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Pretty soon, you'll beg for your life. And, little secret? Towards the end, you'll cry for your mama.
~ Yates taunting Nadia Decotis

Dr. Gregory Yates is a recurring antagonist in the Chicago Fire and Law & Order universes, having appeared in episodes of Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He is a brilliant, sadistic serial killer who rapes, tortures, and murders prostitutes. He is also the nemesis of Chicago P.D. protagonist Erin Lindsay.

He is portrayed by Dallas Roberts.

Early life[]

Yates was born Gregory Williams in Chicago, Illinois. His parents, Michael and Susan Williams, decided to give him up for adoption when he was four years old after he began exhibiting sociopathic behavior such as torturing animals and setting their basement on fire. He was adopted by the Yates family in North Carolina, but his behavior did not improve; if anything, he got worse, developing a violent hatred of women along with his sociopathy and sadism.

He was intellectually brilliant, however, and was accepted to Duke University as a medical student. During college, he met Susie Frain, and they began what would be a long-term relationship - all the while torturing, raping, and murdering prostitutes, painting the fingernails green postmortem and burying their bodies at an isolated beach called Dead Horse Bay; NYPD detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler would later investigate two of his murders, but could not find the killer.

After college, he became a surgeon and a professor at Cornell University. He was then a resident at Presbyterian Hospital, where his classmate Carl Rudnick was an attending surgeon. One night, Rudnick called him, panicked, saying he had just killed his girlfriend Lena Grunwald and needed helping disposing of the body. Yates helped him hide Grunwald's body behind the wall of his aunt's house, and advised him to dismember the body the next time he killed someone.

Yates's medical career continued to flourish, and he was eventually hired by MedCare in Chicago. His murders also evolved; he began burning the bodies instead of burying them to destroy forensic evidence.

Appearances[]

Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D.[]

Yates is introduced as the chief suspect in the murder of nurse Victoria Lewyn, being brought in for questioning after Officers Sean Roman and Kim Burgess find him fleeing the crime scene. He cooperates with the investigation as a means of finding out what the police know, and to manipulate Detective Erin Lindsay, with whom he becomes obsessed. They don't have evidence to arrest him, however, so they are forced to let him go. Hours later, he kidnaps precinct secretary Nadia Decotis, a former prostitute and Lindsay's close friend.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit[]

Yates drives Decotis to New York City, where he rapes, tortures, and murders her. The next day, he talks his way into an nearby apartment building, where he rapes and murders a woman and bludgeons her roommate into a coma. He then goes to Susie's house and proposes to her, which she happily accepts moments before Lindsay and her commanding officer, Sergeant Hank Voight, burst in and arrest him.

He is put on trial for raping and murdering Decotis after the NYPD, led by now-Sergeant Olivia Benson, find her body and several others in Dead Horse Bay. He motions to represent himself, and argues that Decotis had in fact been murdered by Will Halstead, Chicago P.D. detective Jay Halstead's brother, and that Halstead's superiors are framing him in order to cover it up.

Throughout the trial, Benson and Assistant Rafael Barba notice that Yates seems strangely fixated on the grisly crime scene photos. Playing a hunch, they leave the photos within his view while he cross-examines medical examiner Melinda Warner. Sure enough, he becomes excited and demands graphic details of Decotis' agonizing death, and gets angry when she doesn't elaborate on her injuries. The jury sees him for what he is, and sentences him to life in prison. Before Yates starts his sentence, Voight puts him in a chokehold and threatens to break his neck; he lets Yates go, however, saying that he will get what he deserves eventually.

Months later, a woman's body washes up on Dead Horse Bay, and Benson thinks Yates may be responsible. She sends Detective Amanda Rollins to question him, and Yates becomes fixated on her. He insinuates that someone else is responsible, but remains vague and cryptic to keep Rollins coming back. When the SVU detectives find a woman's corpse in a farmhouse, Yates claims to know who is responsible, but will only reveal the killer's name in return for a conjugal visit with Frain. Once he gets what he wants, he reveals that Rudnick is the killer, and feigns shock when Rollins tells him that Rudnick is the chief medical examiner for their precinct. When Rudnick is implicated in a series of murders that Yates may have been involved in, he offers to "consult" with Rollins, speaking of the murders as hypothetical situations to avoid incriminating himself.

Frain blackmails Rudnick with a photo of him dressed as Grunwald, threatening to give it to the police unless he exonerates Yates; to silence her, Rudnick kills her. upon learning of Frain's death, Yates is uncharacteristically saddened, especially upon learning that she was pregnant with his child. Rudnick is ultimately convicted of murder, and is sent to the same prison as Yates, where the two of them "catch up" in the cafeteria.

Yates later bribes a guard to smuggle a smartphone into his cell so he can research his birth family on the Internet. Upon finding out where they are, he devises an escape plan with Yates and prison therapist Bronwyn Freed-Wilkins, whom Rudnick has manipulated into falling in love with him. He hints that he has more murders to confess to on condition of being transferred to the honor block with Rudnick. The two of them use the smuggled phone to order drones and send them flying over the prison yard, causing a riot. During the chaos, they tunnel out of the prison with help from two corrupt electrical workers, both of whom Yates and Rudnick murder once they have outlived their usefulness.

They meet with Freed-Wilkins, who drives them to her house and gives them weapons. Yates then ties her up in the trunk of her own car and tells Yates to kill her; unbeknownst to him, however, Rudnick lets her go. They drive to Gloversville, New York and hide out in an old house, with Yates murdering two state troopers who find them. He then attacks Rudnick, severely injuring him and leaving him for the police to find. Lindsay and SVU Sergeant Mike Dodds catch up to Yates, but he shoots and wounds Dodds, and escapes.

Death[]

In the Chicago P.D. episode "The Song of Gregory Williams Yates", he starts stalking his younger sister, Nellie Carr, all while using the spyware on Lindsay's phone to follow her investigation. He kills all four of Nellie's roommates, but cannot find Nellie herself. He follows her to Hudson University, where she works as a nursing professor, and kidnaps her, leaving a taunting Facetime message for Lindsay. He pays a homeless man to deliver a box to Lindsay's station house, containing one of his victims' hands holding a note challenging her to find him. He locks Nellie in a closet, threatening to kill her if she moves.

He attacks and kidnaps his father, and uses Nellie's phone to call his mother, who is at Lindsay's station house trying to help Lindsay and Voight find her daughter and husband. Yates taunts Lindsay that the police are looking for him in the wrong place, and invites her to join him once she figures out where he is. Lindsay and Voight track the call to Yates' location - the house he was born in.

Yates ties his father to a chair and puts a noose around his neck, threatening to kill him once Lindsay finds them. He holds her at gunpoint and torments her with a graphic description of Decotis' murder, and further traumatizes her by kicking his father off a ledge, hanging him. He advances on her, telling her that she will be the one to kill him, and then tell the world his story. He then moves to attack her, forcing her to shoot him dead in self-defense.

Trivia[]

  • Yates is loosely based on the late real-life serial killer Ted Bundy.

External links[]


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