History Main / SerialKillingsSpecificTarget

* ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'': In "[[Recap/DiagnosisMurderS2E12TheBelaLugosiBlues The Bela Lugosi Blues]]", the owner of a failing football team hires a killer to murder his star player--who is planning on leaving the team--so he can collect on the $20 million life insurance policy he has on the player. The player is on L.A.'s Most Eligible Bachelor list, sp the killer murders two other bachelors on the list so it won't be obvious the footballer was the intended target.

** ''Literature/ThreeActTragedy'' has one that is disguised as a CrimeAfterCrime. An aged clergyman is killed by poison, and a respectable doctor is killed in a similar fashion at a different party that involves the same guest list. This is meant to mislead the investigators to think that the first victim was the intended target, and the second one has discovered something about the killer and has to be silenced. In fact, the intended victim is the second one, and the first one was randomly chosen. A mystery for much of the story was that the first murder seemed to lack a motive, as nobody benefited from the death and the clergyman had no known foes. It turned out that the killer just needed a random victim and let fate decide who would drink the poison.
** Not exactly a serial killing, but ''Literature/TowardsZero'' has a case where the murder victim and the intended target are not the same. Instead, the criminal murders an old lady and tries to ensure that their intended victim be charged with the crime and hanged for it.
** Downplayed in ''Literature/TheBodyInTheLibrary'', in which one additional victim is killed so that the murderers can swap the two bodies and burn one of them beyond recognition, confusing the investigators. In this case, the intended victim was seen as a prospective heiress for a man who viewed her as a surrogate daughter. The other victim was a random teenage girl with a coincidental resemblance to the intended victim. The killers counted on people confusing the identities of two nearly identical victims.

* ''Literature/SolarPons'': In "The Adventure of the Sussex Archers", a would-be murderer sends a cryptic warning to the six members of the eponymous archery club, and then murders one of them; shooting him with an arrow. He intends his actual target second, while making the murders appear to be an act of vengeance for a suspicious death the Sussex Archers were connected to twenty years earlier.

* ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'': In "The Bela Lugosi Blues", the owner of a failing football team hires a killer to murder his star player--who is planning on leaving the team--so he can collect on the $20 million life insurance policy he has on the player. The player is on L.A.'s Most Eligible Bachelor list, sp the killer murders two other bachelors on the list so it won't be obvious the footballer was the intended target.

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "The Scarecrow Murders", Barnaby and Winter investigate a series of killings were the bodies of the victims are left dressed and posed as {{Scary Scarecrow}}s. The idea of a SerialKiller is floated, but Barnaby points out there are too many inconsistencies; including that serial killers refine their technique as they progress, but all three murder methods in this case were radically different. [[spoiler:It turns out to be a case of EverybodyDidIt with three different killers working together to take revenge on an online gambling company that ruined their lives, and used the scarecrow motif in the hope it would taken as the work of serial killer targeting people randomly.]]

* In the ''Series/{{Daredevil|2015}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/TheSinsOfTheFather'', Wilson Fisk hires Bullseye to kill Elektra Natchio's father Hugo as well as corrupt detective Carl Hoffman. The fact that Fisk had different motives for these two murders means that while the police are able to link the two murders, they're inclined to view him as a serial killer and not a professional hitman.

** In "Condemned", Wilson Fisk needs to have Detective Christian Blake eliminated because he leaked secrets to Matt Murdock under duress. He has an ESU sniper take a position on a rooftop overlooking a scene where Blake and Hoffman are overseeing a hostage standoff caused by Matt overpowering a rookie police officer who caught him holed up with Vladimir. If just Blake gets shot, the police will comb through every aspect of his life and career to find a potential motive for why someone would want to kill him, and will eventually find his connection. So the sniper also shoots two uniformed cops nearby, making it look like Blake was randomly targeted, and heads off deeper inquiries.
** Wilson Fisk is hosting a charity benefit where several people are poisoned, including his LoveInterest Vanessa. Fisk later discovers that Vanessa was the intended target, with the other poisonings only to make it look like an attempted assassination by Fisk's enemies.
** Dex's attack on the ''Bulletin'' on Fisk's orders in "The Devil You Know" has a bit of this happening. He's dressed up in a Daredevil costume so that Matt's reputation is destroyed, as is Karen's credibility. During the attack, while he kills a bunch of Karen's coworkers, as well as wound Matt, Foggy, and her boss, the main target is Jasper Evans, who Fisk wants eliminated so he can't tell the public how [[FalseFlagOperation Fisk hired him to shank him]].

** In ''Literature/TheABCMurders'', the killer sets up an alphabetical motif: someone whose name begins with A is killed in a city that begins with A, and so forth. The "C" murder is the significant one; the victim is a wealthy man, killed by his brother in order to inherit his vast estate. The work is something of a modern TropeCodifier, as some later works have referred to fake serial killings hiding a motive for killing a specific target as "A.B.C. murders."

* The story of the ''Blood and Wine'' expansion of ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3'' starts with a string of murders of prominent knights of the Duchy of Toussaint, with the murderer's motive seemingly to punish these knights for failing to live up to one of the five Knightly Virtues of Honor, Valor, Generosity, Wisdom, and Compassion. If you decide to investigate further, you'll discover that the final target was Duchess Anna Henrietta. It turns out that [[spoiler:her sister Sylvia Anna was planning to kill Anna Henrietta to take vengeance for a tragic event during her childhood, which led to Sylvia's banishment]]. The murders of the previous victims were purposefully connected to the Five Knightly Virtues so people would assume these to be divine punishments and also assume the death of Anna Henrietta to be one, allowing [[spoiler:Sylvia Anna]] to be free of suspicion.

* In the pilot of ''Series/{{Castle}}'', the killer murders his sister for her money, then stages the murder to look like something out of one of Castle's books and commits two similar murders so it'll look like one of her clients -- who's obsessed with the books -- did it. Castle sums up the trope beautifully:

** In ''Joker: The Devil's Advocate'', ComicBook/TheJoker is [[NotMeThisTime framed for murder]] when several people come into contact with stamps laced with his trademark Joker venom. The real culprit was a businessman who wanted to get rid of his wife without a messy divorce and had access to a stockpile of Joker venom that was stashed in a warehouse he owned. The scheme falls apart once Franchise/{{Batman}} discovers that particular bit of info during his investigation. Batman is hindered throughout by the fact that everyone else around him wants the Joker to be executed and finally gone regardless of his actual guilt.

* Moriarty's plot in ''Film/SherlockHolmesAGameOfShadows'' relies on funding BombThrowingAnarchists in France and Germany in hopes of igniting a WarForFunAndProfit. He directs them to bomb a Franco-German business conference in Paris, but only to guarantee the assassination of a particular German industrialist--[[InheritanceMurder whose death makes Moriarty the largest shareholder]].

* ''Film/JackReacher'' (the adaptation of the novel ''One Shot'') has Reacher discover the first victim in a mass shooting was simply a test-fire to verify the shooting conditions for the sniper, the second was the real victim, the remaining three were to disguise the real crime and the apparent "miss" was to provide a pristine bullet that could be linked to the patsy being framed for the whole thing.

* It has been theorized that [[GunmanWithThreeNames John Allen Muhammad]], the DC Beltway Sniper who randomly shot and killed 11 people and wounded six more, was eventually going to kill his ex-wife, knowing that the police would not automatically look at an ex-husband as a suspect if they thought she was just a random victim.

* ''Series/JakeAndTheFatman'': After a journalist is dumped by her lover, she murders his wife and makes it look like the work of a SerialKiller in "More Than You Know".

* Inverted in the ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/29688264/chapters/73871472 Chunks of Worm]]'' chapter "Pushing Back", where Taylor spends an entire night resurrecting a graveyard full of people, to obscure the fact that one of those people is her mother (since that would give away her identity).

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* Played with in ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'': Supposedly a serial killer has gotten loose and is killing everyone trapped in the ClosedCircle, but Kindaichi figures out that they're all connected. While the murderer ''is'' looking for one specific person, he doesn't know which person in the group it is and doesn't care that he's killing innocents in the process.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'' story ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7205981/4/The-Eyes-of-the-Wolverine The Eyes of the Wolverine]]'' the initial turning point of the story occurs when it is revealed that the kung fu assassin that is being hunted down is targeting the main character, Jo.

[[folder:Film]]

* In ''Film/TheSleepingCarMurders'' a woman is strangled in her sleep before the train reaches Paris. However [[spoiler:the woman was chosen at random to hide the later murder of another passenger. One of the murderers is a police detective and knows that the police will concentrate on those with a motive to kill the first victim and consider the other murders of all the people in that compartment as getting rid of witnesses]].

* In the ''Literature/EightySeventhPrecinct'' series by Creator/EdMcBain, this happens often enough for the detectives to have a shorthand term for it, "classic smokescreen". One example: In the novel ''Long Time, No See'', a murderer wants a particular blind person dead, so he kills a number of other blind people to make it look like the work of a serial killer.
* Inverted in ''Literature/AncestralVices''. Emmelia, the only one convinced that Walden Yapp didn't murder the diminutive Willy Coppett, sets out on a spree of attempting to kidnap other Persons of Restricted growth to make it appear that the culprit is still at large.
* ''Literature/BenSnow'': In "The Ripper of Storeyville", a SerialKiller is preying on the prostitutes of Storeyville; the RedLightDistrict of New Orleans. The killer [[JackTheRipoff deliberately mimics the M.O.]] of UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, causing authorities to worry that the original Ripper may have resurfaced in America (the story is set in 1901). However, [[spoiler:the killer is actually deliberately murdering four prostitutes who are the only people who could expose the DeadPersonImpersonation his partner is undertaking]].
* In Brookmyre's ''Literature/ABigBoyDidItAndRanAway'', the chief villain kills everyone on a passenger jet simply in order to fake his own death.
* ''Literature/{{Burke}}'' mentions this was a favorite tactic of ProfessionalKiller Wesley. He would kill one man, then burn down the building so the police would have a bunch of other possible victims/motives to investigate. In a later novel, a killer seeking to emulate Wesley arranges a hate-crime shooting of a gay protest rally while firing a precision shot to kill the person he actually wants to kill.
* In ''Literature/TheCallingOfTheGrave'' by Creator/SimonBeckett, a man kills the teenage girl he was having an extramarital affair with. Afterwards, he discovers that the girl's twin sister knew about their relationship, so he has to kill her too. Then he kills a third girl, who resembles the twins physically, in order to make it look like the work of a serial killer.

* In the short story ''Hard Sell'' by Craig Rice, multiple door to door salesmen are murdered. [[spoiler:One of the victims has died by suicide, having previously killed the others so that his family will receive his insurance payout because the police will suspect a business rival or a serial killer.]]
* Another early example of the device, the Creator/JorgeLuisBorges story "Death and the Compass," offers an interesting DoubleSubversion in that the villain's intended victim is [[spoiler:the detective himself, who turns up early after deducing the particular place and time suggested by the pattern to try and stop the last murder. He thus becomes the victim of an ambush by the killer, his longtime ArchEnemy]]. As above, the added twist makes this story a bit of an early, UnbuiltTrope version of the device.
* One of the earliest examples (though the disguise is an intentionally provoked military battle rather than a serial killing) is "Literature/TheSignOfTheBrokenSword" (1911) by Creator/GKChesterton, featuring Literature/FatherBrown. In his own words:

* The title trope in ‘’An Embarassment of Corpses’’ by Alan Beechey. TWO LEVELS of camouflage disguise a series of killings, so the real target can be passed off as an “unfortunate bystander shot by accident”.

* In the Literature/LordDarcy book ''Ten Little Wizards'', wizards are murdered in seemingly impossible ways with taunting references to a rhyme similar to that in ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone''. The intent was to make one deliberate murder of a wizard appear to be another locked-room mystery, instead of pointing to the wizard's entourage.
* In the Literature/MikeHammer novel ''The Twisted Thing'', the killer simply murders the victim with a hatchet, knowing his death will lead to other crimes and revealed secrets among his BigScrewedUpFamily as they all scramble for his fortune, thus creating a large number of suspects.
* Done on a larger scale in the Literature/ModestyBlaise novel ''The Night of Morningstar'', which features a terrorist group who claim a different ideology with each attack and seem to be working to no apparent purpose. It turns out that they're being run by an officer of Soviet intelligence and most of their attacks are to confuse things so that it won't be obvious when they commit an attack that advances the Soviet Union's aims.

* A variation in ''Fraternity of the Stone'' by Creator/DavidMorrell, which opens with every resident in a monastery being killed except the protagonist who was the intended target, a former assassin who underwent a HeelFaithTurn. As the monks had all given up their former lives, and lived in identical cells with no way of telling one from the other, the only way to kill their target was to kill all of them.
* The above variation turns out to be the EvilPlan of ''The Master Sniper'' by Creator/StephenHunter. The sniper is planning to kill all the children in an orphanage, who are all dressed in identical uniforms, to be sure of killing his specific target who's the heir to a fortune.

--> '''Alexis''': How do you get away with one murder by committing two more?
--> '''Castle''': At one death you look for motive, at two you look for connection...at three you look for someone like Kyle [the above mentioned obsessive fan]; at three you don't need motive because mentally unstable serial killers don't usually have one.

** An unintentional example in "Code Blue Plate Special". When his brother refuses to agree to sell off their diner for a huge payday, an owner decides to have someone stage a robbery with the specific aim of shooting the brother. But it goes horribly wrong when [[spoiler:his brother fights back and ends up removing the guy's mask. Panicking, the guy proceeds to shoot the other seven people in the diner. The owner then came out of hiding to shoot the guy himself and make it look like he was a random customer. The guy defends himself on how it was just a bad idea gotten out of hand but Nick coldly points out how they realize his own daughter was still alive and saw the whole thing so he shot her himself to cover the massacre up]].

* In ''{{Series/Monk}}'', some of the [[VillainOfTheWeek murderers of the week]] attempt to do this:

-->'''Frank Castle:''' What are you saying? You killed my family to get to me?
-->'''Carson Wolf:''' Misdirection. A good player hides his hand, Frank. We figured if there were enough dead bodies, nobody would really care to look close enough at any given one of them. It was a calculated risk. You understand, right?

* Played with in ''VisualNovel/ChaosHead'', as the ultimate target of the New Gen murders, the victims of which number in the double digits, is not someone the culprits aim to kill specifically- rather, they seek to use the killings to psychologically torture [[TheHero Takumi Nishijou]] into awakening his [[PsychicPowers Gigalomaniac powers]], and then extract his DNA, to power [[MindControlDevice Noah II]] and TakeOverTheWorld.

* The Literature/LordDarcy book ''Ten Little Wizards'' uses this; wizards are being killed in seemingly impossible ways so that one deliberate murder of a wizard will seem to be another locked-room mystery, instead of pointing to the wizard's entourage.

* In the first ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'' novel, Gauron seeks to cover up kidnapping Kaname on her school trip by blowing up the airliner her class is flying on, scattering pieces of everyone across the Sea of Japan. Under the circumstances, nobody would have been able to tell she hadn't been on the plane when it exploded.

* Mark Hofmann, the forger who was in danger of having his epic scam of the Mormons come to light, did an interesting variation. He killed a local document collector who was on to his fraud with a bomb, then killed a woman whose husband once worked at the same company as the first victim to make it look like they were both done by a disgruntled client of said company. Besides eliminating a potential whistleblower, Hofmann was also trying to buy time to forge more documents that he claimed to have discovered. He nearly delivered a bomb to a third target, but we'll never know who it was because he detonated the bomb by mistake in his car, [[{{Fingore}} losing a few of his fingers in the blast]].

* ''Literature/BenSnow'': In "The Ripper of Storeyville", a SerialKiller is preying on the prostitutes of Storeyville; the RedLightDistrict of New Orleans. The killer [[JackTheRipoff deliberately mimics the M.O.]] of UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper,causing authorities to worry that thhe original Ripper may have resurfaced in America (the story is set in 1901). However, [[spoiler:the killer is actually deliberately murdering four prostitutes who are the only people who could expose the DeadPersonImpersonation his partner is undertaking]].

** Downplayed in ''Literature/TheBodyInTheLibrary'', in which one additional victim is killed so that the murderers can swap the two bodies and burn one of them beyond recognition, confusing the investigators.

** ''Literature/ThreeActTragedy'' has one that is disguised as a CrimeAfterCrime. An aged clergyman is killed by poison, and a respectable doctor is killed in a similar fashion at a different party that involves the same guest list. This is meant to mislead the investigators to think that the first victim was the intended target, and the second one has discovered something about the killer and has to be silenced. In fact, the intended victim is the second one, and the first one was randomly chosen.

* ''ComicBook/ImmortalXMen'': Mister Sinister, who has a seat on the mutant nation Krakoa's ruling Quiet Council, tries to kill as many of his fellow councillors as he can. Partly because it makes the next stage of his plot easier, but mostly because it hides the fact that his one ''essential'' target is Hope, who's key to the nation's ResurrectiveImmortality programme.