linda was submissive to his domestic aggression, so the two married. They conceived a son named Michael, but after eight months, Michael was stillborn. Linda was forced to give birth to her dead son anyway, causing irreparable trauma. To make matters worse, Linda was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive breast cancer, which was metastasizing too rapidly for hopes of treating her and saving her life. Linda was devastated enough she was desperate for a son to replace Michael before she died. She and Robert agreed to create a basement dungeon with a long process of supplies purchases and manual construction, where they'd planned on imprisoning women and girls, raping them, and impregnating them in the hopes they’d conceive boys and the Reimanns would take the babies for themselves. Robert would find young, blond women and girls with drug addictions or runaway history and either kidnap them with force or lures, at least once using a paid accomplice. Robert would repeatedly rape each captive victim while they were imprisoned in the basement, Linda’s cancer drugs used instead as prenatal treatments to increase the chances of pregnancies at the risk of Linda’s own life. When the women and girls would come to term, another captive would be responsible for delivering the babies. If the babies were healthily born boys, they would be named Michael and raised by the Reimanns. If girls were born, they’d be taken from the mothers and left at churches and foster homes to be placed up for adoption. By the time the women no longer produced boys, the prenatal treatments were failing, or they were otherwise infertile or too traumatized, Robert would suffocate them with plastic bags and leave them dead off the sides of highways in various cities in New Mexico. That very habitual manner was how Robert raped and later murdered Monica Winmar, Janeen Atterman, and Kristie Taylor.
Cradle to Grave
The BAU were called in the interest of finding answers once the murders of all three women were successfully connected. As a sexual sadist couldn’t have been so careful with the babies while also being compulsively violent with the women, and baby trafficking was also ruled out, the BAU realized the killers were a couple and deliberately impregnating the women for their babies. In the meantime, Robert paid a man to lure a woman named Julie, where Robert successfully suffocated Julie unconscious with a plastic bag and kidnapped her too. Julie was placed in the dungeon alongside another captive woman, Carol, who was heavily pregnant and expected to deliver at any moment. Carol elaborated on what was happening, before Linda came downstairs with Robert and checked the baby’s vitals. When she told Robert the pregnancy was happening, they left Carol and Julie to make it happen, Carol vehemently insisted Julie deliver her baby or she’d be killed by the couple, so as revolted as she was, Julie was walked through by Carol. Under much duress, the birth was successful, and the baby was revealed to be a boy, who Linda readily named Michael. The team eventually tracked the records of the girls the Reimanns rejected, as well as Linda’s cancer drugs and Robert’s history of domestic violence, leading the team straight to the Riemann and their motives. After a brief bicker between Derek Morgan and Aaron Hotchner about the arrest plan, the FBI and local police raid the house. A young boy watching cartoons is peacefully rescued, and Robert is arrested. Carol and Julie are recovered safely, and Robert directs the agents to the nursery, where Linda holds Carol’s newborn son. She pleads with the agents on how she’d have been a good mother and all she has is children, as even her husband hates her. The agents make a halfhearted promise Michael will remember her for what she’d done, and she relinquishes the bay and surrenders to arrest. Carol is reunited with her son, and Monica’s parents are introduced to her child, the young boy in the house who’s also named Michael, and gain custody over him. The foster family of Monica’s daughter agrees to visitation with the Winmars. Robert is imprisoned for his crimes, and Linda dies from her cancer.
Trivia
- Robert Reimann alone is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Viktor Mokhov, a Russian kidnapper, captor, and rapist of two teenage girls for years with a woman acting as an accomplice, forcing the girls to deliver each other’s babies, only caught once the girls passed a note to call the police when they were taken outside to find a third girl to hold captive. Instead of the accomplice having a stillborn child, one of the teens did from her pregnancy by the time she was rescued.
- Gary Heidnik, a kidnapper, serial rapist, and murderer responsible for holding multiple women and girls of color captive, raping and torturing them, and forcing one woman to participate in the torture, Heidnik killing two women from his violence. The crimes were explicitly motivated out of getting the women and girls pregnant.
- Josef Fritzl, the captor and rapist of his daughter Elisabeth, who gave birth to numerous children, all captive in Fritzl’s basement dungeon. Josef also has a record of sex offenses before his crimes.
- Gary Ridgway, a.k.a. “The Green River Killer”, a serial killer of women and girls in prostitution and vagrancy, with a history of sexual violence against his wives, one who complied with his demands. The murder victims were scattered across the state and even across state lines to divert police.
- Both the Reimanns are inspired by multiple real-life criminal couples:
- Phillip and Nancy Garrido, the couple responsible for the kidnapping of Jaycee Duggard, a girl who was imprisoned all the way into womanhood by a violent sex offender and his spouse and accomplice, repeatedly raping her, impregnating her, and only keeping her sons while her daughters were given away for adoption.
- Cameron and Janice Hooker, the captors and rapists responsible for the kidnapping of Colleen Stan, having already raped and murdered another woman before her. Cameron sexually battered Janice before he _targeted other women.
- Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, a.k.a. “The Ken & Barbie Killers”, a Canadian duo of serial killers with the husband having a history of violence against the wife, as well as _targeting teenage girls to imprison and rape with his wife before killing them and leaving their remains in open areas.
- The Louisiana white supremacist mentioned in the beginning of the episode, which was assumed as one guilty party and not a group, appears to be inspired by serial killer William Henry Hance, a.k.a. "The Chairman of the Forces of Evil", disguising his murders as racially motivated.