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Minor Character: Las Vegas
NateHaskell
Name Warner Thorpe
Alias Nathan "Nate" Haskell
The Dick & Jane Killer
Gender Male
Birth Date February 15, 1960
Family Arvin Thorpe (father, deceased)
Lois Thorpe (mother, deceased)
Willoughby J. Willoughby (grandfather, deceased)
Audrey Thorpe (grandmother, deceased)
City Las Vegas
Pathology Serial Killer
Proxy Killer
Abductor
Rapist
No. of Victims 18 killed
12 killed by proxy
2 attempted
1 attempted by proxy
1 abducted and raped
Status Deceased
Portrayed By Bill Irwin
Mason Steel Davis (aged 16)
Niko Baur (aged 8)
First Appearance 19 Down...

"You thought that you could get inside of my head? A person has to do what I've done to understand me."

Nathan "Nate" Haskell (born Warner Thorpe), a.k.a. "The Dick & Jane Killer" (sometimes acronymed "DJK"), was a prolific serial killer who appeared in Seasons 9, 10 and 11 of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. He is best known for being the arch-nemesis of CSI Raymond Langston.

Background[]

Haskell was born Warner Thorpe. During Langston's lecture in 19 Down..., Haskell claimed to have been physically abused by his alcoholic father, Arvin, every day when he was a child. He only had vague memories of his mother, Sylvia, who was killed by Arvin when Haskell was eight years old. It was revealed in Targets of Obsession that Nate carried the MAO-A gene, a gene which, according to some studies, causes a predisposition towards violence. Exactly how long he knew about it is unknown to everyone except himself. His first animal kill was a cat, which he killed when he was nine years old, whilst listening to Arvin beating his mother, and he subsequently went through numerous other animals, until his first human murder victim, who he killed when he was 16. This was a traveling salesman named Douglas Nathan Haskell, whom he butchered in a home-made torture chamber in his house and whose identity he partially adopted as his own. In the mid-1990s, he became a serial killer. He became known as "The Dick & Jane Killer" because he targeted couples. None of the female victims, all of whom were buried in a cabin where he tortured and killed them, were ever found and Haskell later refused to discuss them. He killed a total of at least 16 people in Nevada, Arizona and California (the first couple, Joel Steiner and Tiffany Cohen, weren't found until 19 Down...). Even though he never held down a single job or filed a tax return during this time (likely because he was living under an assumed name), he could still afford the occasional restaurant visit, earning money by donating blood and semen or taking part in psychological studies. During a visit to an Italian restaurant, Venetti's, he had a chance encounter with future serial killer Charlie DiMasa.

One day in Reno, he stopped at a sobriety checkpoint. That stroke of luck allowed the authorities to charge him; inside the car, they found blood belonging to a victim; under his fingernails they found DNA from another; a potential murder weapon was found and a witness was able to place him with another one of the victims. When the case went to trial, Haskell initially denied any guilt, but changed his mind and confessed when his defense was about to claim the murders could only have been committed by multiple people working together. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and incarcerated in Ely, Nevada. While there, he gained a kind of cult following (he claims to have "students" everywhere) and was even proposed to a couple of times, though he turned them all down because he wasn't allowed conjugal visits. At some point prior to Leave Out All the Rest, Haskell met Thomas Donover, a student at West Las Vegas University and one of his "students".

Season Nine[]

19 Down...[]

Haskell finds out about a special lecture given to by West Las Vegas University Professor Raymond Langston, in which a famous serial killer is allowed to speak directly to his class via computer at prison, and decides to participate when no other murderer accepted the offer. At the same time, the body of Gerald Tolliver (who was killed by Thomas), an accomplice of Haskell's, is discovered in a trash bag amongst the belongings of Joel Steiner and Ian Wallace. Hoping to gain some information after finding out that Ian Wallace was killed by a DJK copycat killer, Grissom comes to Langston's lecture and watches as Haskell discloses the disturbing details of how his mind works and stating (to Thomas) how he gave his female victims some hope of survival before killing them in order to make them compliant. Grissom interrogates Haskell, disguising his questions as innocently as possible, but he eventually goes a bit too far accidentally and Haskell announces to Langston and the class that a member of the Las Vegas CSI team is present. Joel Steiner's mother then suddenly arrives and Haskell taunts her, forcing Langston to order the connection to them and Haskell canceled.

Later, when Langston returns to his office at the WLVU, he receives a call from Haskell, who tricks him into staring at the parking lot before revealing the location of Joel Steiner's skeleton. There, the CSIs find the skeleton, as well as the fresh corpse of another man.

One to Go[]

The CSIs identify the fresh body as one Jeffery Masters, and they realize that his wife Maureen is missing, being held captive by Thomas, who took Haskell's advice about controlling the women at hand. However, the CSIs eventually manage to find Thomas and Maureen and kill the former. Haskell's reaction to these events isn't known, as he was only mentioned in the episode.

Season Ten[]

Neverland[]

While visiting a prison, Ray is approached by an inmate who tells him that "Nate Haskell says hello".

Doctor Who[]

After finding out of the CSIs' investigation of "Dr. Jekyll", Haskell finds the case details similar to his encounter with Charlie DiMasa and decides to call Langston at the end of the episode, telling him he knows Dr. Jekyll's identity before hanging up on him.

Meat Jekyll[]

Haskell's transportation to the Las Vegas crime lab stirs a quarrel between Langston, Catherine, and Brass. However, they eventually agree that if Haskell is just toying with them, they will merely throw him back in prison without a word. Surprisingly, though, it is revealed that Haskell is telling the truth after he informs that contained in the evidence Reno police gathered from his house is a piece of pasta in the shape of a bow, identical to how Dr. Jekyll tied the intestines of Joseph Bigelow. He then tells Langston of his experience in Venetti's. As the investigation progresses, they are forced to use a stripper to help extract information from Haskell in her own way.

As the CSIs go out to investigate, Haskell taunts the guard assigned to watch him in his cell, eventually forcing him into activating a shock belt that was wrapped around him throughout the episode. This causes Haskell to fall over and break his glasses.

After the case is concluded and Charlie is shot dead, Langston visits Haskell to tell him that they caught Dr. Jekyll. However, just as he prepares to leave, Haskell stabs him in the back repeatedly with a shiv made out of his broken glasses.

Season Eleven[]

Shock Waves[]

When guards hear Langston's stabbing, Haskell is shocked by his electric restraints and beaten. After a brief stay in a hospital, in which Langston hallucinates him escaping and poisoning his IV tube, Haskell is taken back to Ely, but not before he taunts Brass about Langston's stabbing.

Targets of Obsession[]

Haskell is taken to court to be charged with attempting to kill Langston, and several of his female "fans" are present. At first, the jury seems to lean onto Haskell's defense that he is predisposed to violence because he carries the MAO-A gene, which is said to have that effect, and was abused by an alcoholic father. With no other alternative, Langston reveals that he also was abused by an alcoholic father and carries the MAO-A gene. Haskell is genuinely baffled by the revelation. After the trial, which leads to Haskell being found guilty of attempted murder, Langston talks to Haskell outside his cell. He tells Langston that he feels even closer to him than before and claims to have known that he was an MAO-A carrier for a long time, though he refuses to elaborate on how he could have known it before official studies were carried out. Later, he switches his inmate badge for that of a minimum security inmate and gets into a transport van in his place. On the road, it is sabotaged by two of his female fans, who kill the guards. After one of the women kills the other, she drives away with Haskell, but not before stopping to take in the sight of the dead officers.

Father of the Bride[]

He reappeared in Father of the Bride, when he kept sending messages to the father of one of his female fans, threatening to kill her. It turned out that the video recordings were all made the day after Haskell escaped, but he and his accomplices sent it weeks afterwards. The CSIs arrive and see that the female fan is dead.

The episode ends at a concert in Los Angeles where the main attraction is Gloria Parkes-Langston playing the cello. Nate Haskell and his current bride Tina Vincent befriend Gloria and her current husband Phil.

Cello and Goodbye[]

Ray went rogue to track down Haskell, who abducts Ray's ex-wife, Gloria, after killing Phil in Los Angeles. It is revealed in the episode from a school yearbook that his birth name is Warner Thorpe. It also turned out that Haskell never got plastic surgery, even though one surgeon and his nurse were killed by him and his accomplices, presumably as a ruse to throw the CSIs off his trail. The trail leads Ray and Nick to a pier, where their pursuit of him is interrupted by the police there. When Ray follows the trail to a carousel, Haskell appears and shoots a police officer. He reveals that Gloria is still alive and leaves a trail before disappearing. Langston eventually finds Gloria and a dying Arvin at Haskell's old house, only to be confronted by Haskell himself.

In a Dark, Dark House[]

NateWarnerThrope

Nate confronting Langston.

Langston immediately takes Haskell down while he is distracted, beating him, to Haskell's delight and puts flex cuffs around his wrists, but when he learns that Haskell raped Gloria, Langston cuts off the cuffs, beats Haskell even more brutally and finally pushes him over a railing to his death. At the crime scene, Brass sees the ligature marks on Haskell's unshackled wrists and puts a pair of handcuffs on them. When he finds the used flex cuffs, he discreetly takes them with him in his pocket without telling anyone. The season ends in a cliffhanger as Ray is asked by IA whether him killing Haskell was self-defense or murder. In the next episode, it is mentioned that Ray was let go.

Modus Operandi[]

"You have to give them hope. If you bring a human being to the brink of death, and then you offer a chance, no matter how small a chance, to survive, they'll grab it. And they'll thank you for it. And then, you can do whatever you want. And believe me, I did."

Haskell targeted Caucasian couples, the wives or girlfriends usually being blonde. He would kill the males by strangling them with his bare hands, drugging them beforehand to incapacitate them, usually with THC (marijuana) spiked with sage extract that he gave them as a ruse, take the female victims to an isolated cabin in which he would hold them captive and rape and torture them for long periods of time before inevitably killing them (he later claimed to have held one of his victims captive for three days). At one point while holding his victims captive, he would pretend to offer them a chance to come out of it alive in exchange for obeying him as a way to gain control over them and keep them from fighting back. The details of the torture are not mentioned, but apparently involved cutting and mutilation with various sharp instruments and electrocution. He mentioned attacking one victim with a baseball bat and cutting off the breast of another.

While the male bodies were disposed of like trash in various remote locations (with the exception of Joel Steiner, whose body was buried for reasons never specified), the female victims were buried under the floor in the torture chamber with their arms crossed over the chests. After killing his first male victim, Haskell would stab the male victims' bodies post-mortem as a signature, the number of stab wounds denoting the number victim couple the two were in his serial killings; the second male victim had two stab wounds, the third three, the fourth four, and so forth.

Haskell's accomplices took various belongings of their male victims as souvenirs, such as glasses, other possessions or even parts of their clothing. His copycats, Thomas Donover and Curtis Keesey, continued the cycle, stabbing their first male victim nine times post-mortem and the latters final male victim ten times. Haskell's next murder victim, Phil Parkes, was stabbed 12 times post-mortem as part of the cycle; according to Ray, this was because Haskell considered him to be his eleventh male victim, even though he survived. When he attempted to kill Langston, he stabbed him repeatedly with one of the arms of his eyeglasses he fashioned into a shiv. How he killed Douglas Haskell is unknown, but after he killed him he buried his body in his backyard.

Pathology[]

"Fun is taking something away from somebody. Like...a nice Jewish girl, for example. Taking off her for a little vacation, just three days and three nights of heaven on Earth. And then just heaven."

Haskell appears to be a sadistic psychopath, incapable of feeling remorse or guilt. He defines the greatest fun as taking something away from someone, which can be seen in the way he kills; he separates the men and women from each other, kills the man to take him from the woman and pretends to give her a chance to live only to take it away shortly afterwards.

Known Victims[]

  • Unspecified date in 1976, Nessus, Nevada: Douglas Nathan Haskell ( Presumably beaten to death and stole his identity)
  • June 14, 1997, Las Vegas, Nevada: Joel Steiner and Tiffany Cohen (the first couple)
    • Joel Steiner (stabbed twice post-mortem)
    • Tiffany Cohen
  • Unspecified dates in 1997-1998: Six couples abducted from all over Nevada, California, and Arizona and killed in Nevada. Named victims are:
    • 1998:
      • January: Peter Ifll and his unnamed girlfriend or wife (the sixth couple)
        • Peter Ifll (stabbed seven times post-mortem)
        • Peter's unnamed girlfriend or wife
      • March: Scott Pherell and his unnamed girlfriend or wife (the seventh couple)
        • Scott Pherell (stabbed eight times post-mortem)
        • Scott's unnamed girlfriend or wife
  • May 22, 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada: Raymond Langston (attempted, but barely survived; was stabbed with a shiv repeatedly)
  • 2011:
    • May 3, Los Angeles, California:
      • Phil and Gloria Baker:
        • Phil Baker (drugged, bashed on the head with a bottle, strangled with an unspecified ligature, and stabbed 12 times post-mortem)
        • Gloria Baker-Langston (Langston's ex-wife; abducted, raped, non-fatally stabbed, and cut; was rescued four days later)
    • May 7, Los Angeles, California: Tina Vincent (one of his "brides"; tortured and shot twice in the leg and head)
    • May 7-8, Los Angeles, California: Officer Davies (first name unrevealed; attempted, but survived; was non-fatally shot)
    • May 8, Nessus, Nevada: Alvin Thorpe (his father; tortured by beating and stabbing, then shot in the head)

Victims by Proxy[]

People killed by Haskell's followers and/or copycats

  • 2008, Las Vegas, Nevada:
    • May: Gerald Tolliver (fatally strangled by Thomas Donover, who was aided by Curtis Keesey)
    • November 5-7: Ian Wallace and Justine Stefani (killed by Thomas Donover and Curtis Keesey in a botched DJK copycat murder):
      • Ian Wallace (tortured, strangled, and stabbed nine times post-mortem)
      • Justine Stefani (presumably tortured, then run down with her car and burned post-mortem)
    • November: Curtis Keesey (strangled)
    • December 14-15: Jeffrey and Maureen Masters (attacked by Thomas Donover):
      • Jeffery Masters (fatally strangled and stabbed 10 times post-mortem)
      • Maureen Masters (abducted, held captive, tortured, and attempted to shoot; was rescued)
  • 2011:
    • February 11, Las Vegas, Nevada: The following were killed during Haskell's aided prison escape:
      • Two unnamed policemen (killed by Vivian Tinsdale and Robin)
      • An unnamed prison van driver and an unnamed prison guard (shot in the head by Vivian Tinsdale and Robin)
      • Robin (a "bride"; shot in the chest by Vivian Tinsdale)
    • April 28, Los Angeles, California:
      • Graham Kole and Teagun Murphy (killed by Vivian Tinsdale)
        • Doctor Graham Kole (shot in the chest)
        • Teagun Murphy (shot in the head)
      • Calvin Frost (shot in the head; killed by Vivian Tinsdale)
      • Vivian Tinsdale (a "bride"; shot and cut her head and hands off post-mortem by Tina Vincent)

Known Accomplices[]

  • Thomas Donover (copycat killer and accomplice of Haskell; deceased)
  • Curtis Keesey (accomplice of Donover; deceased)
  • Gerald Tolliver (accomplice of Haskell; deceased)
  • His "brides"
  • Garth Harris (a drug dealer who supplied Donover with the drugs he used to sedate his victims; deceased)

Notes[]

  • Haskell's crimes appear to be heavily inspired by the "Hillside Strangler" case. He also takes cues from the Ted Bundy case.
  • Haskell is the most prolific serial killer in the CSI franchise. He has also made the most appearances out of any serial killer on the show.
  • Possibly named after Dr. Neal Haskell, a real-life renowned forensic entomologist who has worked several times with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Appearances[]

CSI:Crime Scene Investigation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 #
Season 9 - - - - - - - - X X - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N/A 2
Season 10 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - X X N/A 2
Season 11 X - - - - - - - - - - - - - X - - - - X X X N/A 5
Total 9
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