"You know that bastard made her watch as he tortured the other guy? He told Keri the only way that he'd stop is if she killed the guy herself."
— Dominique Luca, regarding The "Vanity Killer", "Ghosts"
Sergeant Daniel "Hondo" Harrelson and the rest of the team have faced numerous killers, terrorists, and other criminals. A select few manage to stand out in terms of cruelty, brutality, or sheer scale.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Season 1
- "Radical": Professor Marc Lansky is a radical college lecturer whose anti-capitalist rhetoric hides a callous, smug, bitter man. Triggered by his university's unsuccessful attempts to remove him for causing a violent riot, Lansky targets two former students of his, radicalizing their frustrations with the elite until they agree to carry out a bombing spree. When one of the students accidentally blows himself up, forcing them to accelerate their timeline, Lansky manipulates the survivor, Kevin, into blowing up an office block that was the base of several investment firms, and then take the next bomb into the university's business department, in both cases aiming to cause massive casualties. When Kevin was trapped inside by the police, Lansky attempted to make him detonate the bomb and kill himself as well.
- "Homecoming": Trick Carter, inspired by the original Murder Incorporated, founds Murder L.L.C, promising professional hits with no blowback, with Trick personally performing each drive-by shooting whilst his crew films his murders as an optional extra. Kicking off his career, he murders three members of the 20 Street Hammers on commission, almost reigniting a gang war between the Hammers and the 42s to his complete apathy. Approaching the Volkov Brothers, to secure employment he offers to kill anyone in the entire city for them completely free as a demonstration of his skills, tracking down and murdering DA Rick Kushner a few hours later. He then takes a contract on property developer Nate Wilson and his wife. Cornered by S.W.A.T., Trick murders two of his own crew and then, pretending to surrender, tries to shoot Hondo. Soft-spoken and constantly professional, Trick openly admitted to loving murder and managed in the span of a single day to terrorize LA like few others.
- "Ghosts": Martin Harwell is an unpleasant electrical engineer who moonlights as the "Vanity Killer". Targeting young aspiring actors who just moved to LA, Harwell imprisoned them within an abandoned warehouse, keeping them until he kidnapped a new victim of the opposite sex. Making the newest victim watch, Harwell would brutally torture their predecessor for hours on end, carrying on until either the newest victim agreed to put them out of their misery, or they expired from the agony. Having already done this to eight people, Harwell enacts his twisted MO upon Keri, forcing her to watch as he slices up his ninth victim. Upon S.W.A.T. storming the building, Harwell blows up the warehouse, killing his ninth victim, and fakes his own death. Two years later, Harwell returns to LA to resume his killing spree, kidnapping a young woman and Lance Roy. Interrupted torturing the woman, Harwell ambushes Officer Dominique Luca and attempts to beat him to death.
Season 2
- "Shaky Town": Mack Drummond is a ruthless human trafficker, described by Hondo as "the lowest of the low". Taking advantage of the ongoing crisis in Haiti to ensure a constant supply of victims, Drummond has Sal Desir smuggle children into America where he sells them into servitude or worse. Cornered by S.W.A.T., Drummond threatens to murder one of his latest batch of children unless the team backs off. When an earthquake hits, Drummond refuses Hondo's pleas to let them get the children out, and using the chaos as a distraction, escapes, taking the boy James as a hostage. Stealing a car, he attempts to kill the driver when she demands that he let James go. Gagging and tying James up, Drummond locks him in the car's trunk, whilst having a wound stitched up. Seeing an opportunity to escape, he abandons James to starve and murders a paramedic, before trying to hijack a medical helicopter. Engaged by Hondo, Drummond tries to beat him to death.
Season 3
- "Sea Legs": Jakob Varga is the leader of the vicious Hungarian street gang Bal Kez. Expanding from their traditional markets, Varga turned their attention to Human Trafficking. For at least six years Varga and his men personally abduct teenager, and sometimes preteen, girls from the poorer parts of Eastern Europe, smuggling them back to America to work in his brothels or be sold to others. Whilst in the process of selling his latest four victims, Varga kidnapped and brutalized undercover officer Ava Ilic, only holding off killing her to sell her as well. When trying to escape from the police, Varga forced Ava to come with him as a Human Shield.
Season 4
- Marc Stargher, founder of the neo-Nazi terrorist organization the Imperial Dukes, is a vicious white supremacist with delusions of grandeur. Leading from behind the scenes, Stargher has one cell launch multiple arson attacks and attempted mass shootings on minority-run businesses and community centers, leading to multiple deaths and injuries, including the fatal shooting of officer Erika Rogers. Escalating Stargher has another cell attempt a gas attack on a university ceremony for renaming a building after a civil rights activist. Personally running his final plot, Stargher, attempting to take advantage of the city's escalating racial tensions, uses a lookalike to frame Black justice advocate Kevin Hilliard for bombing a police station, ensuring a mass protest at his arrest. Murdering the lookalike, Stargher disguises his remaining men as police officers and leads them in an attempt to massacre the protesters. Stargher intended this to result in city-wide riots, which he believed would in turn kick-start a race war to purge America of all ethnicities, communities, and ideologies which he deems inferior.
Season 6
- "Thai Hard" & "Thai Another Day": Zaw Min, aka "the Ghost Man", is a vicious Burmese drug lord who has spent years terrorizing a strip between the Thai and Myanmar border. Responsible for trafficking massive amounts of heroin as far as LA, Zaw regularly kidnaps children as young as 6 from the nearby villages, personally giving each child the choice between working for him or death. Forcing the children to work 15 hours a day preparing and packaging his drugs under the supervision of his brutal guards, when they're not working Zaw keeps them locked in tiny dirty rooms and murders anyone who tries to escape. Zaw's enforcers likewise live in terror of him, with some of them being children he previously abused. Not even his relatives are spared Zaw's cruelty, with him abducting his nephews, forcing the youngest to work with the other children and attempting to make 12-year-old Thet into a Child Soldier, trying to force him to shoot Hondo to prove himself. The authorities closing in, Zaw attempted to offload his drugs then escape, and when cornered by the police threatens to murder Thet.
- "Woah Black Betty": Gustav Varner is a smug, snotty international terrorist and explosives expert. Targeting NATO countries, Varner is responsible for bombings throughout Greece and Estonia, as well as blowing up the Villatoma Stadium in Spain, killing 198 people and severely injuring hundreds more. Now in LA intending to set off his worst attack yet, Varner hires Bryce McCabe and his crew to steal the team's armoured personal carrier, planning to use it to deliver a Dirty Bomb into downtown LA.
- "Unraveling": William Chen and weaselly fashion designer Vivian Tremblay are secretly partners in a brutal sweatshop operation. Scouting vulnerable young people from China, Chen would arrange for their travel to the US, promising them a better future, then upon arrival would imprison them in his factory. Forcing the victims to work from sunrise to sunset, Chen has aggressive taskmasters oversaw the operation, having the workers beaten for the slightest infraction or if he decided they weren't working hard enough; whilst Tremblay sold the products as her latest fashions and the two split the profits. When one girl attempted to escape, they had her beaten to death in front of the others as a warning. Following LaToya Turner managing to rescue two siblings, the pair, to prevent her from exposing them, engineered her murder, and recapturing Park attempted to sell all their victims out of LA. Cornered by the police Tremblay sold out Chen to save herself, whilst Chen took a victim hostage to try to force them to let him go.
- "Stockholm": Eli Wyatt is a brutish, yet clever and charismatic sex trafficker. Ten years previously, with the FBI after him for running a sex trafficking ring, Wyatt shot two agents and then to escape murdered Jax Evans so he could steal his identity. Charming his way into taking over the Evans farm, Wyatt turned it into the base for his new ring, with him and his men abducting vulnerable teenagers to force into prostitution, keeping them trapped in the barns when not working. Personally kidnapping two sisters, Wyatt became fixated with the younger, taking the 15-year old as his lover when not pimping her out, and brainwashing Natalie into believing he loved her. Confronted by the surviving FBI agent, Wyatt goaded him into ordering his team to storm the compound and attempted to kill all the agents with a bomb. Using the confusion as a distraction, Wyatt abandoned his men to save himself. Taking Officer Cabrera hostage upon Deacon refusing to let him escape, Wyatt attempted to kill her first.
- "Bunkies": Eric Hoffman, a senior guard at LA County Woman's prison, despite appearing simply a smarmy, misogynistic creep, is truthfully corrupt to the core. Posing as a supportive figure, Hoffman targets vulnerable prisoners, offering to smuggle them all manner of contraband in particular drugs. Waiting until they're indebted to him, at which point Hoffman forces them have sex with him, Hoffman regularly raped well over a dozen victims, having deliberately gotten them addicted so they were forced to keep coming back. Silencing the one victim who tried to expose him by planting drugs in her cell, Hoffman also intimidated his subordinate guard into silence, ensuring no would interfere with him making the prison into "his own personal pick and mix bar".
