You think you're going to appeal to his nobler instincts, his better angels? He doesn't have any. The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is he will kill again.
Since 1987, Inspector Morse, Robert Lewis and the other officers of the Oxford Police Force have faced a variety of murders and criminals. A small number, however, manage, through sheer cruelty and depravity, to stand out from the crowd.
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Inspector Morse
- "Service of All the Dead": Harry Josephs hides beneath a pathetic but charismatic front a hedonistic, calculating psychopath who takes a disturbing childlike glee in murder. Desperate for money to start a new life, Josephs masterminds the plot to kill Simon Pawlen. Succeeding in fatally poisoning the latter and faking his own death, Josephs takes advantage of the situation to murder everyone who he felt wronged him: garrotting Paul Morris, beating Paul's 12-year-old son to death for no other reason than he could, and then strangling his own wife. To remove the last person who knows the truth, Josephs attempted to garrotte his own lover. Foiled but treating events with playful amusement, he lures Inspector Morse to the top of the church steeple and nearly strangles Morse. Responsible for the highest body count in the series, and implied to have murdered before, Josephs was one of the darkest threats Morse ever encountered.
- "The Infernal Serpent": Matthew Copley-Barnes has a sardonic, understated and subtly condescending front that hides the fact he's a vicious predator. A respected academic and the wealthy Master of Beaufort College, he is secretly a pedophile who uses his position and connections to get away with preying on children. First molesting his own daughter Imogen, traumatizing her well into her adulthood, he then turned his attention to Sylvia Maxwell, raping her multiple times for several years, starting when she was eleven. Taking advantage of the fact that Blanche Copley-Barnes gave piano lessons to young girls, Matthew secretly used her classes to find other children to abuse, carrying on for decades and only separated from his latest victim, Mandy Hopkirk, a few weeks before the events of the episode.
- "The Day of the Devil": John Peter Barrie is an egotistical, misogynistic sociopath as well as the self-proclaimed "devil's disciple". Originally a robber and car thief, Barrie serves his dark master, purely for the rewards he believes he'll receive in the afterlife, by committing a variety of crimes with his specialty being rape. Dominating another Satanist into being his partner, and forcing the man's abused wife to act as their accomplice, the pair raped three women, two in their own homes, taking a piece of jewelry as a trophy from each victim. Ditching him, Barrie carried on his reign of terror throughout the midlands until he was apprehended. Convinced he had been betrayed by his former partner, Barrie broke out and returned to Oxford, burning him alive on Lamas day. Fatally wounded, to ensure his place at his master's side, Barrie's last act was to attempt to shoot Inspector Morse.
- "Counter Culture Blues": Vernon Oxe uses flamboyant suave charm to disguise a vicious man driven purely by callous Greed. Subtly masterminding the reformation of the famous sixties band the Midnight Addiction, Oxe manipulates a woman into impersonating her dead sister, solely for the riches it will add to their already impressive wealth. Oxe seeks to eliminate anyone who threatens his end goal: killing 15-year-old Lucas Emerson by repeatedly running him over with their car, murdering the band's former roadie by injecting him with heroin and framing it as an overdose, and then brutally strangling Dr. Samantha Wheeler with a lute's string, cutting her neck open as she died. Realizing his final obstacle happens to be his own former lover, Oxe drugs and then pushes the helpless but conscious man into a giant macerator, cruelly mocking him the whole time.
- Detective Inspector Arthur Lott despite seeming simply a smug gruff, crass condescending officer is in truth brutal, greedy, and corrupt to the core. While in the Oxford City Police, Lott regularly took bribes, brutalised suspects, and planted evidence. The whole time, Lott was secretly Assistant Chief Constable Deare's bagman and through him involved with Wintergreen and Landesman's paedophile ring. While not a paedophile himself, Lott happily implemented the abuses for money; he later also enabled Teddy Samuels to regularly pimp teenage schoolgirls as long as he was paid. Moving to the Metropolitan Drugs squad, Lot abused his position and connections with organised crime, setting up his own rackets dealing in drugs, prostitution, and coerced pornography. Following Morse and Thursday's investigation into Blenheim Vale, Lott, solely to protect himself, had the scandal covered up through threats and violence, personally murdering Josiah Landesman and his secretary Brenda Lewis, just in case she knew anything. Years later, upon discovering Brenda's son was searching for her, Lott had him fatally overdosed and sent assassins after the private detective he hired. When Micky Flood tried to warn Thursday, Lott had his goons crucify and torture Micky, ripping his tongue out and finally slit his throat. Realising Morse and Thursday would never stop investigating Blenheim Vale Lott threatened Thursday's family, seemingly accepting a deal from Morse only to reveal he always planned to kill him and Thursday regardless.
- Season 5: Cromwell Ames is a reckless, ambitious West Indian Gangster. A minor player who no one had ever heard of, Ames has his sights set on taking over Eddie Nero's empire, even if this means burning Oxford to the ground. Attempting to muscle Nero out, Ames organizes several arsons on properties owned by Nero, including an apartment building full of multiple families, and viciously murders Nero's enforcer Liam Flynn. Having his gang hijack a goods lorry, Ames sadistically and pointlessly beats the terrified elderly driver, Bert Hobbs, to the point his injuries kill him, but only after several hours of agony. When one of Ames's dealers, Lloyd Collins, unknowingly spoke to an undercover policeman, despite not telling them anything, Ames had Collins gutted, leaving him to bleed to death. Growing more brazen in his attacks, Ames assaulted Nero's businesses in broad daylight, opened fire on him and his wife in public, and finally attacked Nero's base. Ames's overconfidence resulted in the deaths of everyone involved, wiping out both their organizations, including himself and Nero.
- Season 6: Detective Sergeant Alan Jago is the hidden main antagonist of the season. Beneath his unassuming exterior lies a calculating, power-hungry crook who is the root of both the Thames Valley police corruption and the cities drug crisis. Exploiting the fallout of Ames's and Nero's war, Jago murdered Detective Constable George Fancy and stole Nero's heroin supply. Using connections he'd built up during his career, Jago subverted numerous officers, including his own boss DCI Ronnie Box, creating a culture of bribery and brutality, and with the help of his partners took over Nero's empire of protection rackets and dealers. To increase his profits Jago cut the heroin with quinine, drastically increasing its lethality, and murdered a man for his car so his courier could deliver the drugs. His actions plunged Oxford into a drug crisis resulting in at least fourteen deaths, all to Jago's utter apathy. Contacted by his partners to stop Morse's investigations, Jago attempted to murder Morse, along with Thursday, Strange, Bright and Doctor Max DeBryn, then frame them all for corruption. Self-serving and corrupt to core, Jago was both a dark reflection and the embodiment of everything Morse stood against.
- Season 7:
- The Towpath Killer, Carl Sturgis, aka Johnny Linden, seems normal, but is in fact an animalistic maniac with a taste for inflicting cruelty and a fondness for whistling "Antonio". Enjoying hurting and killing animals since childhood—his abuse permanently damaging his sister Phyllis's mental state—at ten years old he murdered his peer George Fontayne. To cover up the crime, Johnny set his family's pub alight, killing his Aunt Beth, Uncle Joe, Cousin Kevin and Sister Doris, faking his own death in the blaze. Suspecting his abused girlfriend of cheating, he began a killing spree. On New Year's Eve 1970, he murdered Molly Andrews by breaking her neck. A few months later he slit Tony Jakobssen's throat with a swordstick. Killing Bridget Mulcahy, he bit into her throat to drink her blood. Unhealthily obsessed with Phyllis, Johnny kidnapped and imprisoned her, also drinking her blood, pushing her into a mental breakdown. Discovered, he attempted to kill Sergeant Strange plunging his swordstick into his stomach, and attacking Morse attempted to rip his throat out with his teeth.
- Ludovico "Ludo" Talenti appears a charming, cultured and aristocratic man of the world and a good friend to Morse, but is really a callous, self-centered individual with a twisted scheme to make himself wealthier. Through his company, Ludo buys life insurance policies from people needing a quick pay out, in return for him receiving the full payment when they die. Waiting until the policy is full, he then engineers a "tragic accident", killing them and giving him the profits. Ludo coerces his terrified wife Violetta, whom he forced to become his accomplice as a teenager, into assisting him threatening to kill her if she refuses. Responsible for masterminding potentially dozens of deaths throughout several locations by various methods. Ludo takes no responsibility for his murders, claiming his victims all had a chance to find his sabotage before it killed them. For one particular con, Ludo spent several months building a close relationship with Carrie Bright, purely so she'd trust him enough that he could engineer her death, even mockingly claiming he "really liked her". Confronted by Morse, Ludo attempts to murder him, not even blinking when he accidentally kills Violetta.
- "Fugue": The Opera Phantom, Mason Gull, is a musical prodigy institutionalized for killing his own mother when fifteen. Getting released by faking being cured, to prove his genius to the world and take revenge for his imprisonment, the Phantom embarked on a twisted killing spree, basing his murders on deaths from famous operas to create his own treble clef, EGBDF, leaving clues and taunts to challenge the police. He strangled Evelyn Balfour; poisoned Grace Madison with devil's snare; and chained Ben Nimno up underground before bricking up the wall, leaving him to slowly die of dehydration. Kidnapping 6-year-old Debbie Snow, the Phantom challenged Morse to find the girl before morning leaving several riddles, as a distraction for him to use an acid trap to kill Dr. Daniel Cronyn, his former therapist who he'd been impersonating. Holding Inspector Fred Thursday at knifepoint, the Phantom planned to throw him off the building as a stand in for the officer who arrested him, then surrender to bask in his new found fame, admitting that he planned in ten years to fake being cured again and commit another killing spree just to ensure his name would always be remembered.
- "Neverland":
- Alderman Gerald Wintergreen and property developer Josiah Landesman, while publicly respected pillars of the Oxford community renowned for involvement in multiple charity projects, are secretly joint leaders of a pedophile ring. Ten years previously Wintergreen was appointed governor of Blenheim Vale school for wayward boys; abusing the position, Wintergreen and Landesman secretly preyed on at least six boys, taking them away in the night to be repeatedly raped by them and other pedophiles, traumatizing several victims well into adulthood. Wintergreen also did the same to Angela Fairbridge, the young daughter of the school's doctor. Following Peter Williams setting Wintergreen's car alight in retaliation, the pair, along with Constable Clive Deare, viciously beat and starved the boys until they got the culprits name. In the present, fearing that the journalist Patterson could expose them, they send Deare into silence him and their former victim George Aldridge.
- Assistant Chief Constable Clive Deare, while erpetuating the façade of being an upstanding officer of the law, is in fact the third founding member of Wintergreen and Landesman's pedophile ring, as well as their enforcer. Ordered by them to silence Patterson, he along with several of his corrupt county officers murdered Patterson, framing it as a drunken accident, and then had George Alright beat senseless and drowned him in a pit. Spotted by 10-year-old runaway Tommy Cork, Deare ordered his goons to find and silence the only witness. Setting Morse up to be killed, when this failed, he personally garroted his boss Chief Constable Rupert Standish, framing Morse. Keeping Tommy alive only to lure Morse and Thursday to Blenheim Vale, he intended to frame them both for the murders. Shooting Inspector Thursday, he mocked Morse, gloating that he'd probably receive another medal for killing them.
- "Pylon": Doctor Lester Sheridan, despite his harmless, friendly appearance, is in fact a pedophile and dangerous child abuser. Three years previously he kidnapped 10-year-old Emily Bayard. Keeping her prisoner, and, implied to have repeatedly molested her, he would drug, pose and photograph Emily both for personal enjoyment and to be sold to other pedophiles, using his skills to disguise the photos as historical Victorian pictures, granting anyone caught plausible deniability. In the present, Emily's progression through puberty makes her no longer a suitable target for his perversions; therefore, he abducts 9-year-old Rosie Johnston from the village fete to make her his new model, and plans to dispose of Emily by selling her to the highest bidder.
- "Degüello": Councillor Clive Burkitt, a smarmy senior local politician, and George McGryffin, a smug belligerent construction magnate, are the partners of Jago. Ensuring his reelection by promising modern homes for the poor people of Oxford, Burkitt secretly conspired with McGryffin to use unsafe, cheaper building materials to construct the Cranmer House apartment tower and split the excess profits. When the local borough surveyor Hollis Binks discovered their scam, the pair buried him alive in the foundation. When construction was complete, the two basked in the good publicity the project brought them. Upon discovering that Hollis's friend Osbert Page was investigating his disappearance, McGryffin had one his goons stab him to death. Because of the shoddy construction, following a year of decay, Cranmer House collapsed one afternoon, killing 16 residents, including multiple children, and injuring numerous others. Only caring about their reputations, Burkitt quickly got to work to bury their involvement in the disaster. After bribery and blackmail failed to shake off Morse's investigations, the pair attempted to assassinate Superintendent Bright and kidnapped Doctor DeBryn to lure Morse out to be murdered. Upon arrest, Burkitt immediately turned on his partner to ensure a lighter sentence.
- "Terminus": Flavian Creech, aka "The Beast of Belgravia", is a vicious psychopath, infamous as a "murderer, necrophile and alleged cannibal", described by his psychiatrist as the most dangerous man he ever encountered, "a creature wholly without conscience...the epitome of evil." Institutionalized for an unspecified number of murders, including his own mother and a policeman who was looking for a missing child that Creech "had been enjoying", Creech took an interest in fellow patient young Warren Loomis who had been cheated and framed by a betting syndicate. Seeing an opportunity for a "disciple", Creech engineered an escape and took Loomis to a masquerade ball where the syndicate members were meeting, intending to set him on a murderous revenge rampage. When Loomis refused, Creech murdered a guest for his costume and then, dressed as a masked Harlequin, carried it out himself, only to almost immediately descend into murdering random guests and staff who caught his eye, luring them away to slit their throats, committing the infamous Tafferton Park Hotel massacre.
