Characters / Cold Case Villains

Serial Killers

George Marks

"You have no idea of the things a woman will beg you to do if you'll just let her live."

Played By: Nick Price (1972) and John Billingsley (1985-2005)

Episode(s): "Mind Hunters" and "The Woods"

The seemingly mild-mannered head of the precinct's Report Control Unit. He was secretly a serial killer who used police reports to find his victims, all of them women who had fought off their attackers, who he would abduct and then dump in the woods for a round of Hunting the Most Dangerous Game. After the headless bodies of nine of his victims were discovered, the team closed in on him, but George got away, only to return months later for a final showdown with Lilly, who he had become obsessed with due to viewing her as a kindred Worthy Opponent.

• Abusive Parents: George's mother, Simone, hated him because he was a Child by Rape. She irrationally blamed George for her hysterical blindness, and even though he tried to please her, she kept telling him that he was evil and a burden while forcing him to live in a dark attic that she rarely let him out of, which led George to begin acting out by doing things like carving the eyes out of his Creepy Dolls. When a rapist broke into the house, Simone saved herself from him by telling him where George was hiding, which led to George being raped, with this traumatic act of Parental Betrayal causing George to snap and kill Simone.
• A God Am I: When Lilly asks him who he is in the woods, George replies, "God." He reiterated this in his next appearance, only to be shot down by Lilly.
• Alas, Poor Villain: As Lilly is leaving the Marks house, she sees the "ghosts" of George's younger self and his mother staring down at her from the attic window as The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" ("No one knows what it's like"/"To be the bad man"/"To be the sad man...") plays for the Montage Out.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Everyone in the neighborhood thought that George and his mother, Simone, were creepy and weird, with the children even believing that the Marks lived in a Haunted House.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: Along with being creepily clean, almost everything in George's house was either stark white or black with sharp angles and harsh fluorescent lighting, with the whole place giving off a minimalist, Spartan-vibe.
• Armor-Piercing Question: "Who sold you out, George?"
• Awesome, but Impractical: He hunted and shot his victims with a Type 38 rifle, like the kind that was used by the Imperial Japanese Army. While there was nothing wrong with the gun itself, it being old and exotic meant that George was only able to get ammunition for it from a specialty store, which was easily located by Lilly and Jeffries.
• Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Growing up, George was forced to live in a dark attic by his abusive mother, Simone.
• Batman Gambit: He bought his old house back and let the severed heads that he had buried in the backyard of it be discovered in order to get the Philly PD to begin reinvestigating the unsolved murder of his mother, Simone. He then made a traceable telephone call from the Tinicum Wildlife Preserve, where he had left the body of his most recent victim, DeeDee Cooper. George knew that a concerned Stillman would order Lilly to stay behind, and that Lilly, intrepid detective that she was, would go off on her own to his old house, to continue to try and piece together exactly what happened on the night that George killed Simone.
• Bait the Dog: He delayed his abduction of Janet Lambert due to the presence of Janet's daughter, Susan, implying a case of Wouldn't Hurt a Child, or at least not one as young as Susan, but it is later indicated that this was just Pragmatic Villainy, and that he would have been perfectly willing to harm Susan (if he had to) to get to Janet.
• Break the Haughty:
  • He specifically targeted "strong" women who had fought back against their attackers, like a wife who had clocked her abusive husband and a track runner who had used tear gas to thwart an Attempted Rape.
  • He was smug throughout his interrogation, bringing up the investigators' own troubled lives to taunt them, but when Lilly brought up George's own failures and his Parental Issues, George lost his cool to the point of Suddenly Shouting. And when he tried to get Lilly again in his return appearance, she once again turned the tables on him, causing him to experience a full-on Villainous Breakdown.
• Break Them by Talking: His goal in "The Woods" was to crush Lilly with one of these before killing her, but it ended up backfiring, prompting George to go with his backup plan of committing Suicide by Cop.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He reveled in his actions, and, in his opinion, was like God, a sociopath who did not need and was entirely unburdened by things like love, loyalty, etc.
• Challenge Seeker: This was part of the reason why he only went after Damsels Out of Distress.
• Child by Rape: He is implied to have been one, going by what his mother said when she thought that she was going to be raped by Lee.
  Simone: What are you gonna do? Dirty acts? Is that why you're here? To do dirty, filthy acts?! Put your disgusting thing inside me?! Making another monster, another one like him?!
• Crazy-Prepared: A thorough search of his house turned up nothing, not even his own fingerprints, something which made an incredulous Vera ask, "This guy wipes down his own house?"
• Creepy Child: Even before he was raped, George displayed disturbing behavior as a boy, like cutting the eyes out of all of his toys and then casually handing them to his mother while monotonously telling her, "I did a bad thing mother. I took out their eyes."
• Creepy Cleanliness: George's home and everything in it was spotless and neatly organized, with Vera commenting, "Not a hair out of place. No dirty dishes, no stained laundry, nothing. I'm not even getting dust here."
• Creepy Souvenir: He replaced his victims' eyes with fake deer ones, and then cut off their heads and buried them in the backyard of his old home, where they were discovered at the beginning of "The Woods."
• Dark Secret: George did not witness Jacob Leonardo rape his mother, he was the one who was raped by Jacob. Both men tried their damnedest to keep this buried, but the truth was eventually pieced together by Lilly.
• Death Seeker: After he was challenged by Lilly, George found himself unable to derive any further enjoyment from hunting and killing women, and since he had nothing else to live for, he arranged for a final showdown with Lilly which he had no intention of surviving, as he would either be shot down by the police after breaking and killing Lilly, or he would goad Lilly into helping him commit Suicide by Cop.
• Deconstructor Fleet: George managed to deconstruct the very same show in his debut episode ("Mind Hunters").
  • He was the first Serial Killer to appear in the series, and as such he did not have any kind of relationship with his victims, unlike other previous killers.
  • He killed more than once and because he liked it. His were not the usual "rage of the moment" killings that make up half of the show, but executions planned to the most minute details.
  • He knew that the police would eventually come after him and likely planned his response to their interrogation years before it happened. Instead of being caught by their usual methods, he mocked them and researched the detectives extensively in order to use their weaknesses against them.
  • Unlike other perps, he knew (and lampshaded) when to shut his mouth and that he could just walk out any time he wanted to since the police did not have any definitive evidence against him.
  • He was a rather low-profile person who nobody paid any attention to, so nobody remembered him and/or could identify him when the police asked about him years later. This also helped him to commit crimes while working as a caretaker for the Philly PD.
  • Since he got away with his crimes, his first episode is the first (and one of the very few) to not feature the victim's "ghost" appearing at the end.
• Disappeared Dad: His father is never mentioned, and was quite possibly just a total stranger, given that it is implied that George was a Child by Rape.
• Enfant Terrible: He graduated from Creepy Child to this when he shot his own mother, Simone.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In all of the "Mind Hunters" flashbacks, especially during his abduction of DeeDee Cooper.
• Eye-Obscuring Hat: He wore one of these in the flashback to him buying supplies from Herb.
• Eye Scream: He cut out his victims' eyes after killing them, and filled the sockets with fake deer eyes that he got from Herb.
• Evil Gloating: When Scotty and Stillman first interviewed him, George did not even try to act innocent, and ended the conversation by telling them, "Oh, by the way? You're not going to find anything in my house."
• Fearsome Foot: All Susan Lambert saw of George before he took her mother, Janet, was George's boots.
• Freudian Excuse: George's mother, Simone, hated him because he was a Child by Rape. She irrationally blamed George for her hysterical blindness, and even though he tried to please her, she kept telling him that he was evil and a burden while forcing him to live in a dark attic that she rarely let him out of, which led George to begin acting out by doing things like carving the eyes out of his Creepy Dolls. When a rapist broke into the house, Simone saved herself from him by telling him where George was hiding, which led to George being raped, with this traumatic act of Parental Betrayal causing George to snap and kill Simone.
• God Is Evil: "God's a sociopath. Free from all pretense of love and loyalty."
• Hannibal Lecture: Scotty and Stillman tried to anger George to get him to slip-up by mockingly suggesting that the serial killer was a sexually inadequate loser, only for George to turn the tables on them by bringing up their own troubled relationships, which got him a Death Glare from the normally stoic Stillman. He proceeded to mock Vera over the Carl Healey case, Jeffries over the death of his wife, and Lilly over how she was mugged and assaulted when she was sent out to the store alone by her mother, Ellen.
• Hates Being Touched: He flinched away from Lilly when she touched his shoulder in "Mind Hunters."
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: He abducted women, stripped them down to their underwear, and dumped them in a dark forest, where he hunted them down with a rifle and a pair of Night-Vision Goggles.
• Impersonating an Officer: This is how he got all of his victims, except for Janet Lambert, due to her daughter, Susan, being in the car with her when she was pulled over by George.
• I Never Told You My Name: After being captured by George, DeeDee Cooper realized that the situation was even worse than it seemed when George called her by the name of her childhood idol, Atalanta.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: He escaped justice in his first appearance, only to be killed in "The Woods." But even then, he died on his own terms, by forcing Lilly to help him commit Suicide by Cop.
• Kick the Dog: He taunted Scotty and Stillman over their troubled personal lives in retaliation for them mockingly suggesting that he was a sexually inadequate loser, but then did the same to Vera, Jeffries, and Lilly simply For the Evulz.
• Lonely Funeral: "No one there but the grave diggers."
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Before killing his victims, he let them fruitlessly beg for their lives for a bit, even noting during his abduction of DeeDee Cooper, "Don't and please. They always say those words."
• Mask of Sanity: While George is perfectly capable of acting normal, in a few flashbacks to him interacting with people other than the investigators and his victims, he displayed somewhat demented behavior, like not speaking and just grinning madly when he was found by Ranger Robbins, and awkwardly laughing out loud to himself before suddenly stopping after spotting a poster of Orion on the ceiling while buying supplies from Herb.
• Meaningful Name: A marksman with the last name "Marks."
• Monster Misogyny: He only cares about hurting and killing women; he killed his own mother for letting him be raped, while showing no interest at all in the man who raped him, and when a male park ranger found him right after he had killed Janet Lambert, George notably made no move to attack him, though he presumably would have had the ranger suspected him of being anything other than a smalltime Evil Poacher. Vera and Jeffries even grilled George on why he only targeted women, with George answering, "Maybe those females had more to live for. Like the ones with children put up a real squall, I bet, if he promised to bring their little ones into the woods, too."
• Multiple Gunshot Death: He was shot three times by Lilly.
• Murderer P.O.V.: We get a brief instance of this, when he kills Janet Lambert, at the beginning and the end of "Mind Hunters."
• Mythical Motifs: George and Lilly's final showdown parallels the darkest versions of the story of Orion and Artemis, something that was hinted at by things like George's veneration of Orion and DeeDee Cooper idolizing Atalanta.
• Nerves of Steel: When a park ranger came across him in the middle of the woods at 5.00AM, George managed to stay completely calm, cool, and collected, even though he had just killed Janet Lambert.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He was inspired by various real-life serial killers, like Ted Bundy, Robert Hansen, and Edmund Kemper.
  • Bundy: His ploy of Impersonating an Officer, as well as him gloating about his crimes in a detached way by speaking in hypotheticals and in Third-Person Person (he did this, the killer did that, it excited him, etc.)
  • Hansen: Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
  • Kemper: Everything involving him and his mother, as well as him burying the heads of his victims in his mother's yard, which is what Kemper did with the severed head of Cindy Schall.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He tried to claim that, beneath it all, he and Lilly were alike, namely because they were both "damaged" by traumatic assaults that were caused by the actions of their terrible mothers, Ellen Rush and Simone Marks. Lilly initially concurred, though mainly to turn the tables on George, but then denied it when George started goading her into helping him commit Suicide by Cop.
• Not the First Victim: After Janet Lambert's body was found, a mass grave with eight other shot and decapitated corpses was uncovered nearby by the K9 Unit.
• Parental Issues: In his first appearance, George was asked for his opinion on the serial killer, and bluntly replied, "He hates women. Because of his mother, who was domineering and controlling." Later, he became uncomfortable, to the point of flinching when Lilly touched him, when Lilly brought up his mother, Simone. We are finally shown exactly what George and Simone's disturbing relationship was like in "The Woods."
• Obsessively Organized: While it was not commented upon, almost everything in George's house was arranged in lines of 3 (there were three mugs and three sponges on the counter, there were three boxes, cans, jars, etc. of everything in the cupboards along with three towers of paper cups, etc.)
• Off with His Head!: After killing his victims, he cut off their heads and buried them—facing upward—in the backyard of his old house, similar to one of his inspirations, Edmund Kemper.
• Only Friend: Growing up, the closest thing that George had to a friend was a neighboring boy named Evan. The two would sit at their windows and use flashlights to communicate with each other in Morse code.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: DeeDee Cooper, unlike the rest of George's victims, was shot multiple times and also stabbed repeatedly, worrying signs which indicated that George was either "bored" or "out of control."
• Parental Betrayal: As she was about to be raped, George's mother, Simone, told her attacker to rape George instead, which he did; this, coupled with the reveal that his mother was not as blind as she seemed, led to George killing Simone.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: George's first victim was his own mother, Simone, who hated and abused him, and let him be raped by a man named Jacob Leonardo.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: George, during a discussion with Scotty and Stillman about the serial killer that they were looking for, bluntly stated, "He hates women."
• Rape as Backstory: As a child, his mother let him be assaulted by a serial rapist named Jacob Leonardo.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: After being raped, Simone Marks became convinced that that the resultant child was evil incarnate, and that he had somehow robbed her of her sight (she suffered from hysterical blindness). And while George already displayed unsettling behavior as a child, being raped (which his mother let happen to him) is what caused him to snap, kill Simone, and become a Serial Killer.
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": When Lilly realized what really happened on the night that George murdered his mother back in 1972.
• Regularly Scheduled Evil: All of his victims were taken and killed in November, during the emergence of the constellation of Orion.
• Remember the New Guy?: While it is implied that he was always around, his first appearance was in mid-Season Two.
• The Resenter: It is implied that this was part of the reason why he went after Damsels Out of Distress. They fought back and escaped from their attackers, unlike George, who seeks to "punish" them for this by making them feel as scared and helpless as he was when he was raped by Jacob Leonardo.
• Sarcastic Confession: He gloated about his crimes to the Philly PD, but never actually confessed to them, always speaking in hypotheticals and conjecture, never letting slip any more than he could conceivably know due to either his job or the media, and, when talking about the killer directly, always slipping into Third-Person Person (using words like "he" and "him" and "them" instead of "I" or "me").
• Saying Too Much:
  • The only time that he slipped up while being interrogated was when he referred to the small black ball that Vera and Jeffries had brought into the interrogation room with them as a "deer eye." When Vera and Jeffries asked George, who had previously stated that he had no interest in things like hunting and taxidermy, how he knew what the deer eye was and why they found it in his house, George seemed to momentarily lose his composure before simply stating, "Done talking to you. Done talking."
  • The way that George talked about Stillman's daughter's rape and Lilly's own assault as a child, especially how he kept badgering her to tell him who "betrayed" her and if she was raped, caused Lilly to realize, "Your mother wasn't raped in this house... you were."
• Self-Made Orphan: His first victim was his own mother, who he shot in 1972.
• Serial Killer: The show's first, as well as its most infamous and prolific, with eleven murders to his name spanning from the 1970s to the 2000s.
• Shameful Strip: He forced his victims to strip down to their underwear as a way of degrading them, which led to a case of Motive Misidentification as this caused the investigators to assume that the serial killer was also a Serial Rapist.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In "The Woods."
  George: I AM GOD IN THESE WOODS!
  Lilly: No, George. You're a little boy. Whose mother didn't love him. Who sold him out.
• Sinister Whistling: He whistled and sang a few lines of "Walking on Sunshine" before abducting Janet Lambert. This is also how he got Lilly's attention before confronting her in "The Woods."
• Smug Smiler: He is this throughout both of his appearances, especially as he was being interrogated by the Philly PD, and at the end of the first episode, when he went for an Ominous Walk.
• Smug Snake: George, being intimately familiar with all of his rights, police procedure, and the personal lives of the team, is this throughout "Mind Hunters." He was even worse in "The Woods" up until his Villainous Breakdown.
• Stalker without a Crush: In his second appearance, he reveals that he has been keeping tabs on every member of the team, especially Lilly, whose house he at some point broke into, taunting her over this by asking her, "Do you keep a photo of my mother at your bedside like you do all your victims?"
• Start of Darkness: We are shown what made him the way he is in "The Woods."
• Suddenly Shouting: When Lilly managed to get under his skin, George, previously unflappably smug throughout his interrogation, suddenly started shouting, "Don't you walk away from me! Don't you walk away from me!" He had an even worse explosion in "The Woods."
• Suicide by Cop: He forced Lilly to shoot him at the end of "The Woods."
• Sympathetic Murderer: Played straight with his abusive, unloving mother who sold him out to a rapist. Subverted with every subsequent murder victim, none of whom had anything to do with his abuse.
• Thanatos Gambit: He goaded Lilly into killing him in the hope that doing so would eventually cause her to become as empty and alone as him, making him a posthumous version of The Corrupter.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: George's mother, Simone, thought that he was evil incarnate from birth, and so treated him horribly because of that, which unsurprisingly contributed to George becoming a Serial Killer.
• Time for Plan B: He wanted to break and then kill Lilly, but when she not only refused to break but also figured out his Dark Secret, George went ahead with his backup plan of trying to corrupt Lilly by forcing her to help him commit Suicide by Cop.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Lilly pieced together his Dark Secret, George instantly lost all composure, and descended into Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!".
• Virtue Is Weakness: He scoffed at concepts like loyalty, and believed that Love Is a Weakness.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: George tried to make his mother happy, but she hated him simply for existing, and referred to him as "The Darkness."
• Where It All Began: He lured Lilly to his abandoned childhood home, where he killed his own mother after she let him be raped back in 1972.
• Worthy Opponent: He stopped getting any kind of thrill from hunting and killing people after he met Lilly, which is why he returned to have a final showdown with her in "The Woods."
• Would Hurt a Child: His youngest victim was Tina James, who was only 14.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: When George was asked about his thoughts and opinions on the serial killer, he spoke in the third person and in hypotheticals while happily flashing back to what he did to women like Latrice Hicks and Tina James.
  George: I once read a pursued animal will run on broken toes, fractured shins, bloody stumps of feet. There are worse things than rape, Nick. Things that go on for hours. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Roy Brigham Anthony

"God's work can be brutal."

Played By: Alex Ball (1977) and Barry Bostwick (2005)

Episode(s): "Creatures of the Night"

A psychotic strangler who, due to a highly controversial plea bargain, was set to be released in 2005.

• Affably Evil: Roy is a nice, if awkward, fellow... so long as you do not push his Berserk Button. During his first meeting with Lilly and Scotty, he is nothing but genial, always referring to Lilly as "ma'am."
• Berserk Button: Disrespecting the Lord.
• Burger Fool: While in Philadelphia, he worked as a busboy at a greasy spoon called the Franklin Grill.
• Confusion Fu: Roy killed people in uniforms at night, but otherwise acted with complete randomness due to being driven to kill by hallucinations, and that, coupled with Roy being grounded enough to still do things like lie to protect himself, baffled investigators to such an extent that the only way that they could get him was through a desperate "sweetheart deal" Plea Bargain.
• Creepy Souvenir: He took a "trinket" from all of his victims, with the first being a gold charm that he took off of Mike Cahill.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Roy's aunt, Louise, loved him, and it broke her heart when he ran away and became a Serial Killer.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Even though his father, Edward, was implicitly abusive, Roy still loved him, and he becomes agitated when Lilly suggests that his victims were surrogates for Edward. He also appeared to care for his Aunt Louise.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He will lie and kill, but is adamantly against sex outside of marriage, which made him want to propose to Kelly Witkowski, even though the two of them had only just met after Roy moved from Utah to Philadelphia.
• Freudian Excuse: Roy targeting people in uniform is indicated to stem from deep-seated resentment of his father, a strict military man who, in his only scene, is shown treating Roy more like a subordinate than a son, at one point nearly backhanding a flinching Roy.
• The Fundamentalist: A devout, homicidal Mormon.
• Gun Man With Three Names: He was for some reason almost always referred to as either Roy or Roy Brigham Anthony, rarely just Roy Anthony.
• Has a Type: Non-sexual variant; he only killed people in uniform, starting with doorman Mike Cahill.
• Hearing Voices: He thinks that they come from God.
• Insane Equals Violent: He initially only harmed himself, but his aunt's unwitting encouragement caused him to become a Serial Killer.
• Just Following Orders: Roy claims to be "just obeying orders" when confronted with photographs of his victims when he first speaks with Lilly and Scotty.
• Knight Templar: Roy believes that his killing people is justified because he does it at the behest of voices which he believes originate from God.
  Roy: God's work can be brutal.
• Light Is Not Good: He is shown wearing white in literally every flashback to him as a young man in 1978.
• Loners Are Freaks: According to his aunt, Roy had no friends, and barely interacted with anyone other than her and his co-workers at the Franklin Grill.
• The Mentally Disturbed: He suffers from auditory and visual hallucinations, committed self-harm in an attempt to suppress them, and eventually began killing people because he was convinced that he was being told to by God.
• Mission from God: Roy is convinced that God is directing him to kill people, and that he has no say in the matter, proclaiming, "He shines a light on someone's face and I don't have a choice."
• Named After Somebody Famous: Brigham Young, a pioneering Mormon.
• Noodle Incident: An unknown incident involving a girl in Provo led to Roy's father shipping him away to live with his Aunt Louise in Philadelphia.
• Obviously Evil: During his first interview with Lilly and Scotty, Roy outright admits that he still suffers from hallucinations, and that he intends to resume killing people as soon he gets out of prison, casually stating, "I have a lot of work to catch up on."
• Plea Bargain: In 1980, he confessed and pleaded guilty to murders that he was strongly suspected of but could not be conclusively linked to, and in exchange he only got twenty-five to life, with his exemplary behavior while behind bars making it very likely that he would be released in 2005.
• Religious Bruiser: A religious fanatic, he killed all of his victims with his bare hands, and was shown to tower over almost everyone at 6'4.
• Religious Stereotype: Roy and his family were weird, naïve, and uptight Mormons who had no social circle outside of themselves, as well as an obsession with purity and virtue and nothing but disdain for "heathens." Aunt Louise also believed that, like Joseph Smith, Roy could hear the voice of God.
• Self-Harm: Whenever the voices in his head became too overwhelming, Roy would hurt himself in an attempt to suppress them, including by burning himself on the stove at the Franklin Grill.
  Roy: It was either hurt him, or me.
• Serial Killer: With nine confirmed victims, he is the show's second most prolific serial killer, after George Marks.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: He had "impure" thoughts about a girl in Provo, as well as Kelly Witkowski, and was ashamed of them, as his religious beliefs precluded sex outside of marriage, with the frustration that this caused him further fueling his psychosis, leading to an obsession with "pure" girls like Kelly.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The circumstances surrounding his near-release, despite him being a confessed serial killer, were inspired by Carl Eugene Watts.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: This is the impression given by the flashback showing Roy with his father, Edward.
  Roy: When are you coming back for me?
  Edward: That depends... on how well you obey the rules.
  Roy: Oh, I'll obey, sir! I promise!

Ramon Delgado and Martha Puck

"What we have is special. We are Bonnie and Clyde. And it feels good, right?"

"I'm not cool. But I believe in love that changes your life from black and white to color."

Played By: Bruno Campos (Ramon) and Emily Nelson (Martha)

Episode(s): "Lonely Hearts"

A con artist couple, Ramon would seduce and swindle lonely women, who he would then murder with the help of his partner, Martha.

• Ambiguous Situation: It is unclear if Martha was right about Ramon wanting to kill her, especially since it is clear that Ramon actually did love Martha.
• Asshole Victim: Martha was initially assumed to just be someone who Ramon had swindled and killed, but then it turned out that she became his accomplice and encouraged him to become a Serial Killer. Despite this, her and Ramon's serene-seeming "ghosts" are still shown at the end of the episode, with Ramon appearing to Stillman, and Martha to Lilly.
  Kat: Well, this is a big, fat waste of time. Solving a murderer's murder.
• Awful Wedded Life: We get a glimpse into Ramon and Martha's life together, and looked far from perfect, with Martha sulking while Ramon, having found another mark, asks her, "This loser's into ferns. You know anything about that?"
• The Big Board: Ramon kept a rented storage unit full of big boards containing information on all of his marks, including Martha.
• The Bluebeard: Ramon would marry desperate women at quickie chapels, take all of their money, and then have them killed by Martha.
• Car Fu: Once he was done with them, Ramon would set his victims up to be run over by Martha.
• Carpet of Virility: Ramon, something that is most apparent in the shirtless photo of him that is examined by Scotty.
• The Casanova: Ramon got with and used nineteen women through video dating services, all of whom were insecure and easily swayed; a more confidant woman, like Martha's roommate, Stephanie, could immediately tell that Ramon was a Slimeball.
• Common Law Marriage: Though Ramon eventually did end up proposing to Martha.
• Con Man: Ramon seduced and swindled women out of their money and valuables using video dating services, and took Martha (who was initially just another mark) along as an accomplice after meeting her in 1989.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Martha was an orphan, which is part of the reason why her case went cold so fast after she was murdered back in 1989.
• Creepy Mortician: Martha worked as mortician's assistant before becoming a Serial Killer.
• Cuckold: Martha bemoaned having essentially become one, stating, "I've become a terrible person. And for what? So that I can pretend to be your sister while some girl who thinks she's your wife climbs all over you?"
• Destructive Romance: Martha refused to dump Ramon even after finding out that he was criminal, and together the two entered an unstable relationship in which they became Serial Killers.
• Dissonant Serenity: During her first date with Ramon, Martha cheerfully described how, when she was four, her mother had a fatal stroke, and she spent two days alone with her corpse before a neighbor found her and called 911.
• Driven to Suicide: Ramon shot himself when the IRS finally caught-up with him, and also due to apparent despair over Martha.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Martha became paranoid that Ramon was going to kill her, and while he may have considered it at the time, the circumstances of his suicide (he shot himself while watching her video dating tape) indicate that he really did love Martha.
  Lilly: Her face was the last thing he wants to see before the lights go out? Got to be more than a con. Maybe it's a love thing.
• Fat and Skinny: Martha (fat) and Ramon (skinny).
• Females Are More Innocent: While Martha did convince Ramon to start killing people, she was portrayed as the more sympathetic of the two, eventually becoming overwhelmed with guilt over what she had become, which led her to turn on Ramon.
• Female Fighter, Male Handler: In a way, as Martha was the one who actually killed the women who were seduced and had their money taken by her sugar daddy, Ramon.
• Freudian Excuse: Martha's mother dropped dead from a stroke when she was four, and she spent two days alone with the corpse before being found, with it being implied that Martha's childhood was unpleasant even before this, as she felt that her mother was "finally happy" when she died on Martha.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Martha realized the error of her ways, and enlisted Eugenia Karpathian to help her kill Ramon. Unfortunately, Eugenia was still in love with Ramon, and she killed Martha.
• Heel Realization: While examining an heirloom that she and Ramon had taken from one of their victims, Martha started crying, and stammered, "I've become a terrible person."
• Hot Guy, Ugly Wife: Ramon was a handsome Latin Lover who fell in love with the dowdy, overweight, and awkward Martha.
• Horrifying the Horror: Ramon, during his first date with Martha, was obviously creeped out when she cheerfully described how, as a child, she spent two days alone with her mother's dead body before a neighbor found her and called 911.
  Ramon (after a very long, awkward pause): That's sad, Martha.
• In Love with Love: Martha was a self-described "sappy romantic" who spent all of her time reading Chick Lit and who stuck by Ramon even after realizing that he was con artist when she walked in on him right in the middle of stealing her TV.
• In Love with the Mark: Ramon was a con artist who just wanted to steal from Martha, but then he fell in love with Martha.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Ramon's love for Martha appeared to have truly bloomed after she began helping him with his crimes, as he noticeably acted much more affectionate towards her after she described to him how she conned Buella Stiffler.
• Instant Death Bullet: Martha dropped dead immediately after being shot by Eugenia.
• Insurance Fraud: Afraid that Ramon was going to kill her, Martha took out a life insurance policy on him in preparation for killing him first, though before she could do anything she herself was murdered by Eugenia Karpathian.
• In the Back: Martha was killed when she shot in the back with a .45 by Eugenia Karpathian.
• The Killer Becomes the Killed: Martha, a woman who was complicit in five murders, was herself killed by a woman named Eugenia Karpathian.
• Lady Macbeth: While Ramon was already a criminal when he met Martha, she was the one who encouraged him to graduate from con artist to Serial Killer.
• Latin Lover: Ramon, who used it to his advantage by seducing and swindling women like Eugenia Karpathian.
• Line-of-Sight Name: Martha's alias, Serena Montagne, was taken from a Romance Novel.
• The Lost Lenore: Ramon still pined for Martha after her death, and committed suicide while watching the video dating tape that she made back in 1989.
• Love Makes You Evil: Martha was so desperate for love that she stuck by her boyfriend even after finding out that he was a con artist, and convinced him to stay with her by encouraging him to become a Serial Killer.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Ramon and Martha killed all of their victims by making them look like hit and run accidents, one in New Jersey, one in New York, and the other three in Philadelphia.
• The Mourning After: Ramon never got over Martha, and killed himself while watching the video dating tape that she made back in 1989.
• Nerd Glasses: Martha wore giant spectacles, and considered herself to be "not cool."
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: The two were based on Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, an American serial killer couple who were active during the 1940s.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Ramon might have been planning to kill Martha, who decided to kill him first by trying to shoot him with a .45.
• Outlaw Couple: The two are even compared to Bonnie and Clyde by Ramon.
• Posthumous Character: Ramon committed suicide just prior to the events of the episode, while Martha was murdered in 1989.
• Relatively Flimsy Excuse: Martha was Ramon's lover, but pretended to be his sister while he was seducing and swindling other women, so their flirtatious behavior around each other creeped out Reverend Love.
• Retired Monster: While Ramon continued to committ financial crimes after Martha's death, there is no indication that he killed anyone else after 1989.
• Ripped from the Headlines: While the two were based mainly on Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, the concept of financially-motivated serial killers disposing of their victims via staged hit and run "accidents" was taken from the then-recent Black Widow Murders.
• Secret Diary: The flashbacks that are shown from Martha's POV are framed as Lilly reading passages from Martha's diary, which she had hidden in the jacket of one of her Romance Novels.
• Serial Killer: The two swindled and killed five women over the course of several months in 1989.
• Shrine to Self: When he notices that Ramon's home is full of pictures of himself, Scotty muses, "Guy's got a little crush on himself."
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Martha. As Kat put it, "The novels got to her head."

Malik

"I was the smallest, the weakest, but they didn't care. And now I take everything from them."

Played By: Steven Wash Jr. (1986) and Jamil Walker Smith (2007)

Episode(s): "It Takes a Village"

A highly unstable African-American man who kidnapped, tortured, and killed any young Black boys who managed to beat him at an arcade game called Defector III.

• A God Am I: "They were laughing. Yet Theseus knew his day would come. That fed him. It was his source of strength. It gave purpose to his miserable life. Made him invincible. Immortal. God. He found them, one by one. And he did exactly what they had done to him."
• Arc Number: 17. The numbers of the storage units that he rented all added up to it, and it turned out to have been the number of the shower room that he had his finger traumatically cut off in while at Pritchard House.
• Awesome McCoolname: He used the alias Theseus "Theo" Gamble.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Lilly caused him to realize that he had become like the very boys who had victimized him, a revelation which caused him to be Driven to Suicide.
• Body in a Breadbox: He placed the bodies of all of his victims in freezers, which led to his undoing when one of them broke down in 2007.
• Bully Hunter: He sees himself as this, when in reality is his victims are just completely innocent children, with the realization of this causing him to be Driven to Suicide.
• Bully Magnet: He was small and weak as a child, and so was easily pushed around by bigger and tougher boys at Pritchard House.
• Calling Card: He cut off the left index fingers of all of his victims, in reference to how he had his own cut off by older boys back in 1986.
• Cassandra Truth: He told a doctor what Grimes was doing to him and the other boys at Pritchard House, and while the story did unnerve the doctor, he did not do anything about it, so Malik and the other boys remained at Grimes's mercy at Pritchard House.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: He starved his victims and forced them to stand in a small square for days, causing them to develop shin splints and abrasions under their feet, and slashed their faces before finally killing them via Slashed Throat.
• Connect the Deaths: All of his victims were taken from arcades that contained a game called Defector III.
• Conveniently an Orphan: He says that he had no one, without any elaboration, which is why he ended up in a Juvenile Hell.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: He had an odd, almost child-like voice, and that, coupled with his small stature, caused him to be mistaken for a child by a few people, including a witness named Byron.
• Driven to Suicide: Lilly making him realize that he had become the exact type of person who had victimized him and who he (deludedly) believed he was punishing caused him to kill himself, making him the final of his five intended victims instead of Tyrell Hobbs.
• Eye-Obscuring Hat: He is shown wearing one of these in all of the flashbacks to him doing things like renting a storage unit and abducting Shemar.
• Fingore: He cut off the left index fingers of all of his victims, in reference to how he had his own cut off by older boys back in 1986.
• Freudian Excuse: He ended up in a notoriously brutal Juvenile Hell called Pritchard House, where the worst counselor's preferred punishment was a collective one in which one boy's actions would lead to their entire ward being forced to stand in place in small squares for days at a time, something that was especially hard on the runty Malik. When Malik sassed the counselor, he reacted by giving the other boys who were being punished for Malik's troublemaking carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to him, so they beat him down and crudely amputated one of his fingers using a piece of mirror that one of them had fashioned into a Sinister Shiv.
• Giggling Villain: He giggles creepily in a few flashbacks, and when he is first confronted by Lilly and Scotty.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: This plays during the finale, when he is cornered by Lilly and Scotty.
• Heel Realization: Lilly caused him to realize that he had become just as bad as the boys who had victimized him, causing him to commit suicide after releasing Tyrell Hobbs.
• Juvenile Hell: Pritchard House, the Hellish juvenile facility that he ended up in 1986. It is more infamously known as "The Pit."
• Meaningful Rename: He renamed himself after Theseus, a Greek hero who, as Stillman simplistically put it, would "do to bad guys what they did to others."
• Misplaced Retribution: Instead of going after his childhood bullies or even people who were similar to them, he targeted completely innocent children who were able to beat him at a game called Defector III.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: No one noticed the pattern of young Black boys disappearing until the bodies of the victims were unearthed in 2007. One police officer even ignored one boy's father's request that they put out an Amber Alert for his son, on the basis that the boy had probably just run off and become a Gangbanger.
  Lorraine Henderson: I spoke to detectives, over the years. Didn't nobody mention to me that there were other boys missing. Why? They had to know that monster was out there. Didn't they?
• Mistaken Age: His slight build and Creepy High-Pitched Voice led an arcade owner named Byron to assume that he was only about 14 or 15.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: He chose his victims using Defector III, a Mortal Kombat-style arcade game that resonated with him because the losing fighter's death animation entailed being knocked into an abyss called The Pit, and his Freudian Excuse involved being a loser in a Juvenile Hell that was nicknamed "The Pit."
• No Full Name Given: He is only known as Malik.
• Not the First Victim: After Shemar Reynold's body was found in a storage unit in 2007, the detectives discovered that the person who had rented the unit had rented three other units under the same name, leading to the discovery of three more victims, with the earliest one being from 1999.
• Obviously Evil: Unlike a lot of the show's other villains, it is apparent right from the start that there is something definitely wrong with Malik. A man who he rented a storage unit from could not remember much about what he looked like, but he did remember that Malik came off as seriously "touched" [in the head]. Unfortunately, Children Are Innocent, so they did not really see anything too "off" about Malik.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: No explanation is provided for how he is able to afford all of his storage units, freezers, cameras, etc.
• Pet the Dog: He lets Tyrell Hobbs go after being talked down by Lilly.
• Psycho Knife Nut: He was a serial killer who used a knife to slash the faces of his victims before killing them via Slashed Throat. He would also slice off their left index fingers, in reference to his own left index finger having been cut off back in 1986.
• Punishment Box: He forced his victims to stand in a square that was drawn on the floor for days, a punishment that he and other boys were also subjected to in Pritchard House.
• Rage Quit: He gets angry if he does well and wins at Defector III, with there being a flashback where he is shown abruptly quitting and storming off after beating a boy named Corey.
  Malik: I thought you were a winner, man. [...] You lost. You wasted my time.
• Red Right Hand: He always wears gloves to cover up his missing finger, which was sliced off back in 1986.
• Sadist: He viciously tortured his victims, and filmed it, with Lilly musing that one of the films ending without the victim's murder even being shown means that the killer does not even care about killing, all that really matters to him is the Cold-Blooded Torture.
• Serial Killer: He kidnapped, tortured, and murdered four (nearly five) young boys in a spree that lasted from 1999 to 2007.
• Slashed Throat: He slit the throats of all of his victims before subjecting them to Fingore. He also kills himself this way in front of Lilly and Scotty.
• Stalker without a Crush: He hangs out at arcades, spying on any boys who play a game called Defector III.
  Malik: I don't play just anybody. Only those who know how to dominate.
• Snuff Film: He filmed his victims' torment, and we see some of the footage that was shot of Shemar Reynolds. The footage cutting off just before Shemar's death led Lilly to conclude that the killer does not actually care about the act of murder, just Cold-Blooded Torture.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Lilly gets him to let Tyrell Hobbs go by pointing out that he has become like the very boys who had victimized him, a revelation which caused Malik to be Driven to Suicide.
• Torture Cellar: He turned rented storage units into these, soundproofing them and filming his victims being tortured in them before eventually finishing them off via Slashed Throat. He would then clean the place up and leave the body of the victim in a freezer, one of which was finally discovered in 2007.
• Video Arcade: He would troll these for young boys, taking any who managed to beat him at a game called Defector III.
• Where It All Began: He took his fifth and final intended victim to the abandoned Juvenile Hell where he was beaten down and had one of his fingers cut off back in 1986.
• Would Hurt a Child: His victims were all children, the youngest of whom was only 9.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He sees himself as a modern day Theseus, righting wrongs by punishing those who deserve it by using their own methods against them, when in reality his victims are just innocent children and he is nothing but a demented Serial Killer.

Alessandro Rossilini

"At first, I thought I'd gone mad. Then I realized it wasn't me, it's the world that's gone mad."

Played By: Kim Coates

Episode(s): "Sabotage"

A bomber with anti-modernization sentiments who began terrorizing Philadelphia in 1999.

• All for Nothing: He lost the legal battle for his childhood home, but it amounted to nothing anyway, as the company that bought the land went bankrupt soon afterward, so now the land where the house once stood is just a dirty lot with a withered sign announcing that Pixelerator Media will be moving in in 2001.
• Big Brother Bully: Even though his younger brother, Luke, idolized him and offered him financial support, Alessandro had nothing but contempt for him, which led the two of them to have a falling out in 1999.
• Cain and Abel: After he lost everything, Alessandro came to hate and resent his brother, Luke, who he tried to destroy by killing Luke's wife, Beth, and their daughter, Mia.
• Calling Card: His bombs are all disguised as ornate music boxes that play the song John Henry.
• Connected All Along: It was initially believed that Alessandro only went after Luke Ross because he saw Luke as a Morally Bankrupt Banker, but then it is revealed that Luke is actually Alessandro's brother, Luciano Rossilini.
• Creepy Souvenir: When the team find Alessandro's lair, they discover a wall with a bunch of newspaper cutouts relating to the attacks on Curt Fitzpatrick, Gene Schmidt, and Roderick Poole.
• Despair Event Horizon: He tried to live a normal life even after losing everything, but finally snapped when a big box store employee refused to give him a refund for a shower radio because the warranty had expired, all the while apathetically informing Alessandro that it would be cheaper to just buy a new one rather than send it back to the manufacturer in Taiwan.
  Alessandro: What the Hell kind of product is that?
  Curt: Disposable.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He killed Curt Fitzpatrick because of Curt's flippant response to Alessandro's attempt at getting a refund for a broken shower radio from Big Box Electronics.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Despite their falling out, Alessandro's brother, Luke, still cared about him, and even insisted that Alessandro was "not a violent man."
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His father, as well as his daughter, Sophia.
• Evil Luddite: In Alessandro's eyes, rampant modernization has corrupted society, and created an apathetic and withered Crapsack World.
• Family Extermination: He tried to kill his brother's family, the Rosses.
• Grief-Induced Split: Alessandro and his wife, Helen, divorced after the death of their daughter, Sophia.
• Firing Day: We get a flashback to the day Alessandro lost his job at Kinetic Corp. due to the company deciding to restructure and start outsourcing to cheaper workers in Bangalore.
• Freudian Excuse: He lost his job due to outsourcing, his daughter due to being unable to get her decent healthcare due to his lack of insurance, his marriage due to his daughter's death, his childhood home due to a company that ended up going bankrupt and doing nothing with the land due to the tech bubble bursting, and his relationship with his brother due to Alessandro lashing out at him due to viewing him as a Morally Bankrupt Banker.
• Harassing Phone Call: He calls his targets posing as a credit card representative to learn about their habits and routines, and then taunts them, like he did with his sister-in-law, Beth.
• I Can See You: While talking to his brother's wife over the telephone, Alessandro taunts her by saying, "I hope you and your husband are enjoying your new purchases. Love the blue curtains, by the way."
• I Have a Family: In a flashback, we see Alessandro pleading with the boss who had just fired him, telling him, "I have a wife, a kid. A mortgage."
• I Have No Son!: During their last conversation, Alessandro told Luke, "You're not my brother."
• Ironic Echo: Alessandro reveals to his brother, Luke, that a bomb is going to kill Luke's family by paraphrasing Luke's earlier line, "Not everything's meant to last forever."
• Going Postal: His second attack was against his old workplace, Kinetic Corp.
• Lack of Empathy: Despite criticizing society for this, Alessandro repeatedly gives the impression that he cannot fathom that other people can simply be incapable of doing what he wants them to and that, coupled with his self-centric whining about about how others cannot understand his pain and have to be made aware of the state of the world that caused him it, causes him to come off as a myopic hypocrite or, as Kat put it, an "angry sociopath."
  Alessandro: Your best isn't good enough!
• Line-of-Sight Name: He took the name "Carl Baxter" from a random convict after noticing that the man had forearm tattoos that spelt out the names "John" and "Henry."
• Mad Bomber: His bombings are a means at getting back at the system, though in practice they are just Shoot the Messenger.
• Mess of Woe: Alessandro's apartment is a dark, squalid mess full of junk, bomb supplies, fast food containers, and a wall full of Creepy Souvenirs.
• Moral Myopia: In a flashback, Alessandro is shown treating his brother, Luke, like complete crap, and yet he gets angry and disowns Luke after Luke finally becomes fed-up with his brother's constant self-righteous belittlement and condescension and declares that he will no longer be financially supporting Alessandro.
• Motive Rant: "It never stops, never stops, never, never. At first, I thought I'd gone mad. But then I realized it wasn't me, it's the world that's gone mad. You become numb, disconnected, conditioned to accept every... every indignity. Disposable. It's never anyone's fault. Never. I'm just doing my job, it's not personal, it's just business. People have to answer for what they do. I gave them all a chance again and again. But you can only get pushed down so far before you have to stand up and tell them you have value. Sometimes you have to wake people up. Make them realize how we've all been diminished. Oh, no one's innocent. No one. We're all.. we're all complicit. In this... this mess. People need to be made to understand [about loss]."
• Musical Assassin: His bombs are all disguised as ornate music boxes that play the song John Henry.
• Mythical Motifs: He is obsessed with—and sees himself as something akin to—the folk hero John Henry.
• Nice to the Waiter: An employee of the library that he frequented had nothing but good things to say about him, and described him as "such a nice man."
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He was inspired by Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He waxes on about the evils of modernization and the system's exploitative treatment of the working class, and yet all of his targets were just people who he had some petty personal grudge against, like the floor manager who not give him a refund for a defective product and the doctor's aide who was simply unable to do anything to help Alessandro's sick daughter, Sophia.
• Off the Grid: In 1999, he began living as a squatter in an old apartment building, with any amenities that he used only being low-cost and free public ones, like the payphones in the 20th Street Station and the computers in the Philadelphia Public Library.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: John Henry.
• Outliving One's Offspring: His four year-old daughter, Sophia, died of a treatable form of cancer because the Rossilinis had lost their health insurance and could barely get by with just Medicaid.
• Precious Photo: During the final showdown, Alessandro reveals that there is nothing in the music box that he is holding but an old photograph of his daughter, Sophia.
• Railroad Plot: Along with his daughter's illness, he was also rendered destitute by waging an exhaustive and ultimately pointless legal battle to try and save his family's old home from a company called Pixelerator Media.
• Revenge by Proxy: Instead of going after his brother, Luke, directly, he targeted Luke's wife, Beth, and their daughter, Mia.
• Serial Killer: He only killed two people, but wounded over a dozen others, and tried to murder his own niece, Mia, and her mother, Beth.
• Serial Killings, Specific Target: He targets specific people, but attacks them in public, high-traffic places (like a department store and a gym) in order to "make it seem random."
• Shoot the Messenger: The targets of his attacks all represented the faceless establishments that he was actually angry with, like big box stores, corporations, banks, the medical and insurance industries, etc.
• Sinister Whistling: While leaving the scene of the fourth bombing, he casually whistles John Henry.
• Trauma Conga Line: He lost his childhood home, his job, his daughter, and his marriage, and then ruined his relationship with his brother, Luke.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Even though his younger brother, Luke, was helping him out financially and doing his best to try and support him and make him see reason, Alessandro had nothing but contempt and disdain for Luke, which led to the two of them to have a falling out in 1999.
• Unsatisfiable Customer: Implied, as Curt Fitzpatrick's response to seeing Alessandro standing in the store's return line was an exasperated, "What's the problem now, sir?"
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He was fired from his job because all of the knowledge and skills that were required for his field of work had become a "commodity" and people in other countries could do the same job for "one-fifth the salary."
• Western Terrorists: In motive, though in practice he is more of a Serial Killer.
• Where It All Began: The final standoff with Alessandro takes place in his father's greatest achievement, the 20th Street Station, which Alessandro spent much of his time admiring as a young boy living in Germantown.
• Would Hurt a Child: His final intended victim was his own young niece, Mia.

John Smith

"Once hope is gone, dying is just a formality."

Played By: Field Cate (1983) and Damon Herriman (2007-2008)

Episode(s): "The Road"

A mysterious man who, after being pulled over for erratic driving in West Virginia, was connected to the unsolved disappearances of several women, with the latest being Brenda MacDowell, a Philly native who went missing in 2007.

• And Your Little Dog, Too!: In a flashback, John shows Colleen Legarth footage of her newborn baby while telling her, "Pretty little girl. Maybe she'd like it here, too, someday."
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: He paid $6000 in cash all at once for the house in Newark where he imprisoned Colleen Legarth, and bought four other properties in Detroit, Atlanta, Queens, and Philadelphia all within about a year or two of each other in the early to mid-2000s.
• Beneath Suspicion: "I'm not the guy you look at and think "rapist." I'm more like the guy you see at the dentist's office. No reason to fight me."
• Break the Haughty: He targets women who he sees as being completely happy and content with their lives, seemingly all just because he sees their joy and any kind of resilience that they have displayed as arrogance, at one point even telling Brenda, "Real stunt you pulled there at the end of the marathon. Never seen a girl so pleased with her damn self."
• Break Them by Talking: He destroys his victims mentally, and screws with Lilly and, to a far lesser extent, Scotty, while being extradited back to Philadelphia.
• Buried Alive: His victims are entombed in Creepy Basements.
• Claustrophobia: He suffers from it, to the extent that the deputy who arrested him had to have him taken out of a holding cell because just being in it was making John go "nuts."
• Creepy Basement: He bought cheap, dilapidated houses, the squalid basements of which he converted into dungeons for Bunker Women.
• Cruel Mercy: Lilly refuses to take the bait and kill him, and leaves him to be carted off to prison, where he will suffer for the rest of his life from his Claustrophobia.
• Didn't Think This Through: He imprisoned Brenda near a church, the daily bells of which were loud enough for Brenda to hear even while underground, which gave her a means to keep track of the passage of time and help her preserve her sanity, with John apparently not realizing this until he mentioned it to Lilly.
• Driven to Madness: He psychologically torments his victims over the course of several weeks or months, crushing their hope and driving them insane to the point of causing Death by Despair, with one victim's cell being a Room Full of Crazy.
• Enfant Terrible: As a child, he came across a woman who had fallen into a well, and when she begged him for help, he just leered down at her and gave her a Spiteful Spit.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played for black comedy and as a Brick Joke. John was pulled over and arrested after he made an illegal turn, and when he notices that Scotty never uses his turn signals, he sardonically quips, "Cops drive however they want."
• Evil Laugh: He gives one while being beat up by Scotty.
• For the Evulz: John, unlike the show's other serial killers, is never given an explanation for why he is the way he is, with it being implied that he was simply born bad, as a flashback to his youth showed him taking absolutely demented delight in taunting a drowning woman before watching her give up hope and die back in 1983.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: This plays as he is entombing Brenda.
• Hidden Depths: While he only uses video editing gigs to find victims, he is apparently still very good at the job, even being described as the "best" by an ex-boss in Philadelphia.
• Hope Crusher: It is not imprisoning, controlling, or killing women that gets him off, it is bringing them to the Despair Event Horizon.
  John: Who are you when it's taken away? The job. No one. Like them. Even the one who had God.
  Scotty: Monica. The singer.
  John: She gave up the easiest. She couldn't understand how God could leave her in that room so alone. I saw it in her eyes. The moment she realized there was no God. That if God was anything, he was the greatest con man of all. Once hope is gone, dying is just a formality.
  Scotty: You sealed her in there alive?
  John: First, I took the door off its hinges. She was free to go, run. I wouldn't have stopped her.
  Lilly: But she wasn't looking for a way out anymore.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: John's attempt at goading Lilly into killing him by, among other things, revealing what Brenda's supposed last moments were like, caused Lilly to realize that John had imprisoned Brenda near Ascension Church in Kensington.
• Instant Sedation: He incapacitated his victim with a chloroform-soaked rag, though it failed to work right away on Brenda.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When Lilly says that he lied about the dead woman in Newark being Brenda, John points out that he never said that the woman was Brenda, the team just assumed that it was her and he went along with that while not confirming or denying that the woman was Brenda.
• Faux Affably Evil: On the surface, he is polite and good-mannered, but underneath it he is a twisted, sociopathic Smug Snake.
• Just One Little Mistake:
  • He was caught when he was pulled over for making an illegal turn while driving away from where he had entombed Brenda. He also took a cigarette that he was offered, and the spit that he had left on it ended up matching the DNA sample that was taken from the blood that was found at the site of where he took Brenda.
  • His stolen car wracked up a number of parking tickets, which helped the team find what was left of Colleen Legarth. This, coupled with details that he let slip during his Evil Gloating, allowed the team to discern that he was a serial killer and a video editor whose job history they used to find the bodies of his other victims in Detroit, Atlanta, and Queens (though, in this case, Lilly guessed that John wanted the other victims to be found).
• Laser-Guided Karma: He sealed women away in homemade dungeons after driving them mad, and is going to spend the rest of his life losing his own mind in prison due to his Claustrophobia.
• Monster Misogyny: All of his victims were women, and while being extradited back to Philadelphia, he focused almost entirely on Lilly while paying only lip service to Scotty.
• Motive Misidentification: Scotty kept assuming that John was somehow motivated by sex, something which John mocked him for, though it was admittedly a sound assumption, given that John held women captive for months in Creepy Basements.
• Mr. Smith: He gives his name as "John Smith."
• Murder by Inaction: As a child, he came across a woman who had fallen into a well, and when she begged him for help, he just leered down at her and gave her a Spiteful Spit.
• Nightmare Fetishist: As a child, he witnessed a woman give up all hope and let herself drown in the well that she had fallen into back in 1983.
  John: It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.
• Not the First Victim: The team realize that they are dealing with a serial killer when the dental records of the woman whose body was unearthed in Newark are matched to Colleen Legarth, and not to Brenda MacDowell.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: "If I wanted to have sex, I could pay for women off the streets, in bars. Common as roadkill, filth like that."
• Refuge in Audacity: He approaches his victims and gets close to them by simply acting like they somehow already know each other, like when he pretended to be a paralegal who worked at the same law firm as Brenda.
• Saying Too Much: He let slip that Brenda was imprisoned near a church that, every morning, played "Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow." Lilly realizes that this means that Brenda is in Ascension Church in Kensington
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: He imprisoned his victims in homemade dungeons that were hidden beneath insular ghettos where no one noticed or cared about what was going on around them, though one neighbor did remember him because he was the "only cracker on the block."
• Serial Killer: He abducted, imprisoned, psychological tortured, and killed four women, and nearly a fifth named Brenda MacDowell.
• Sherlock Scan: He realizes that Lilly and Scotty want something, like a confession or a body, from him because they are taking the long way back to Philadelphia, and he surmises just from the way that Lilly talks that she is probably from Kensington.
• Smug Snake: He is slimily pompous, in both the present and in flashbacks, up until his Villainous Breakdown.
• The Sociopath: He is outright described as one by Jeffries.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: His tone is mostly laidback and casual up until his Villainous Breakdown.
• Stalker without a Crush: He studies his victims very meticulously, to help capture them, and also so that he can psychologically torment them with intimate personal details of their lives once he has them locked up in one of his Creepy Basements.
• Straw Nihilist: He feels that life is meaningless and one big charade, and that the things that make it worth living are just "delusions."
  John: Death's the only thing that's real. It's the purest thing you'll ever see.
• Suddenly Shouting: When Lilly and Scotty begin needling him over how he got caught while theorizing what could have rattled him enough to make him screw-up, John angrily proclaims, "I don't make mistakes!"
• Suicide by Cop: He tried to goad Lilly into shooting him, as spending the rest of his life in prison would be Hell for him due to his Claustrophobia.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: He is repeatedly described as being generic and unassuming, something which he prided himself on, with the only reason that a former neighbor recognized him being because John was the "only cracker on the block."
  Deputy Huffard: He's polite, good manners. Wouldn't have picked him out of a crowd.
• The Spook: His ID is fake, his car is stolen, his wedding ring is a prop, he pays for everything in cash, his fingerprints and DNA are not in any database, and the only name that the investigators have to go on is the one that he gave them, "John Smith."
• The Unreveal: We never learn his real name, or any other personal details about him except that he was warped even as a child back in 1983.
• Villainous Breakdown: Brenda's refusal to break rattled him to such an extent that it led to distracted driving that got him noticed and caught by Deputy Huffard. And after Lilly and Scotty realize that Brenda is still alive, John's smug attitude begins deteriorating, starting with him Suddenly Shouting, "I don't make mistakes!"
• Virtue Is Weakness: He calls his victims "vulnerable" and "weak" because they fell for his Wounded Gazelle Gambits.
• Where It All Began: Instead of leading Lilly and Scotty to Brenda, he takes them to the old abandoned well where he first saw a woman die back in 1983.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: After luring Brenda outside, he got her to come close by pretending to be an acquaintance with car trouble and a pregnant wife at home who needed Brend's cellphone to call AAA.

Caroline Hargreave

"Is that what this is all about, me outliving my husbands? It happens all the time. Men are the weaker of the species."

Played By: Chandra West (1974) and Jane Daly (2010)

Episode(s): "The Runaway Bunny"

A wealthy woman who had her lawyer, Wilson Katz, hire a private detective named Harry Denton to find her runaway stepdaughter, Michelle "Bunny" Hargreave, in 1974. After Harry's remains are found buried beneath an office building in 2010, they are traced back to Caroline, who the team discover is a Black Widow.

• The Bad Guy Wins: She gets away with everything, and is last shown taunting Lilly and Stillman.
• Big Fancy House: She lives in a virtual mansion, complete with a pond full of koi that were "flown in direct from Kyoto."
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She paints herself as an aloof, but caring woman who only wanted her stepdaughter, Bunny, back, when in reality she is a remorseless Black Widow who wanted to have Bunny Wrongfully Committed.
• Black Widow: She poisoned her first husband, Melvin Grover, in 1964, and her second husband, Stan Hargreave, in 1974.
• Caring Gardener: She initially seems to be this, having a large collection plants and flowers, but then it is revealed that she is a Black Widow.
• Classy Cravat: She wears one of these during her second interview with Lilly.
• Color Motif: The color red is emphasized in all of her flashbacks, which otherwise verge on Monochrome Past.
• Crocodile Tears: She sheds these when she first talks to Lilly and Scotty about Bunny.
• Destroy the Evidence: She cremated her poisoned husbands, Melvin and Stan.
• Does Not Like Men: "Men are the weaker of the species."
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: By her attorney, Wilson Katz, who has Undying Loyalty towards Caroline.
• Found the Killer, Lost the Murderer: Wilson Katz is arrested for killing Harry Denton, but his boss, Caroline, gets away with murdering Melvin Grover and Stan Hargreave.
• Handshake Refusal: She ignored Denton's outstretched hand when they first met back in 1974.
• He Knows Too Much: Stan's daughter, Bunny, suspected that Caroline had poisoned her father, so Caroline was going to have her Wrongfully Committed.
• Ice Queen: While watching Caroline's second interview with Lilly, Kat even remarks, "That's one cold bitch."
• Insurance Fraud: She got a big life insurance payout when her first husband, Melvin Grover, died of "food poisoning" back in 1964.
• Master Poisoner: She cultivated foxglove, which she disguised as primrose, in order to extract its digoxin, which she used to poison Bunny's father, Stan.
• Not the First Victim: She did not just kill Stan Hargreave, she also killed her earlier husband, Melvin Grover.
• The Perfect Crime: Stan was a middle-age man with heart troubles, so it was easy for Caroline to poison him using digoxin that she had extracted from foxglove, getting away with it by having Stan cremated, with the only loose end being Stan's suspicious daughter, Bunny, who was ultimately unable to do anything to Caroline. She later had the remains of her first husband, Melvin, exhumed and cremated, to eliminate another loose end, after having Wilson Katz deal with the suspicious Harry Denton.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: After asking if Lilly has anything to go on besides her outliving her husbands, Caroline scoffs that such a thing is not unusual, as "Men are the weaker of the species."
• Rags to Riches: She was a "White trash" prostitute and petty criminal from Tulsa who climbed her way up to high society by becoming a Black Widow.
• Retired Monster: She used her ill-gotten gains to live a quiet life of luxury, which she was shown to still be enjoying in 2010.
• Serial Killer: She poisoned two of her husbands, and then had Harry Denton killed by Wilson Katz.
• Smug Smiler: She has a hoity smirk plastered on her face throughout her second interview with Lilly.
• Smug Snake: She is pompous throughout her second interview with Lilly, only faltering when Bunny is revealed to still be alive, and even then she quickly recovers, and goes right back to being smug towards Lilly.
• That Man Is Dead: When Lilly brings up her past as Mandy Mae Smith, Caroline claims, "I'm no longer that person."
• The Vamp: She had her attorney, Wilson Katz, completely wrapped around her little finger, so much so that he killed Harry Denton for her, and refused to act against her when he was arrested for Harry's murder in 2010.
• Wicked Stepmother: To her second husband's daughter, Bunny, who she was going to have Wrongfully Committed.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: She does nothing to help Wilson Katz, her undyingly loyal attorney, when he goes down for killing Harry Denton.

Paul Shepard

"My father built something, and it was ripped from his hands. I just tried to correct the mistakes of the past."

Played By: Jonathan Brett (1978-1980) and JB Blanc (1998-2010)

Episode(s): "The Last Drive-In" and "Bullet"

A sniper who killed four people in the 1980s, having been driven to do so by the traumatic suicide of his father, Bill Shepard. After two decades of inactivity, he resurfaced, attracting the attention of FBI Agent Diane Yates.

• Absence of Evidence: The lack of a shell casing at the site of the Mel Shaver shooting in 2010 is one of the reasons why Agent Yates suspected that the man who killed Mel was the same one who had killed four other people back in the 1980s.
• Alcoholic Parent: While Paul's father, Bill, was not abusive, Paul does mention that, after Bill lost his drive-in theater, he really took to Drowning My Sorrows.
  Paul: He-he was never mean or anything like that, just... broken.
• Ambiguous Situation: Paul killed his cousin, Tom, but it is unclear if he also planned on killing his aunt and uncle, who happened to not be home when he showed up at their house in New Jersey.
• Bad Boss: Paul fired Theodore Kutler because the man's carelessness cost him a ton of money, all of his stores besides the main one, and irreplaceable film memorabilia, which is understandable, but then he went and shot Theo after becoming a Spree Killer.
• Beard of Evil: A villain with a very prominent one.
• Berserk Button: The phrase "Nobody cares." His first victim, Barry Jensen, was a random customer on the last night before Paul's father's drive-in theater closed down, who told Paul that "nobody cares" about such places anymore because Technology Marches On. Paul's father. Bill, had committed suicide over losing the business, and Paul saw Barry as practically dancing on Bill's grave with that comment (not that Barry had any way of knowing this, of course). His subsequent victims are killed for a variety of reasons, but merely using the phrase in Paul's vicinity is enough to put a target on someone's back, as was the case with Mel Shaver.
• Boom, Headshot!: Paul shot most of his victims in the torso, but for some reason used headshots to kill Ned Cotner and Tom Gleason.
• Clashing Cousins: Paul's cousin, Tom, was unable to provide Paul with any further financial aid, and that coupled Paul being envious of Tom having children while Paul and his wife, Claire, could not, led him to kill Tom.
• Cold Sniper: He was revenge-maddened Serial Killer who shot almost all of his victims from afar with a scoped rifle, though he planned on using a handgun to shoot himself and his own wife, Claire.
• Crazy Survivalist: Paul's father, Bill, was an avid outdoorsman and hunter, had a cabin with a built-in bunker and a subscription to a magazine that got him put on a watchlist, and, in his suicide, basically rambled about how society was an apathetic dog eat dog Crapsack World.
• Death Seeker: When he realizes that Lilly and Yates lied to him about Claire being pregnant, Paul becomes suicidal again, and tries to get Yates to kill him by agreeing to her "deal" to do so in exchange for him telling her why he killed Barry Jensen.
• Disproportionate Retribution: While a few of the victims, like Felicity Andrews and Theodore Kutler, did cause unintended harm to Paul or his father, others, like Barry Jensen and Fred Norris, were killed for petty reasons, in Fred's case because he had to kick Paul and his father off a bus because they could not pay the fare, and Barry because he had rudely told Paul that no one cared about the Drive-In Theater, which Barry had no way of knowing once belonged to Paul's father, Bill.
• The Eeyore: In practically every flashback to his youth, Paul looked downtrodden and dead-eyed, with his aunt noting that, for the longest time, Paul was "a glass half-empty kind of kid."
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His father, Bill, and his wife, Claire. Unfortunately, when he became suicidal, he decided to kill Claire before offing himself, as his warped way of sparing her all of the pain and grief that he felt when Bill was Driven to Suicide.
• Freudian Excuse: Paul watched his father, Bill, lose everything and become a broken shell of a man who was eventually Driven to Suicide.
• Geeky Turn-On: He and his wife, Claire, fell in love due to their shared taste in obscure films, like East of Eden.
• Generation Xerox: Bill Shepard was a forty-five year-old with a film-based business who lost control of his life due to an innocuous mistake caused by Felicity Andrews. Paul, by Contrived Coincidence, was a forty-five year-old with a film-based business whose life completely spiraled due to an innocuous mistake cased by Theodore Kutler. It practically dives into History Repeats as the investigators note the almost eerie similarities between the old and new targets, like Barry Jensen and Mel Shaver, Felicity Andrews and Theodore Kutler, Preston Schmall and Tom Gleason, and Fred Norris and Juanita Renaldo.
• The Glasses Come Off: He discarded them after killing Ned Cotner... which might explain why he missed Juanita Renaldo, and why he only wounded the FBI agent who was left to guard Claire.
• Green and Mean: He wore a distinctive green army jacket during all of the shootings, even the modern ones in 2009 and 2010.
• He Knows Too Much: He shot Walt Granville because Walt was the only person who knew where the Shepard's old cabin was, and that the PO box for it was being used by Paul, and not Bill.
• Hostile Hitchhiker: Having abandoned his van, Paul resorts to flagging down, shooting, and carjacking a motorist named Ned Cotner.
• In the Back: This is how he killed Barry Jensen.
• In the Hood: His face was concealed by the hood of his jacket in all of the flashbacks to his murders, including the first one in 1980.
• It's Personal: For Agent Diane Yates, since Paul's first victim was her date, Barry Jensen.
• Just One Little Mistake: It would have looked like Bill Shepard, the only suspect in the sniper murders, had simply disappeared into the ether and become nigh-untraceable had Paul not decided to continue using his father's PO box and cabin in Mount Pocono. Lilly and Yates find the latter, and discover Bill's remains in it, because the PO box was still receiving checks from the VA.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Paul and his wife, Claire, wanted a baby more than anything, but they were unable to conceive, no matter how much they tried and how much money they spent to try and kickstart the process, which led Paul to become even more resentful of his family man cousin, Tom.
• Loners Are Freaks: Paul's uncle mentions that Paul had no hobbies besides films or any friends besides his cousin, Tom, though he eventually outgrew this, opening a business and marrying a woman named Claire.
• Murderer P.O.V.: With a crosshair and a green tint since we get them through the scope of a Sniper Rifle.
• Murder-Suicide: Paul promised his wife, Calire, that he would never leave her like his father left him... which, after Paul snapped, translated to him kill him killing her and himself, though he was stopped by Lilly and Yates.
• Pet the Dog: Literally, as he stopped to pet Mel Shaver's pet dog after shooting Mel.
• Raised by Grandparents: After his father died, Paul moved in with his Uncle Charlie and Aunt Rita.
• Retired Monster: After the 1983 murder of Fred Norris, Paul stopped killing and led a completely normal life... until he snapped again in 2009.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: He went after the people who he blamed for his and his father's ruinations, initially killing them years apart, though he eventually snapped and went after a bunch all at once as a Spree Killer.
• Serial Killer: With nine victims, he is tied with Roy Brigham Anthony as the show's most prolific one after George Marks.
• Serious Business: East of Eden, doubling as Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times.
• Shoot the Messenger: At his pettiest, he attacked people simply for being either the bearers of bad news, like the fertility clinic secretary and the two men who had told him that "nobody cares" about his and his father's businesses due to Technology Marches On, or because they were simple doing their jobs, like the bus driver who had to kick Paul and his father off of the bus for being unable to pay the fare and the two repo men who took Paul's father's car (though one of therepo men also mocked Paul's father and nearly got into a fight with him).
• Spanner in the Works: Tim Hudson survived Paul shooting him, and a chance meeting with the ex-wife of one of Paul's victims, who Lilly and Yates also ended up talking two, led the two to Tim, who gave them information that helped them narrow down the list of suspects to Bill Shepard.
• Spree Killer: He started out as a Serial Killer, but when the authorities started closing in on him in 2010, he went on a rampage, killing four people in the span of a day and a half before nearly offing himself and his own wife, Claire.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Lilly and Yates get Paul to surrender by lying and saying that his wife, Claire, is pregnant thanks to experimental treatments that she underwent at Lifespring Fertility.
• Tragic Keepsake: His father's suicide note and, in a way, his cabin in Mount Pocono.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Paul is overweight, bespectacled, and about fifteen years older than his conventionally attractive wife, Claire.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Paul was an entirely normal young man who was irrevocably changed after his despondent father Ate His Gun.
• Villainous Breakdown: Paul originally only cared about going after the people who had crossed him or his father, but after his father's old cabin in Mount Pocono was found by Lilly and Yates, which led to his identity as the sniper being discovered, he started killing for convenience as he made a mad dash to take out everyone on his hit list before offing himself and his own wife, Claire.

Sex Offenders

Carl Healey

"I wish that we could have met under different circumstances."

Played By: Joel Bissonnette

Episode(s): "Our Boy Is Back"

A serial rapist investigated by Detective Nick Vera who, after five years of inactivity, returned to terrorize Philadelphia in 2003.

• Ambiguous Situation:
  • He either purposely killed Gail Chimayo because she fought back and could have identified him, or he accidentally asphyxiated her while trying to stop her from calling out to Larry. In his letter, he just says that she "died on me."
  • Lilly assumes that Carl's letter was as much a cry for help to stop him as it was a taunt, though it is unclear if this was the case, as Carl himself does not confirm it as he is being arrested by Lilly and Scotty.
• Apologetic Attacker: He apologizes to his victims, and claims to have joined the military in a failed attempt to suppress his "demons."
• Bad People Abuse Animals: He calls cats useless animals, and is shown kicking one in the flashback to him raping Nicole.
• Catchphrase: "I wish that we could have met under different circumstances."
• Creepy Hairless Animal: A human example; he regularly removes all of his body hair, and one of his victims describes how it was unsettlingly "soft and smooth, like a woman's."
• Criminal Mind Games: He announces his return by sending a letter to the Philadelphia PD.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: His girlfriend, Bridget, was quite fond of him, admitting that she never got over him even after he moved while also asserting that he was "a good person" when interviewed by Lilly and Vera.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He left a cigarette at one crime scene, was remembered by a witness partly due to his chain smoking, and is shown smoking in literally every present day scene, including when he is arrested by Lilly and Vera.
• Has a Type: He targets accomplished and intellectual women due to frustration over being "trailer trash" with an illiterate mother, a streetwalking sister, and a girlfriend who is clear cut case of Dumb Blonde.
• Lean and Mean: He squeezes through his victims' windows, even barred ones, and was described as being like "some kind of spider" by Vera.
  Carl: I used to slide down the laundry chute at my best friend's building. You can't believe how narrow it was. I'd get into the neighbors' houses and steal things. It was like the one thing that I was really, really good at, getting into small places.
• Serial Rapist: He had four confirmed victims, and murdered one named Gail Chimayo.
• Simpleton Voice: He has a Southern-ish accent, presumable to emphasize his background as a Lower-Class Lout who grew up in a Trashy Trailer Home.
• Stalker with a Crush: He hangs out at places like bookstores, coffee shops, libraries, museums, etc. in search of smart-seeming women, who he then follows home, scoping out their residences and keeping an eye out for pet cats (which he takes as an indication that they live alone).
• That One Case: For Detective Nick Vera. The episode is the first one in which the victim's "ghost" appears to a detective other than Lilly.
  Vera: This case became a health issue for me.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: He was inspired by Troy Graves, a serial rapist and murderer who was active in both Philadelphia and Fort Collins.

Josh Freely

"I'm gonna have to take care of that pretty little girl all by myself. You just wait for the knock on the door, Rosie. When you least expect it."

Played By: Don McManus

Episode(s): "Fly Away"

A pedophile who used his job as a social worker to prey on the daughters of single mothers, one of whom, Rosie Miles, ended up in a coma after she jumped out of a window with her daughter, Toya, in an attempt to get away from Freely.

• Attempted Rape: Rosie discovered what he really was when she walked in on him about to molest Toya.
• Department of Child Disservices: As malignant an example as you can possibly get, as he was a pedophile who used the authority afforded to him by his position to take little girls from their mothers, who he contemptuously saw as nothing but "welfare queens" and "trailer park trash."
  Lilly: You were like God to these women. You had the power to give. To take. And you did.
• The Dreaded: Just the sound of footsteps that she thought were Freely's was enough to make Rosie jump through a multi-story window with Toya. Lilly and Scotty also find a creepy drawing of him made by Toya.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He honestly seemed to think that everyone looked down on the women who he victimized as much as he did; while being interrogated, he bluntly says to Lilly and Scotty, "Like anyone gives a damn. Trailer park trash. Welfare queens. Like you care what happens to them."
• Kick the Dog: He takes obvious perverse pleasure out of taunting Rosie over how he is going to take Toya away from her, telling her, "I'm gonna have to take care of that pretty little girl all by myself. You just wait for the knock on the door, Rosie. When you least expect it."
• Not Me This Time: While guilty of many crimes, he turned out to have had absolutely nothing to do with Rosie and Toya's defenestration (Rosie herself did it).
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He calls Rosie "damaged goods" and a "drunk, dumb bitch" and dismisses all other women like her as being nothing but "welfare queens" and "trailer park trash."
• Serial Rapist: He had nine confirmed victims, and nearly a tenth in Toya.
• That One Case: For the unseen Detective Billy Markins.
• Villainous Breakdown: He is last shown alone in the interrogation room, crying as he is identified by a very long line of victims who have been gathered by Lilly.
• Villain with Good Publicity: When we first meet him, Freely comes off as a straitlaced, if slightly callous ("Most of these girls will give it up for a Big Mac and supersize fries") social worker, and just someone who is doing a tough but necessary job, with nothing about him raising the suspicions of either Lilly or Scotty.
• Would Hurt a Child: As a pedophile, this is a given.

Lauren Williams

"You can say what you want. No one will ever compare with me. Not for you. Not ever."

Played By: Donna Mills

Episode(s): "Blackout"

The matriarch of the wealthy Williams family, she drowned in the family pool during a blackout that occurred during her grandson Matt's birthday in 1996. In 2007, new evidence came to light indicating that she had been murdered, which was unsurprising, as she was hated by all of the other Williamses.

• Abusive Parents: She molested her own son, Tad, and makes it very clear that she sees him and her daughter, Ginny, as nothing but disappointments, something which she blames entirely on her ex-husband, Stan.
• The Alcoholic: Her blood alcohol level at the time of her death was about three times the legal limit, yet she appeared to be only slightly buzzed when she died, indicating an incredibly high tolerance level that was built-up over years of being a Lady Drunk.
• Asshole Victim: She was a shrewish Rich Bitch who molested her own son, Tad, and then tried to do the same to her grandson, Matt.
• Attempted Rape: Her attempted molestation of her own grandson, Matt, was interrupted by Tad.
• Bitch Alert: In the span of a few minutes, Lauren criticizes Ginny's hair and calls her husband "The Unmentionable One."
• Black-and-Gray Morality: While Lauren is definitely worse than her ex-husband, Stan, Stan himself is still an adulterous jackass who dates women who are less than half his age, abandoning one of them after realizing that she had children, all the while blaming all of his problems on Lauren, even though, as Lauren and Tad pointed out, they got equal shares in the divorce, with Stan squandering his all on his own without any help from Lauren.
• Blaming the Victim: She holds Tad equally culpable for what she did to him when he was 13.
• Boomerang Bigot: She treated Diane like some kind of bumpkin for coming from a modest town like Tinley, even though Lauren herself is from Garth, Pennsylvania.
• Broken Pedestal: For her daughter, Ginny.
  Ginny: I worshipped you when I was a little girl. Wanted to be just like you.
• Calling the Old Man Out: She got this from both of her children during the blackout in 1996.
• The Dreaded: Everyone falls silent and becomes uneasy as soon as Lauren drops in on the other Williamses.
• Evil Matriarch: Of the Williamses.
• Gruesome Grandparent: She was killed after she started trying to molest her own grandson, Matt.
• Financial Abuse: She used this to try and control her daughter, Ginny, and, through her, Ginny's son, Matt.
• Fingore: One of her nails was ripped off while she was being drowned by Ginny.
• First-Name Basis: She tells Diane and Matt to just call her Lauren, the latter during their near-Two-Person Pool Party.
• Hated by All: Everyone hated Lauren, with the only one to be even slightly sympathetic to her after her death being Diane.
• Hypocrite: She accused her ex-husband, Stan, of being a pedophile, when she herself was secretly one, having molested her own son, Tad, before attempting to do the same to her grandson, Matt.
• I Was Quite a Looker: While still attractive by 1996, it is noted that Lauren was nowhere near the beauty queen that she used to be, with Ginny stating, "When her looks faded, she had nothing to fall back on."
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Her death was initially ruled to be an accident, but new evidence led to it being reclassified as a homicide in 2007.
• Mrs. Robinson: A very dark one, as she molested her own son, Tad, when he was thirteen, and tried doing the same to her grandson, Matt.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: When the blackout hits, Stan announces, "It means we're gonna get cozy, have a nice family gathering... plus one."
• Narcissist: As Ginny put it, "You've never loved anyone in your whole life except yourself."
• Parental Incest: She molested her own son, Tad, when he was a boy, and tried to do the same to her grandson, Matt.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: She engaged in a lot of this with her family during the blackout in 1996.
• Posthumous Character: She was killed in 1996, and her case is reopened in 2007.
• Post-Rape Taunt:
  • When Tad insults her while confronting her over how she molested him, Lauren snaps back, "You can say what you want. No one will ever compare with me. Not for you. Not ever."
  • When Ginny told her that her power over the family was fading, Lauren smugly replied, "You might ask your precious son about that."
• Proud Beauty: Though she has fallen victim to I Was Quite a Looker.
  Lauren: Poor, plain Ginny, always afraid I'm going to steal her men away. Like moths to a flame. That's the power of beauty. That's the power you'll never understand.
• Rags to Riches: She was a beauty queen from the podunk town of Garth, Pennsylvania who married a wealthy industrialist named Stan Williams.
• Rich Bitch: "I know how difficult this must be for you, Diane, being in a house with no electricity. A reminder of your childhood, dear. You are from Tinley, Arkansas, aren't you?"
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: "My mother was the most unhappy woman I've ever known. The only thing that gave her pleasure was making other people as miserable as she was."
• Sympathy for the Devil: By 2007, Diane has come to consider Lauren more pathetic than anything else, and admits that she now finds Lauren's behavior during their time together understandable, as Lauren spent twenty years married to a Jerkass like Stan before he dumped her for "newer models" like Diane.
• Two-Person Pool Party: She tried to have one with her own grandson, Matt.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She is afraid of the dark, with the only person who knew this being Ginny.

Michael Delaney

"But you didn't mean it, did you?"

Played By: Justin Hartley

Episode(s): "Justice"

A promising college valedictorian who was shot to death in 1982. After his case is reopened, it is revealed that, beneath his All-American façade, Mike was actually a vicious Serial Rapist.

• Academic Athlete: He was a varsity jock and a straight-A student who engaged in a lot of extracurricular activities like managing the local Meals on Wheels.
• Asshole Victim: One of the show's biggest, if not the biggest, so much so that he has the dubious distinction of being one of two murder victims (the other being Roger Mulvaney) to have their killer be Let Off by the Detective. Everyone agrees that Mike got what he deserved, his murder is reclassified as a justifiable homicide, and when his "ghost" appears to Vera in the evidence room, there is no air of melancholy as Vera just looks away in disgust after giving Mike a brief Death Glare.
• Beneath Suspicion: When Karin told her roommate, Lisa, what Mike had done to her, Lisa's response was a blunt, "A guy like Mike doesn't need to rape anyone."
• Berserk Button: The word "no" in general, going by the flashback to him raping Melinda.
• Big Jerk on Campus: He is described the Big Man on Campus by Scotty. Mike's reputation at school went a long way into covering up his rapes.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mike came off as a humble, sweet, and charming Academic Athlete, but it was all just a front for a sleazy, unapologetic Serial Rapist.
• Bring My Brown Pants: He peed himself while being held at gunpoint by Tessie.
• Bullying a Dragon: While being held at gunpoint by Jimmy Bartram, Mike treated the entire situation like a joke and even taunted Jimmy about how much he enjoyed assaulting Tessie.
• Date Rape: His modus operandi, though without Slipping a Mickey.
• Hidden Depths: His colored paper origami roses actually did look well-crafted and beautiful.
• Hypocrite: His graduation speech, during which he quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., had him him wax on about compassion and injustice and not staying silent in the face of adversity, something which noticeably sickened his victims who were in attendance, like Karin, Melinda, and Regie.
• Instant Death Bullet: He dropped dead immediately after being shot by Jimmy Bartram.
• Invisible Parents: Mike's family is never shown or even mentioned, something that might have been intentional in order to make him even less sympathetic by avoiding Even Evil Can Be Loved and Even Evil Has Loved Ones.
• Kick the Dog:
  • After raping Tessie, he told her, "You're prettier when you smile."
  • He raped Karin, even though she was actually willing to have sex with him, for no reason other than apparently just because he was a sexual Sadist.
  • After he raped Regie, he approached her on campus, and taunted her with lines like, "You're mad I haven't called" and "But you didn't mean it, did you?"
  • When Jimmy confronted him over what he did to Tessie, Mike mocked him, telling him, "Between you and me, kid? Your sister was one Hell of a lay!"
• Kill Tally: Rape tally in this case, as it is discovered that he drew a rose on the yearbook pictures of all of the women who he had assaulted when the team flipped through the book in 2007.
• Lack of Empathy: One of his victims, Shania McNulty, shot herself in the head, not that Mike appeared to care.
• "No" Means "Yes": To a borderline deranged degree, as Mike seemed to genuinely believe that he was not doing anything wrong, since, in his warped view, all women wanted to be dominated and raped; even while being held at gunpoint, he insisted that this was simple fact, even telling Jimmy Bartram, "They all say that. But they don't mean it. You'll see one day."
• Posthumous Character: He was killed in 1982, and his case is reopened in 2007.
• Post-Rape Taunt: "You're prettier when you smile."
• Sadist: Karin was actually willing to have sex with Mike, but he raped her anyway. In 2007, Karin, while being interviewed by Kat, laments, "I just always wondered why he did it. I liked him, you know? He didn't have to force me."
• Serial Rapist: With ten confirmed victims, he is the show's most prolific, with the only other one who even comes close being Josh Freely.
• Smug Smiler: "Saw him on campus everywhere weeks after. Always with that damn smile."
• Smug Snake: In practically all of his scenes, even while being held at gunpoint by Jimmy Bartram.
• Something about a Rose: He charmed his victims with paper roses, and also marked their pictures in his yearbook with a doodle of a rose, something which the team discovered when they skimmed through the book in 2007.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: His case was reopened when, on the 25th anniversary of his death, someone (later revealed to be Regie) defaced his grave with the word "Rapist."
• Ungrateful Bastard: After his victims decided to spare him, Mike, once they were out of earshot, laughed over his feigned repentance while calling them "stupid bitches" and "whores."
• Vigilante Execution: He was shot to death by Jimmy Bartram, the younger brother of one of his victims, Tessie.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Mike, to most people, was a popular and beloved Academic Athlete who was even Chapter President of the local Meals on Wheels. In reality, he was a slimy Serial Rapist.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: This was presumably his thought process while being held at gunpoint by Jimmy Bartram.

Spree Killers

Cameron Coulter and Neal Hanlon

"I am the destroyer, the apocalypse, the widow maker. I am a rifle, I am a gun. Look down the barrel of my hate, we're gonna have some fun."

"Let him bleed."

Played By: Kyle Gallner (Cameron) and Will Rothhaar (Neal)

Episode(s): "Rampage"

A pair of teenage outcasts who committed suicide after shooting up the Woodland Valley Mall in 1995.

• Alas, Poor Villain: At the end of the episode, during the usual "ghost" scene where a victim or victims appear, Cameron and Neal are shown instead, and when Cameron's parents notice them, the two look away sadly, with Cameron looking teary-eyed, indicating that, at least in death, the two are ashamed of what they did at the Woodland Valley Mall.
• Attention Whore: The two got Barry Lewis to tell them about the mall's security cameras not so that they could avoid them, but so they could know which ones were dummies and which ones were real and thus could help them achieve Fame Through Infamy.
• Ax-Crazy: Neal's artbook is full of violent and demonic imagery, while Cameron's journal contained the poem, "I am the destroyer, the apocalypse, the widow maker. I am a rifle, I am a gun. Look down the barrel of my hate, we're gonna have some fun."
• Better to Die than Be Killed: The two shot themselves after shooting up the Woodland Valley Mall.
• Cruel Mercy: Cameron was all set to finish Barry off, but Neal stopped him, telling Cameron to let Barry "bleed." Barry ended up surviving, albeit as a paraplegic, thanks to Tina.
• The Dividual: The two are never shown apart and are largely interchangeable outside of the scene with Tina, where Cameron came off as the more dominant of the two, despite his father's earlier assertion that he was just a follower who went along with Neal.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Cameron's parents loved him, with Mr. Coulter at one point sadly stating, "everyone forgets, that day we lost a child, too."
• False Friend: The two pretended to befriend one of the mall's security guards in order to learn about the building's security features, and then remorselessly shot him during the rampage in 1995.
• For the Evulz: Their motive was a combination of this and Fame Through Infamy.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The two were bullied, but otherwise appeared to have had entirely normal lives, with it being made clear that being teased had little to nothing to do with what they did, they were just misanthropic time bombs who were liable to go off at any time, and did when they were egged on by Tina (though the fact that they already had loaded guns on them when Tina approached them makes it questionable exactly how much influence she even had on them).
• Greater-Scope Villain: The two are long dead by the events of the episode, the focus of which is the search for a possible "third shooter" spurred on by the discovery of an old camcorder in one of the vents in the Woodland Valley Mall.
• Horrifying the Horror: In a minor comedic moment, Cameron was clearly weirded out when a rambling and disheveled Tina approached him and Neal, muttering, "Girlfriend's seriously tweaked."
• Invisible Parents: While Cameron's parents are supporting characters in the episode, Neal's are never shown, not even in flashbacks, and are said to have moved to Georgia in 2004.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Their first victim was Zack, a Jerk Jock who had bullied them, sexually assaulted Tina, and beat-up Davie and Dayton when they tried to help Tina.
• Loners Are Freaks: Their only friend was Dayton Moore, who abandoned them when all three of them started attending Lakefield High.
• Misanthrope Supreme: They are introduced calling the mall the "ninth circle of Hell" and the "sweaty armpit of suburbia" full of "tweakers, preps, horny housewives, and morons galore."
• Murder Simulators: According to Dayton Moore, the two used an online game called "Renegade Massacre" as "practice" for shooting up the Woodland Valley Mall.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Their Online Aliases were "The Destroyer" (Cameron) and "The Apocalypse" (Neal).
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: The two are obvious stand-ins for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre.
• Posthumous Character: They killed themselves in 1995, a full decade before the case was reopened in 2006.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: They were White boys who used a lot of slang like "dawg" and "home slice."
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": "The survivors say they busted a gut the whole time they were mowing folks down."
• Sarcastic Confession: No one believed that the two of them would go through with committing a mass shooting, even though they bragged about it 24/7.
• Snuff Film: The two wanted to be caught on camera killing people, and gave a camcorder to Tina so that she could record them shooting everyone in the Woodland Valley Mall.
• Sound-Only Death: Their suicides are portrayed this way, unsurprisingly, given that they blew their own heads off with high-powered firearms and the show is only rated TV-14.
• Spree Killer: They were mass murderers who shot and killed fifteen people at a shopping mall, making them the killers with the second highest body count in the show after Paul Chaney from "Disco Inferno."
• Storyboarding the Apocalypse: Neal's sketchbook contained detailed drawings of the planned mall massacre, right down to a drawing him and Cameron shooting each other with the caption, "The End."
• Teens Are Monsters: While the show had plenty of other teenage murderers, Cameron and Neal stand out due murdering fifteen people in a massacre that they committed For the Evulz and to achieve Fame Through Infamy.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: As Lilly put it, they looked "so normal."
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: At the end of the episode, we are shown happy pictures of Cameron with his parents, who had earlier claimed that, growing up, Cameron was always "polite" and "well-behaved."
• Villainous Friendship: At the end of their shooting spree, the two smiled at each other and said their goodbyes while clasping hands and hugging before shooting themselves in the head in front of the cowering Tina.
• Would Hurt a Child: When trying to decide who to shoot first, the two play "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" with a little girl and Zack.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The two used Barry Lewis to learn about the mall's security features, and then shot him when they finally snapped and went on a rampage in 1995.

Mitch Hathaway

"I'm gonna take out a piece of garbage every day till you solve the murder of my son Clayton Hathaway."

Played By: Rick Ravanello (1987) and Mitch Pileggi (2007)

Episode(s): "Offender"

A grieving father who was wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of his own son, Clay, in 1987. After getting out of prison, he began killing a sex offender a day, and announced that he would only stop once the police found out who really killed Clay.

• Anti-Villain: Mitch was wrongly convicted of raping and murdering his own son, whose case he forces the Philly PD to reopen and make their top priority by murdering Asshole Victims.
• Criminal Mind Games: He keeps calling Scotty during his spree, and left a note with his first victim bluntly explaining his motive, "I'm gonna take out a piece of garbage every day till you solve the murder of my son Clayton Hathaway."
• Death Flight: A non-vehicle variation, in that he took his victims up to the roofs of tall buildings and then threw them off of them, with Ernie Grabowski landing on a Car Cushion.
• Frame-Up: After raping and killing Clay, Cliff Burrell planted photographs of his own son, Johnny, on Mitch. This ended up being irrelevant to the investigation, though, as Tara Hathaway (the one who found the pictures) never came forward with them, in a misguided attempt to protect the Burrells.
• Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: Mitch was an average, everyday man when he went to prison, and after he got out, he became a hardened Vigilante Man.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Mitch was wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of his own son, Clay, in 1987, and only exonerated in 2007.
• Murder-Suicide: How he intended to end his spree, by killing himself along with Clay's real killer, Cliff Burrell.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: His victims were registered sex offenders, like Harold Dixon (who molested half a dozen boys) and Ernie Grabowski (who practically brags about how he groomed boys into giving him "consent").
• Spree Killer: While he had the mentality and methodology of a Serial Killer, Mitch killing a person a day while evading the authorities, who were fully aware of his identity, makes him closer to a Spree Killer.
• Stalker without a Crush: He secretly follows Scotty throughout the investigation into who really killed Clay.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Mitch is talked into surrendering peacefully by his pleading ex-wife, Tara.
• Tough Love: While Mitch did love his son and was not abusive towards him, he was also not quite one for coddling, and raised Clay to believe that the best way to overcome something was to just "walk it off."
• Trauma Conga Line: His son was raped and murdered, he was blamed for it, his wife left him because of it, and he spent twenty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2007.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The concept of a vigilante using the sex offender registry to find victims was taken from double-murderer Stephen Marshall.
• Vigilante Man: He killed pedophiles in order to spur the Philly PD into finding the one who killed his son, Clay.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: All Mitch wants is justice for the son who he failed to protect back in 1987.

Ed Marteson

"Always, Romeo."

Played By: Joe Reegan

Episode(s): "Stalker"

A young man who, under the username Romeo, became obsessed with Kim Jacobi after starting an online relationship with her, unaware that he was actually talking to Kim's mother, Emily.

• Ax-Crazy: After Kim remembers that he was the one who killed her family, Ed snaps and takes her hostage while ranting, "You're not gonna take her from me. Not again. I'll kill her before I let you do it. I'll kill all of you!"
• Camera Fiend: He obsessively photographed Kim, and camera flashes and snaps are used for all of the episode's Flashback Effects.
• The Cracker: He hacked the Jacobi's computers to show slideshows of Kim, and was described as a "hacker pain in the ass" by Kat.
• Destroy the Evidence: After the attack on the Jacobis, he smashed all of their computers in a failed attempt to keep the police from finding out about the online relationship between him and Kim (actually Emily).
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Ed has literally only one innocuous scene (the pre-credits one, to boot) prior to The Reveal.
• Dramatic Irony: When Emily Jacobi tried to pull a Take Me Instead, Ed shot her while saying, "I don't want you." Emily was the one who Ed had fallen in love with online, not Kim.
• Face Framed in Shadow: This is how he appears in every flashback prior to The Reveal.
• Family Extermination: He killed every member of the Jacobi family except for Kim (though not for lack of trying on his part).
• Frame-Up: After massacring the Jacobis, he made it look like Mr. Jacobi had committed Pater Familicide.
• Freudian Excuse: It is implied that the reason why he is so warped is because his own family was abusive, going by a flashback in which he states, "No one ever rescued me from my family, but I'm gonna do it for you because I love you, Kim."
• Harassing Phone Call: When Emily stopped communicating with him online, Ed started calling Kim.
  Ed: I know you wanted to call someone and cry, but there was no one to call.
  Kim: How'd you know I wanted to call someone?
  Ed: Because. I'm watching you.
• Hostage Situation: He accompanies Kim to the precinct for her follow-up interview, and when Kim realizes that Ed was the one who killed her family, Ed whips out a gun, grabs her, and shoots Stillman and Lilly.
• If I Can't Have You…: "You're not gonna take her from me. Not again. I'll kill her before I let you do it."
• I Just Want to Be Loved: His implicitly abusive upbringing has left him desperate for love, and he shoots Lilly while asking her, "You don't think somebody could love me, huh?"
• In the Back: Scotty killed Ed by shooting him in the back, though he was too late to stop Ed from shooting Lilly.
• I Reject Your Reality: When both Lilly and Kim reveal that Kim was not the one who he had an online relationship with, Ed adamantly refuses to believe it, and remains convinced that it was Kim who was in love with him all of the way up until he is killed by Scotty.
• Love Makes You Evil: Noticing how dysfunctional Kim's family was, he decided to kill all of the other Jacobis in order to "free" Kim.
• Loving a Shadow: He thought that he was in an online relationship with Kim Jacobi, when in reality he was just being catfished by Kim's mother, Emily.
• Made of Iron: Ed tanks being shot by a police sniper, and manages to shoot both Stillman and Lilly before finally being taken down by Scotty.
• Not Good with Rejection: When Kim unsurprisingly freaked out after Ed murdered her family, he shot her too, though she survived and only fell into a Convenient Coma.
• Orderlies are Creeps: He got a job as an orderly or a male nurse in order to stay close to the comatose object of his obsession, Kim Jacobi.
• Pet the Dog: He ultimately lets Kim go, but then he shoots Lilly.
• Shoot the Hostage Taker: A police sniper does this, but Ed survives the shot, and retaliates by shooting Stillman.
• Something about a Rose: He sends roses and love notes to Kim, both before and after killing the rest of the Jacobis.
• Spree Killer: He killed three (nearly four) members of a family in 2006, and a few months later caused a Hostage Situation at the police station, during which he shot and nearly killed Stillman and Lilly.
• Stalker with a Crush: For Kim Jacobi, unaware that he had actually been seduced by Kim's mother, Emily.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Ed was an EMT-turned dedicated nurse to Kim Jacobi... who he is revealed to have put into her Convenient Coma after killing the rest of the Jacobis.
• Would Hurt a Child: He shot Kim's younger brother, Stewart.

Other Villains

Miguel Maldonado

"Scooter ain't his no more."

Played By: Luis Garcia

Episode(s): "Saving Patrick Bubley"

A vicious Latino gang leader who became embroiled in a blood feud with the Bubleys after he stole a scooter from the family's youngest son, Patrick.

• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Cedric Bubley brings up how Miguel killed Vaughn, an apathetic Miguel just asks, "Vaughn? He Urkel-looking like you?"
• Disproportionate Retribution: He shot Vaughn Bubley simply because Vaughn had annoyed him by trying to take back his younger brother Patrick's scooter, Web D.
• The Dreaded: According to Stillman, Miguel is "untouchable" because everyone fears him, even his own cousin and second-in-command, Jesus.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Even though Miguel treated his girlfriend, Letecia, like complete crap and was unfaithful to her, she was still unflappably attached to him.
• Family Extermination: He and his gang killed all but two of the Bubleys.
• Gangbangers: The leader of the O's, a gang that operates out of Fairhill.
• Gangland Drive-By: This is how he killed Quincy Bubley.
• Gangsta Style: This is how he shot Vaughn Bubley.
• I Surrender, Suckers: He pretended to give Patrick Bubley's scooter back to Patrick's older brother, Vaughn, but then turned around and shot Vaughn.
• Kick the Dog: All of his scenes are just a parade of these, from stealing a scooter from a small child to using his own devoted girlfriend as a Human Shield to turning the boy's mother into his drug-addicted Sex Slave by dangling the whereabouts of one her son's bodies over her head.
• Obviously Evil: As the leader of an extremely dangerous gang with a known feud with the Bubley family, Miguel is one of the few Cold Case culprits whose guilt is readily apparent from the beginning. However, he's also an expert at intimidating witnesses to his crimes, so the episode's conflict instead consists of trying to find someone actually willing to testify against him before the last Bubley, Patrick, tries to continue the Cycle of Revenge that killed his brothers. In the end, the police are able to persuade Jesus, who is in love with Miguel's abused girlfriend, to flip on him for her sake.
• Sadist: He is outright described as one by Stillman.
• Self-Serving Memory: He used his own girlfriend, Letecia, as a Human Shield against Cedric Bubley, but when Maeve Bubley came to him begging to know what he did with Cedric's body, Miguel asked her if Cedric was "the same boy who put a gun on my girl."
• Silly Reason for War: "Four boys dead. All over a scooter."
• Smug Snake: He is insufferably smug in all of his scenes up until he is finally jailed for killing the four Bubleys.
• The Sociopath: He stole a scooter from a young boy, shot the boy's brother when he tried to get it back, used his own girlfriend as a Human Shield when he was confronted by another one of the boy's brothers—who he then had killed—and got the mother of his victims hooked on crack and turned her into his Sex Slave when she came to him begging to know what he did with the body of one of her sons, Cedric.
• That One Case: Vaughn Bubley was Lilly's first homicide case, so she becomes driven to get justice for him and all of the other Bubleys.
• Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy: He had nothing to with Luther Bubley's death, but is held accountable for it anyway since Luther died in an incident that involved the O's, who Luther had attacked as Revenge by Proxy against Miguel.
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • Miguel's gang is introduced messing around with Patrick's scooter in Yin's Market.
  • He was eating dinner in a restaurant with his girlfriend, Letecia, when the two of them were confronted by Cedric Bubley.

John Harding

"The five stages of dying. The first is denial. Then anger. Then bargaining. Depression and acceptance."

Played By: Hallock Beals (1968); Scott Vickaryous (1980); Željko Ivanek (2006)

Episode(s): "One Night"

A man with multiple sclerosis who showed up at the precinct one night with a dirty shovel, which he claimed to have buried two teenage boys alive with, one a few hours ago, and the other in 1980.

• Affably Evil: He is almost unflappably calm and polite, lets his victims choose a happy personal place for them to be buried in, reassures them that their deaths will be painless, and apologizes to Mr. and Mrs. Jablonski for what he did to their son, Steve.
• Apologetic Attacker: He falsely reassures Steve that he did not put anything in his beer, then admits that he actually did, blasély stating, "I'm sorry I lied."
• Bad Samaritan: He captured Steve Jablonski when Steve asked him for a lift while he was stuck trying to change a tire on his Cadillac.
• Bald of Evil: By 2006, he has gone bald, though he was no less evil than when he still had hair back in 1980.
• Buried Alive: What he did to Steve Jablonski (who died) and Justin Bradley (who survived).
• Calling Card: He forced Steve Jablonski to write his own will, which he then sent to Mr. and Mrs. Jablonski. He does the same thing with Justin Bradley, having him write a will to be delivered to his friend, Valentino.
• Dying Alone: His greatest fear, and part of the reason why he turned himself in to the Philly PD.
• The Eeyore: He has a dour demeanor, is almost perpetually watery-eyed, and speaks in a slightly shaky Creepy Monotone.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: While he is completely estranged from his family, when he realized that he would be dead soon, he still called his ex-wife to tell her about it, and to say goodbye to her and, through her, their sons, Jack and Stan.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When asked why he had Steve Jablonski write a will, John replies with, "People should have the chance to put their affairs in order. To make sense of their lives. To say goodbye."
    Jeffries: Now, that's real stand-up.
  • He is clearly disgusted when Scotty pegs him as pedophile who had a sexual interest in Steve and Justin.
• Evil Cripple: He has MS.
• Evil Old Folks: He is even called "grandpa" by Justin.
• Evil Teacher: He is a high school teacher, though it has nothing to do with his motive or MO.
• Fate Worse than Death: How he feels about his MS.
• Freudian Excuse: Being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis turned him into a resentful Teen Hater.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Assuming that he has been abducted by a sexual predator, Steve offered himself to John (who was clearly put off by it). And when Scotty assumes that he is a pedophile, an irritated John adamantly declares, "You're way off base."
• Mr. Smith: He introduces himself as "John Doe." The lack of originality is noted by Lilly.
• Real Name as an Alias: John Doe's real name turned out to be... John Harding.
• Reluctant Psycho: He was wracked with guilt over what he did to Steve Jablonski, and after he does the same thing to another boy, he turns himself in to the Philly PD.
• The Resenter: Being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis caused him to both envy and hate young men with their whole lives ahead of them who think that they will live forever, leading him to abduct and bury Steve and Justin.
• The Spook: His fingerprints are not on file, he has no ID or any form of identification on him, and insists on only being referred to as "John Doe." He is eventually identified as John Harding.
• Suddenly Shouting: He loses his cool when Scotty gets under his skin by accusing him of being a pedophile, shouting that he did not choose his victims because he was sexually attracted to them, he choose them because, "the little bastards think they'll live forever!"
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: We get a flashback to John's happiest memory, him as a carefree young man, hanging out with his friends at the river, in 1968.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: "You look at me and you see a quiet, simple man. So did he. Didn't believe me when I told him he was gonna die."

Becca Abrams

"Losers are so pathetic. Spend all their time projecting their ugliness onto other people. It's sad, really."

Played By: AnnaLynne McCord (1997) and Lauren Woodland (2007)

Episode(s): "Stand Up and Holler"

A cheerleading captain who was involved in the death of a junior squadmate named Rainey Karlsen back in 1997.

• Accidental Murder: While she did force-feed Rainey a can of beer that was laced with GHB, Becca had no intention of killing her, and was totally unaware that Celeste had added an excess amount of the drug to the beer before she poured it on Rainey.
  Becca: What's wrong with her?! She only had one beer!
• Alcoholic Parent: Her mother would give her practically anything, so long as she asked "during cocktail hour."
• Alpha Bitch: Of Birmingham High School back in 1997.
• Bitch Alert:
  • As Rainey is trying out for the cheer squad, Becca interrupts to remind her to smile and tells her not to bother concentrating, as it "makes you look like you have a giant bloomer wedgie."
  • When Lilly and Jeffries first talk to the grown-up Becca, she interrupts the interview to tell one of the beleaguered reunion workers, "Don't you think we should maybe actually center the centerpiece?"
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: This is emphasized the first time Rainey and Celeste have lunch with the senior cheerleaders. Becca, under the pretense of being friendly, brings up how "stupid" it was that she used to mock Celeste's overeating by calling her "The Black Hole." When Celeste meekly replies that she now buys size 6s from The Gap, Becca just says, "Ugh, I'm so pissed at them. They totally resized all their clothes to make fat people feel good. I mean, just 'cause everyone else in America weighs 5,000 pounds, don't punish me."
• The Chain of Harm: It is implied that Becca did not make up the cheer squad's hazing rituals, and that she herself was subjected to them after joining the squad.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Her main reason for "befriending" Rainey was because she was insecure about her boyfriend Casey's interest in Rainey, leading her to want to "control" the latter. Ironically, Casey did not care about Becca at all, even as a teenager, at one point calling her an "old jock mattress."
• Condescending Compassion: Just read her page quote. She sympathizes with "losers" who she believes wallow over not being like her and her clique.
• Cruel Cheerleader: The show's quintessential example, along with Jane from "Love Conquers Al."
• Disproportionate Retribution: Has Rainey pinned down and force-feeds her drugged beer in retaliation for Rainey telling her off and quitting the squad.
• Female Misogynist: She gets called out as one by Joe after he spots her enforcing Popular Is Dumb on Rainey, with Joe mentioning how ironic it is that people always say men keep women down when he just saw a woman tell another one to look pretty and act stupid under the threat of making it so that she would no longer be In with the In Crowd.
• Force Feeding: She force fed Rainey a can of beer that was laced with GHB, though she admittedly did not know that a nigh-lethal amount of the drug had been added to the drink by Celeste.
• Freudian Excuse: Her mother was all but stated to be a Lady Drunk, and when she spots Celeste crying after playing the "game" where a cheerleader has to roll a pair of dice to see how many football players she has to have sex with, whether she wants to or not, Becca tells her, "Quit your sniveling. Last year I rolled a 12."
• Future Loser: By 2007, she is unable to hold down a job, has had two divorces going on three, and is desperately trying to relive her Glory Days through the 10-year reunion at Birmingham High School.
• Girl Posse: She had two sycophants, one without dialogue, and the other credited as just "Cheerleader #1."
• Informed Attribute: While Becca is repeatedly implied to be promiscuous, no actual details are given, and the most we get is her acting slutty to get a good grade on a presentation from Mr. Pruit.
• It's All About Me: When first interviewed about Rainey's death, Becca blasély states, "Look, you can imagine how bad it looked for me when she turned up dead."
• Lack of Empathy:
  • Despite being put through a similar ordeal herself, she still set Rainey and Celeste up to be sexually assaulted by the football players, and when Celeste began crying the next day after ten of the boys had their way with her, an annoyed Becca just told her to stop her "sniveling."
  • While she may not have intended to kill Rainey, Becca left her alone with Celeste in the football field to save her own skin despite knowing Rainey would likely die from the drug overdose, and doesn't show any remorse for it in the present. When Lilly goads her into confessing, Becca declares that she "showed that bitch who was boss".
• Lame Comeback: After Rainey calls her out on how pathetic she is during Mr. Pruit's class, Becca's only response is a very awkward, "Someone needs to take a chill pill, bokay!"
• Oh, Crap!: Her reaction after she rants (i.e. confesses) to Lilly about what she did to Rainey.
• Popular Is Dumb: She actually encourages the people in her entourage to avoid doing well academically, at least publicly, because "you look stupid if you look smart."
• Rape as Backstory: She mentions offhandedly that she was pressured into having sex with (or just outright raped by) a dozen football players back in 1996.
• Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: While Rainey is overdosing, Becca runs away with her posse while telling Celeste to deal with it.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: She is as much of a petulant, selfish brat as an adult as she was as an Alpha Bitch back in 1997.
• Sextra Credit: While she does not have sex with Mr. Pruit, her idea of a physics presentation for him is to just give a Supermodel Strut and say, "Friction. It's a real downer. How do you fix it? Lubrication."
• Spoiled Brat: After mentioning that her parents will give her either a Beemer or a boob job, but not both, Becca then unironically states, "My parents just like to deny me things."
• Totally Radical: "Someone needs to take a chill pill, bokay!"
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: An abuser of this, something which Lilly throws back in her face with the Ironic Echo, "Don't move a muscle... bitch."
• Valley Girl: She sounds like one as an adult, but strangely not so much as a teenager back in 1997.
• Womanchild: When shown in the present, she acts exactly like the bitchy teen that she was back in 1997.
• You Are Fat: Her default insult when it came to Celeste.

Linda Boyka

"Nachalnik just means boss. Could be anyone."

Played By: Brenda Wehle

Episode(s): "Cargo"

The head of a Mafiya sex trafficking ring that is centered in Philadelphia, her illicit activities (which she oversees under the name "Nachalnik") came to light after the team reopened the case of Mike Chulaski, a longshoreman who was murdered in 2005.

• Bad Boss: Kiril became a dead man walking after he screwed-up selling Lena to Mike.
• The Baroness: She is a cold, intimidating Russian woman, and a top-level Human Trafficker.
• Cigarette Burns: Her trademark way of punishing girls who were too spirited was to burn their feet with cigarettes, something which Kateryna mimicked to make it look like Nachalnik had killed Mike.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: She had any girls who copped an attitude tortured, usually via Cigarette Burns.
• The Dreaded: Everyone fears Nachalnik.
  Kiril: You talk about Nachalnik, you disappear.
• Fearsome Foot: When we finally meet Nachalnik, the camera shows their approaching feet before moving up to reveal Linda.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Kateryna killed Mike, and then made him look like a victim of her abusive, murderous pimp, Nachalnik.
• Greater-Scope Villain: She did not kill Mike, but she is still the overarching villain of the episode, with the nightmarish things that Kateryna endured under Linda's ownership being what drove her to snap and kill Mike.
• Human Traffickers: She falsely promises desperate young Eastern European girls jobs in America, and then puts them to work as Sex Slaves.
• The Mafiya: She runs a sex trafficking branch of it that is centered in Philadelphia.
• Not Me This Time: She turned out to have had absolutely nothing to do with the murder of Mike Chulaski.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Lena was valuable, but also a hassle, so when the opportunity to get rid of her and make money doing it came up, Linda agreed to Mike's offer to buy Lena, despite previously threatening to kill Mike.
• Red Baron: A mysterious, elusive human trafficker who is initially known only as "Nachalnik" (the Russian word for "Boss").
• Samus Is a Girl: Everyone assumed that Nachalnik was a man, but "he" turned out to actually be a woman named Linda Boyka.
• The Spook: The FBI has been working for years to take down Nachalnik, but has had little luck, as she is very good at covering her tracks, with no one even knowing her gender until the team stumbled onto her identity while investigating the murder of Mike Chulaski.
• Smug Snake: She is dripping with smarm throughout her interrogation, believing herself to be untouchable, and even mocking Stillman for believing that being in police custody will protect Kiril.
• The Queenpin: She runs an Eastern European sex trafficking ring out of Philadelphia.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The fearsome "Boss" is revealed to actually be named Linda.
• Villains Out Shopping: She was in the middle of reading a book and drinking tea when Mike came back to buy Lena.
• Villain with Good Publicity: She operates a small community center that is dedicated to helping immigrants, but it is just a front, the main purpose of which is recapturing girls who have escaped from Nachalnik.
• Would Hurt a Child: Two of the girls that were shown in one of her brothels looked to be even younger than Lena, who herself was only 15.

Margot Chambers

"We reached the end of the line, baby. But with this, not only do we disappear, we do it rich. Then you can buy any kind of normal you want."

Played By: Monet Mazur

Episode(s): "Thick as Thieves"

A prolific con artist who, with the help of her son, Spencer, committed crimes all over the country before being shot in the face and falling into a coma in 1989.

• Abusive Parents: "Mom beat the crap out of her daily, yeah, Margie would watch the old movies to escape."
• Asshole Victim: She was a prolific con artist whose actions drove a man to suicide, who got her comeuppance when she tried to browbeat her son into helping her murder his own girlfriend in order to commit Insurance Fraud.
• Boomerang Bigot: Margot called Kylie trailer trash... even though she grew up poor in a Trashy Trailer Home.
• Con Man: She had a long rap sheet for offenses like fraud and check kiting, used her own son as a Honey Trap, and tried commit Insurance Fraud by murdering an Identical Stranger named Kylie Cramer.
• Conspicuous Consumption: The characters realize that there is more to "Jane Doe" than they thought when they discover that she had high-end breast implants that, at the time of her shooting, were worth at least $15,000.
• Didn't See That Coming: She outright said this when she was betrayed by Spencer.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: When confronted by Spencer and Kylie, Margot pleaded, "I did it all for you... because I love you. You're the only one who matters. The day you were born, I swore you'd have a better life. You're my only reason to live, Linus. You're my son. And I'm your mother."
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Spencer was ultimately unable to go through with shooting his mother, and when Kylie shot her instead, Spencer broke down, and cradled his half-dead while sobbing, "Mama? Mama? Say something. Please. I'm sorry, mama." When Margot fell into a come, Spencer visited her every year to drop off expensive gifts, and when she finally died, he was caught visiting her grave by Lilly.
• Fake Boobs: Despite already being beautiful, Margot got breast implants, which were used to identify her once she finally died in 2007.
• Faking the Dead: She was going to fake her own death by murdering Kylie Cramer as part of an Insurance Fraud scam that would pay out three million dollars to her and Spencer.
• False Friend: She pretended to befriend Kylie Cramer to set her up to be killed by her and Spencer.
• False Rape Accusation: Margot and Spencer used this as part of their con, having Spencer seduce rich women who would bail him out of his bad relationship with Margot, who he would claim to be unable to leave on his own without her accusing him of rape and Domestic Abuse.
• Fate Worse than Death: She was shot in the face at point-blank range in 1989, but surprisingly did not die, instead lingering on in a persistent vegetative state, unable to move, walk, talk or do anything else of independence until her death in... 2007.
• Food Slap: She threw her drink in Spencer's face during a staged argument that they had in front of Melissa Canter.
• Freudian Excuse: Margot grew up poor trailer trash, was regularly beaten by her mother, and found a form of escapism in old films, the glamourous women of which she idolized and wanted to be like, with her favorite being Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina.
• Gasp of Life: The episode starts off like any other, with the victim going about their day before being shown dead... except here they used this to pull a Bait-and-Switch.
• Good-Times Montage: Margot is introduced sipping champagne, buying flashy new clothes and jewelry, driving a sweet car, and applying for membership at a fancy club before she is shown being found half-dead by the Philly PD.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: She intended to have a woman, who bore a striking resemblance to her, killed in an attempt to collect life insurance on herself for One Last Job. Spencer, having fallen in love with the woman in question however, informed her of Margot's plot instead, causing the woman and Spencer to devise a plot of their own against Margot.
  Stillman: So Margot the double-crosser got double-crossed.
  Lilly: Beaten at her own game.
• Incest Subtext: Margot and Spencer's relationship was... unsettlingly close and possessive, leading to a totally understandable case of Relative Error.
• Insurance Fraud: She planned on faking her own death for a three million dollar life insurance payout that would be given to Spencer.
• Kill and Replace: This was her plan for Kylie Cramer.
• Lack of Empathy: When confronted by a man who blamed her for ruining his brother and driving him to suicide, Margot just shrugged and said, "He had fun while it lasted."
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Margot and Spencer were essentially slightly less bloodthirsty versions of murderous mother-son con artist duo Sante and Kenny Kimes.
• Rags to Riches: Margot was born poor trailer trash, but used con artistry to become a Rich Bitch.
• Real Name as an Alias: While she used different last names, her first name was always Margot.
• Relative Error: Everyone assumed that Spencer was Margot's boyfriend, and they only learned that he was actually her son when it revealed by Lenny Delpy.
• Teen Pregnancy: Based on her and Spencer's ages, the team assume that Margot must have had him when she was around 14.
• Posthumous Character: She finally died in 2007, and the episode centers around finding out who shot her back in 1989.
• The Power of Hate: Jeffries jokingly suggests that the reason why Margot hung on for so long was to spite Spencer and Kylie and prevent them from claiming her multi-million dollar life insurance policy, which ended up expiring three years before Margot finally croaked in 2007.
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: She was obsessed with the film Sabrina, with her son (who she named after a character from it) mentioning that she "must have seen it a thousand times."
• The Spook: After being shot, Margot became a no one from nowhere until her death eighteen years later, when the serial numbers on her breast implants were traced back to Doctor Jeremy Fincher.
• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: Margot was shot in the head in 1989, and survived... until 2007.
  Abby: This woman suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, resulting in a massive stroke. Bullet fragments dormant in the brain accelerated the process.
  Lilly: You saying almost twenty years dying in a hospital bed is accelerated?
  Abby: I'm saying the bullet killed your victim. Just took some time doing it.
• Unusual Pop Culture Name: Spencer's birthname is actually Linus Larrabee, Humphrey Bogart's character in the film Sabrina.
• Villainous Mother-Son Duo: She was a con artist whose partner was her own son, Spencer.
• You Got Guts: When Spencer and Kylie showed up to kill her, Margot admitted, "I didn't think you [Spencer] had it in you. Honestly, I didn't see it coming at all. Work of art, darling. And who knew you [Kylie] had a brain?"

Major Moe Kitchener

"The more you push, the less I have to lose."

Played By: Daniel Baldwin

Episode(s): "The Long Blue Line" through "Metamorphosis"

A retired U.S. Army Officer employed as a physical training instructor at the Pennsylvania Military Institute, he helped cover-up the accidental death of one of the institution's first female cadets, Kate Butler, in 2005. While Kate's killer was arrested, Moe managed to make bail, and became a thorn in the side of the Philly PD, especially Lilly.

• The Alcoholic: He was shown drinking on campus, and appeared to spend all of his free time drinking at a dive bar, at one point leaving it so loaded that he was unable to walk straight, which led to him getting a DUI thanks to Lilly.
• Ambiguous Situation: A lot of his backstory and how he was involved in covering-up Kate's death comes from Lilly's Dying Dream, so how much, if any of it, is true to life, is unclear, including whether or not Lawrence Gardner is really dead, as his death is not mentioned after Lilly recovers, and yet he is still conspicuously absent during Moe's Perp Walk.
• Arc Villain: His storyline started at the end of Season Six, and lasted until mid-Season Seven.
• Asshole Victim: Moe was a scumbag, so no one really cares that he was murdered, though Hank Butler does mention that Vengeance Feels Empty.
• Bail Equals Freedom: Moe being granted bail reduction is treated like this, especially by Lilly.
• Body in a Breadbox: The footlocker that he transported and buried Kate's body in, which was traced back to the Pennsylvania Military Institute.
• Car Fu: He tried to kill Lilly by ramming her car off of a bridge using a car borrowed from the Pennsylvania Military Institute.
• Crime After Crime: He covered-up Kate's death, and when her body was discovered, he tried to kill Lilly, and then framed and killed Lawrence Gardner.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: He killed Lawrence Gardner in order to frame him for killing Kate and trying to kill Lilly.
• Embarrassing First Name: It is revealed to actually be "Maurice" in "Jurisprudence."
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: "I take my mother to mass on Sundays."
• Face Death with Dignity: He is completely stoic while being held at gunpoint by Hank Butler, not begging or resisting, and merely saying, "Sorry, Hank. It wasn't personal."
• Faux Affably Evil: He initially acts cordial towards Lilly and Scotty, especially compared to Commandant Murillo, but is gradually revealed to be a despicable Smug Snake.
• Following in Relative's Footsteps: He is a fourth generation alumni of the Pennsylvania Military Institute.
• Found the Killer, Lost the Murderer: The team gets Kate's killer, but they are unable to nail Moe.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: He asks Ryan this when Ryan comes to him after accidentally killing Kate.
• I Shall Taunt You: As Lilly upped her harassment of him, Moe started taunting her, hoping to goad her into doing something that would get her more than a slap on the wrist from Internal Affairs or the DA's Office.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After evading justice for many episodes, he is shot to death by Hank Butler, the father of the girl whose death he helped cover-up, at the end of "Bombers."
• Lack of Empathy: He cared more about his family's military academy of choice than he did about the lives of its cadets, even ending his Motive Rant by stating, "Excuse me if I forgot to shed a tear for Hank Butler's daughter."
• The Neidermeyer: While no worse towards the new recruits than the other faculty members and the older cadets, it is made clear that he cared more about the academy itself than its student body, going by his callous behavior towards Kate, Lawrence, and Ryan.
• Nothing Personal: He tells Hank Butler, whose daughter's death he covered-up, this before being shot by him in "Metamorphosis."
• Perp Walk: Everyone present turns their backs on Moe and Ryan as they are being perp walked out of the Pennsylvania Military Institute.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: During his Motive Rant.
  Moe: Do you know how many congressmen have graduated from P.M.I.? Twelve. Six senators, eight four-star generals. Those courts ordered us to change the way we do things here. Now here we are.
  Scotty: Stuck installing women's latrines and tampon dispensers.
  Moe: There are over sixty women's colleges in this country. Do you see any men banging down the doors trying to get in? The value of a separate education is that it is separate!
  Lilly: Sound bitter, Moe.
  Moe: Because of this catastrophic experiment ,an army of lawyers and press stand ready to shut down the institution I love, the one thing I share with my father and his before him.
• Smug Smiler: Especially when it comes to Lilly.
  Lilly: He smiled at me. The bastard smiled at me, boss.
• Stupid Crooks: Moe's attempts at covering-up his involvement in Kate's death were incredibly sloppy, and he displayed a staggering amount of shortsightedness when he tried to kill Lilly, attempting to do it with an academy car that only he used, and afterward not even bothering to try and hide the damage that was done to it when he returned it to the academy after using it to attack Lilly.
• Vigilante Execution: He is shot in the head by Kate Butler's grieving father, Hank.
• Villain Has a Point: Moe is a smarmy asshole, but he was not wrong to file complaints against Lilly and call her out when she began stalking and harassing him while he was on bail, doing things like calling in favors to get Moe's car booted and sabotaging Moe getting a bank loan after he was dismissed from the Pennsylvania Military Institute.
• Villain with Good Publicity: His lack of previous legal entanglements, stature in the community, laudable service record, and the judge also being ex-military led to Moe being granted what amounted to Bail Equals Freedom.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Implied, as he called the Pennsylvania Military Institute the "one thing I share with my father and his before him."