"There is one serial killer who has shaped and defined police profiler Tony Hill's life, whose evil surpasses all others and who has the power to chill him to the bone: Jacko Vance."
— On Jacko Vance, blurb for The Retribution
Whether in print or on television, Dr. Tony Hill, DCI Carol Jordan, the other officers of the Bradfield police force, and their allies, have faced some of the most twisted and vicious Serial Killers and other criminals imaginable. Even among these, a select few distinguish themselves by being the worst of the worst.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Book Series
- The Wire In The Blood & The Retribution: Jacko Vance, one of the nation's most beloved celebrities with his cultivated image of a charming, philanthropic man of the people, is truthfully a calculating, narcissistic, misogynistic psychopath driven by an obsession with control, and is considered by Tony to be the most evil killer he ever encountered. For twelve years, Vance charmed vulnerable 14-15-year-olds into secretly meeting him, then he would shatter their arm with an vice and imprison them, repeatedly raping and torturing his victims for months on end until eventually they died from the trauma of the ordeal or starvation. Responsible for 17 deaths in this grizzly manner, Vance, realising that Detective Shaz Bowman was onto him, murdered her by ripping out her eyes, cutting off her ears, and pouring acid down her throat. Breaking out of prison years later, Vance murdered his loyal accomplice, whom he'd fooled into believing he was innocent, once Vance no longer needed him, and went on a rampage: murdering Carol's younger brother and his wife, raping her as she died; disfiguring and blinding Sergeant Chris Devine with an acid trap; and setting his ex-wife's stables on fire, intending to kill her new partner and succeeding in killing an innocent stable boy. Vance intended to carry on until he'd destroyed everything meaningful in the lives of everyone he blamed for his incarceration.
- The Torment of Others: Detective Sergeant Jan Shields, aka "the Voice", presents herself as a gruff but fair officer, but is secretly a corrupt, manipulative, lecherous psychopath driven by obsessions with power and control. Abusing her position in Vice, Shields forced all the Temple Fields prostitutes to regularly have sex with her to be allowed to work in the area, delighting in subjecting the women to humiliating and painful experiences that violated their every boundary, earning the epithet "The Creeper". Having been obsessed with the idea of possessing absolute control over another human being since childhood, Shields brainwashed Derek Tyler into becoming her "Trained Monkey" and then set him to murder four local prostitutes through an agonising manner that left them to slowly bleed to death, all for Shields's pleasure. Losing Tyler, Shields brainwashed Carl McKenzie and used him to carry on her killing spree, murdering two more women. Then, to up the stakes, Shields had McKenzie abduct DC Paula McIntyre, keeping Paula prisoner for days without food or water, so Shields could enjoy her prolonged suffering. The police closing in, Shields ordered Tyler to kill himself, then personally murdered McKenzie, and attempted to stab Tony to death.
- The Retribution: Eric Fletcher, despite projecting the façade of a quiet, unassuming individual, is truthful a vicious yet clever and cautious abuser, tormenting his vulnerable acrophobic wife Margo throughout their marriage. Upon their daughter Kerry turning 8, Eric began raping her, carrying on well into her twenties whilst keeping her under his thumb by punishing her mother, through either beatings or trapping Margo outside on their balcony for hours at a time. Margo's death allows Kerry to escape, but Eric, unable to accept her leaving him, took to murdering prostitutes, copying the methods from an obscure TV series and tattooing each victim with the word "Mine", so it would appear a serial killer was on the loose and scare Kerry into coming back to him. Strangling his first victim, Eric drowned his second and crucified his third upside down, driving the nails into her wrists and ankles before slitting her throat, and then dismembered a fourth woman whilst she was alive. When Kerry still refused to come back, Eric, losing his patience, Eric made her his fifth victim by flaying her alive.
- Cross and Burn: Gareth Taylor is a snotty, hot-tempered meticulous egotist who since childhood has possessed a dangerously misogynistic mindset. At 14, Taylor first raped his stepmother, carrying on regularly doing so until he left home. As an adult, Taylor was a controlling and abusive husband, constantly undermining and isolating his wife to point of rarely allowing her to leave their home, controlling every aspect of her life, and regularly beating and raping her. Losing her, Taylor began stalking and kidnapping women to force them to be her replacement, subjecting them a horrific regime of imprisonment, beatings, and rape at every perceived infraction, subjecting his first victim to nearly a month of torture, before finally beating them to death for failing to meet his impossible expectations. Succeeding in murdering three innocent women, Taylor was arrested whilst attempting to abduct his fourth victim.
- Season 6: "Michael", a self-proclaimed "fallen angel" who is driven by an obsession with control and attention, is the show's only recurring antagonist and a dark reflection to Tony Hill. Murdering a personal counsellor he stole his identity to find new victims. Michael's MO is to abduct people he considered "failures", binding them so they are under his complete control. Keeping his victims imprisoned for weeks or longer, Michael would force feed them rich fatty foods then dismember their limbs whilst they were conscious, then cook and eat their body parts in front of them; finally hanging his victims if they resisted or he grew bored with them. Murdering his fifth victim for refusing to comply, he'd decided to make her boyfriend his next victim, leaving him to slowly choke when he resisted. Imprisoned, Michael developed a fascination with Tony Hill, faking a religious conversion to escape he murdered the Chaplin by stuffing Bible pages down his throat. Now free Michael took to stalking Tony and sending him taunts, pausing briefly to murder Fiona Grantham by cutting off her head. Managing to kidnap Tony, Michael tried on final time to kill him.
- "Shadows Rising": Beloved celebrity Jack Vance, despite seeming attentive, charming, and compassionate, is in reality a controlling, vicious predator. Regularly beating and raping Jilly Davis during their marriage, once she escaped, Jack took to preying on impressionable teenagers who resembled Jilly. Charming the girls into agreeing to meeting up, he would imprison them within a tiny room and then spend a week beating and raping them, climaxing in him smashing their right cheekbone and slitting their throat. Over the span of seven years, he succeeded in killing eight girls in this manner, each time living out the fantasy of breaking and killing Jilly. Growing concerned at Beth Morris endangering his ability to continue, Jack brutally stabbed her to death afterwards, posing her body for Amanda Vance to find, aiming to traumatize her into silence. Framing the loyal assistant Jason for the murder, the killer returns his attention to carrying on his brutal torment with his latest victim.
- "Bad Seed": Michael Thompson, aka "Mack The Knife", masquerades as a reformed murderer but is in truth a horrific killer by proxy. Murdering two prostitutes in the 1970s by disemboweling them and raping the corpses, Mack pretended to reform while, in prison but secretly groomed a vulnerable young boy called Laurence into killing on his behalf after becoming unable to use his hands. Upon his release from prison, Mack had Laurence murder a couple in their home, with the woman having her fetus carved out of her body while she was still alive, before forcing Laurence to murder his own girlfriend in the same way, as well as a woman called Sarah Maynard. Telling Laurence to take photos, Mack masturbated over the killings. Knowing that Tony suspected him, Mack enrolled on his university course purely so he could taunt him and even had Laurence horrifically torture one of Tony's students, Peter, to death. Vicious, manipulative, and sadistic, Mack ultimately proved so evil that Tony allowed him to be killed just to stop his murder spree.
- "Nothing but the Night": Michael James Dawson, despite his youth is a vicious, sadistic brute and animalistic maniac. A day after his release for violent offenses, Dawson murdered the vulnerable Paul Macmillan's former abuser to indebt him, recreating a painful execution from a film. Setting them up with his girlfriend Leah, whom Dawson regularly beat and abused at the slightest provocation or just for fun, he forced Paul to become his partner having developed a taste for murder. Upon finding a sufficient brutal death on TV, Dawson would track down a victim to re-enact what he watched, going on a killing spree with his signature being torture. Upon Paul deciding he wanted to stop, Dawson beat him to death on the spot. Forcing Leah to become his new partner, Dawson abducted a young woman planning, to force Leah to torture her to death then kill Leah afterwards.
- "Synchronicity": The Bradfield Sniper is an unnamed compulsive gambler who embarks on a killing spree both to gain a sense of control over life and for the sheer thrill. Picking his targets by cutting a pack of cards, if the result was positive he would then kill one random person where the card represented, murdering roughly one person a day over a week, each time leaving the playing card at the scene. Starting with an office worker one morning, the sniper deliberately non-fatally shot his next victim so he could watch his futilely attempts to crawl away before he finished him off. Murdering a compassionate teacher in front of his pupils, the sniper taunted the police over their inability to stop him before proceeding to slaughter a shop worker, and then a kindly priest on the steps of his church. Realizing his game couldn't carry on indefinitely, deciding to go out in "a blaze of glory", the sniper began simply massacring everyone he encountered until he was stopped, slaughtering three more people at the office where he started.
- "Hole in the Heart": Professor Martin Sutton, despite appearing to be a friendly, charismatic figure is truthfully a smug, perverted Christian fanatic with a misanthropic view of the world. Using religion to fulfill his twisted fantasies, Sutton recruited six vulnerable individuals, forming an Apocalypse Cult, then sends his brainwashed followers to murder those he deems corrupt in methods that mimic the executions of Christian Saints, having them kill themselves upon completing the assignment. Under Sutton's orders, a property developer is burned alive; a kind-hearted bishop dies from multiple stab wounds; and a local judge is decapitated. Hoping to throw the police off the scent, Sutton ordered a follower to chain a millstone around their neck and jump into the sea, then another follower to blow themselves up in an attempt to kill ACC Eden. Revealing his judgement that the whole world is corrupt, the leader plans for the final follower, vulnerable biochemist Kurt Merrick, to release a modified strain of bubonic plague starting an epidemic which he believed would kick-start the Rapture.
- "From the Defeated": John Taylor is a simple-minded thuggish survivalist and illegal fight club champion, who's discovery he is sterile challenges his survival of the fittest based sense of superiority. Following an attempt to rape a co-worker, Taylor vowed to correct this by gaining a child via a proxy. Obsessing over young mother Ellie Jacobs whom he decides is his "Eve", Taylor's eugenics mindset devised a twisted method of testing for a suitably superior "Adam". Kidnapping fit, attractive men in their early twenties, Taylor imprisoned them in a makeshift dungeon, giving them just enough scavenged food to survive. Then at gunpoint he forces two victims to brutally fight to the death, the winner surviving until the next fight. Finding one victim is a different ethnicity—thus an unsuitable proxy candidate—Taylor simply murders him. After putting four people through his traumatizing ordeals, Taylor kidnaps Ellie and her baby, forcing the survivor Mark Barron to attempt to impregnate her or else he'll kill the baby, stopping Mark from making the experience easier for Ellie as she was for him later, whilst planning to kill Mark and the baby once he no longer needed them.
