"A 60-year-old woman. She did things she never expected to do...Do you wanna hear how, in the evening, she said she would do anything as she begged for her life? Or how, in the morning, she begged me to take her out of her misery? Which do you think I enjoyed more?"
— William Lewis, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, "Her Negotiation", after telling Detectives Benson and Amaro in graphic detail what he did to one of his victims (including putting out cigarettes on her)
In the criminal justice system, these particular offenders are considered especially heinous. In cities around the country, the officials who investigate these vicious felonies must unravel their tangled webs of murder, rape, and violence to bring down these vile criminals. These are their stories.
FBI and its Spin-Offs can be found here.
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Examples
- "Everybody's Favorite Bagman" & "The Torrents of Greed" two-parter: Frank Masucci was the franchise's first recurring villain, and one of the worst. Loaning out his henchman Antonio "Tony" Scalisi to a group of corrupt city officials, Masucci had Scalisi kill Councilman Chuck Halsey on their behalf, then had Scalisi murdered after he was released by EADA Benjamin Stone, leaving the officials to take the fall for a racket he was complicit in. In a later appearance, Masucci and his brother-in-law Harv Biegel sent thugs to assault store owners who refused to buy bootleg cigarettes, leaving one man dead and one man crippled. Indicted for, among other crimes, the murder of Trucking Union President Russel Mackey, Masucci sabotaged the prosecution by forcing leg-breaker Joe Pilefski to perjure himself, and had Biegel killed when he became concerned his brother-in-law was getting ready to turn on him. After Biegel and Mackey's bodies—along with over a dozen others—were retrieved from a mass grave site in New Jersey, Masucci found himself re-indicted, only to be assassinated on orders from his sister, Katherine Biegel, who feared, with cause, that she was next on his hit list.
- "Refuge" two-parter: Constantin Volsky ordered an innocent man murdered and dismembered because he had a relative who wouldn't go along with a money-laundering scheme. When he finds out that the key eyewitness for the prosecution is a 6-year-old boy, he sends assassins to kill him. They kill his mother and an A.D.A. The boy lives, but only because they didn't cut deep enough into his throat. In the second part, he orders the bombing of the precinct where the police protagonists work, just for giggles.
- "Bodies": Mark Bruner is a sexual sadist responsible for the rapes of at least 17 teenage girls. Murdering the girls afterwards, Bruner would keep the bodies in an unknown location so he could admire their bodies as they decayed. After being arrested, Bruner refuses to tell the parents of his victims where their bodies were, purely so they couldn't get closure; however, he shows his lawyer Tim Schwimmer the bodies, which forces him to keep it secret due to attorney-client privilege and leads to Schwimmer being arrested as an accomplice. Unnerving even Briscoe, Green, and McCoy, Bruner stands out as one of the worst within the original series.
- "Deadlock": Leon Vorgitch is a psychopath defined by his callous regard for human life and his love for murder. Arrested for the brutal murders of five people, Vorgitch escapes from prison, killing two guards in the process. Pursued by the detectives, Vorgitch goes on a rampage, resulting in the deaths of several students he had taken hostage. When arrested again, Vorgitch brags to Connie and Jack that he will break out of prison again and come for them.
Examples
- "Her Negotiation" & Season 15: William Lewis, born Lewis Williams and known as "the Beast", is the Arch-Enemy of Detective Olivia Benson. His soft-spoken manner and good looks hide the fact that he is a killer, rapist, and sadistic torturer. His MO is going from state to state, under different aliases, kidnapping, raping and torturing women, regardless of age, for hours and even days on end. When he was young, he watched his babysitter get raped and killed in front of him; he describes it as the best day of his life. Eventually he kidnaps Benson, forces her to watch as he kills the father and rapes the mother of his defense attorney. After killing a cop and taking Benson to a house to rape her, he takes a maid and young girl hostage. When Benson turns the tables on him, he deliberately tries to provoke her to kill him, an experience he makes Benson relive during his trial. After his escape, he kills another cop, rapes a nurse and kidnaps a young girl. When Benson confronts him, he takes her hostage again, but becomes turned off by his initial molestations, so he decides to force her into a game of Russian Roulette. He ends up fatally shooting himself as one last way of tormenting Benson, figuring she'll be accused of his murder.
- "Manhunt": Darryl Kern is a former soldier discharged for believing that soldiers enjoy killing. Taking that enjoyment to the streets, Kern makes a hobby of raping, torturing, and murdering women, granting him the moniker the "Bowery Stalker". When his hideout is discovered by the police, they discover 18 more bodies of his victims, some which are of children, buried there. Having his assistant Marvin Posey, a mentally fragile man, kidnap a woman and her daughter, Kern kills Posey and then tries to kill his kidnapped victims. By the time of his arrest, Kern had killed at least 30 people.
- "Redemption": Arthur Blessard is an IRS employee who uses his position to gain access to women for his depraved tastes. Starting in 1983, Blessard raped, tortured, and strangled 7 women, even biting chunks of flesh off his victims, earning himself the moniker the "SoHo Strangler." Blessard framed a mentally challenged man named Roger Berry for the murders, getting Berry put away for 18 years while Blessard claimed 12 more victims across the country, progressing to slitting his victims' throats. When Berry was released, Blessard returned to New York and claimed two more victims, hoping to pin them on Berry once more while he is free to continue killing.
- "Angels": Anthony "Tony" Damon is the pompous, greedy head of Global Voyages Travel Agency, a front for child trafficking, child Sex Tourism, and child pornography. Viewing children as merchandise to be sold, through Global Voyages, Tony regularly arranges for wealthy child predators to rape children abroad and record the instances on camera at a base price of $5,000. Additionally, Tony facilitates the smuggling and false adoption of children as sex slaves in the United States. With the death of a client, Bret Jansen, Tony tries to downplay his connection to Jansen when asked by the SVU. Arrested by Detective John Munch while Munch is posing as a prospective client, Tony falsely accuses another client of murdering Jansen and attempts to shift blame onto the perpetrators for the recorded sexual abuse, only for said client to later reveal that Tony directly facilitated the actions of his clientele.
- "Dominance": Charlie Baker had in the past raped his brother Billy, and then beat up his alcoholic father when they were caught; Charlie continues to beat his father. In the span of a week, Charlie has either killed, or manipulated the weak-willed Billy into killing, around 10 people, but not before forcing them to have sex with each other first. Then Charlie kidnapped two women, killed their boyfriends, and kept them captive on a roof where they risk dying of exposure. Charlie also framed Billy so the latter would face punishment for his crimes.
- "Ritual": Martin Bosa is a Nigerian man who is the head of a human trafficking ring specializing in children. For years Bosa has been taking children from Africa and shipping them to the US to sell them as forced laborers or as sex slaves. When a pedophilic client murders a boy he bought from Bosa, Bosa opts to cover his tracks by locking over a dozen children in a storage unit to starve to death. When arrested, Bosa is unrepentant, only revealing the location of his latest shipment to avoid execution.
- "Debt":
- Ricky Yao is the smug leader of a Snakehead gang in New York's Chinatown who facilitates the illegal immigration of people from China. Immigrants Yao imports are forced into debt and face beatings and threats to their lives and the lives of family members if they can't pay Yao, who is a suspect in three murders and several assaults but has avoided prosecution due to witnesses disappearing or being intimidated into silence. If the immigrants, are caught Yao has lawyer Roger Baker file asylum claims and Yao pays for their release, leaving them in debt to him. Yao also forces hundreds of women to work as prostitutes for him, with at least 20 of them being killed in the process. Yao forced a teenager named Ping Wu into prostitution then murdered her mother Jiao when she threatened to go to the police. Yao then beat Jiao's sister Li Mei nearly to death and threatened to kill her, Ping, and Ping's younger siblings if she didn't pay off Jiao's debt. When arrested for extortion, Yao taunts the police about Ping and orders his gang to kill her.
- Roger Baker is a seemingly friendly lawyer who is in reality Ricky Yao's partner in his criminal operation. If Yao's immigrants are caught, Baker would file asylum claims for them and have Yao pay for their release, leaving the immigrants in debt to Yao under threat of death. Baker is also the supplier of Yao's whorehouses with hundreds of women, some as young as 15, being forced into prostitution under his supervision, where many of them are abused and murdered.
- "Charisma": Eugene Hoff, alias Abraham Ophion, is the pedophilic leader of a cult of his 100 followers, which included his preteen victims and their families. Hoff separates the married couples, because he said that they couldn't be soldiers of God if they were slaves to the flesh, and uses all the women and girls of his cult for sexual favors, fathering seven children with them. His earliest victim was a 4-year-old Janie Buchman, who her father caught in the same room with a near-naked Hoff, causing his family to leave the church. Growing paranoid, Hoff began to prepare his followers for war, filling their heads with the idea of the U.S. government coming to kill them and having one member kill six of his children and then herself. He was also a greedy man, killing John Cramer and lying to his wife for John's million-dollar bank account and only keeping his latest victim Melanie alive so he can claim her two-million-dollar trust fund after their baby is born. Hoff is ultimately a depraved individual who believes himself to be greater than God.
- "Fault": Victor Paul Gitano is a deplorable pedophile and described as a "sadist...[who]...chooses children because they're just easier to control.". Responsible for the molestation of over a dozen children as a teenager, Gitano takes a fancy to torturing, raping, and murdering kids as an adult. Kidnapping two children for his sick desires, Gitano slits one of the kid's throats when the police hunt him in a subway. Cornered at a warehouse, Gitano boasts how he murdered the other child, claiming she was a slut, before trying to kill Stabler with a shotgun.
- "Confrontation": Luke Dixon is among the more heinous rapists in the series. As he thinks that children with imperfections shouldn't be accepted by the public, he tries to create a "Master Race" by impregnating his victims. He operates by using master keys to break in his victims house, forcing them to urinate so he could know their menstrual cycles, and raping them again at the day of ovulation. Dixon has done so to 19 women, including one that he murdered after she confronted him, and another who has been raped thrice and committed suicide due to the emotional trauma. Finally, before getting arrested, Dixon attempted to kill Detective Dani Beck with a knife. With the unique nature of his crimes taking Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil to a new level, Luke Dixon, despite not having an inordinately large number of victims, managed to stand out in a series dealing with sexual crimes.
- "Svengali": Robert Morten is a smugly sadistic, self-styled "artist" currently incarcerated for a vicious killing spree in which he kidnapped 8 women, tortured and raped them for at least 12 hours each, then murdered them in cruelly creative fashions such as crushing their skulls with a press, ripping their hearts out, or strangling them with a chain. When contacted by the 17-year-old Cecilia in a desperate attempt to find her father, Morten instead preys on and grooms the girl, mentally and sexually abusing her through her status as a law firm intern while twisting her to "love" him. Eventually coercing her into continuing his spree by butchering one of her friends, Morten then uses one of his other "fans" to bomb the SVU office, nearly killing several officers. For his own amusement, Morten savagely insults and tears down Cecilia when she's caught, sending the woman into a psychotic breakdown while Morten mocks her for being a "talentless hack" compared to himself.
- "Pursuit": Adam Grafton is a sadistic killer and rapist with over forty victims to his name over at least 25 years. Starting as a teenager, Grafton would claim his victims—some of whom, including TV host Alicia Harding's younger sister Vanessa, were in their mid-teens at most—in clumps and paralyze them from the chest down by stabbing them in a certain area, rape them repeatedly, and viciously stab them to death to finish them off, but not before stabbing them in their lung, collapsing it and preventing the victim from screaming for help. In the present day, Grafton is obsessed with mentally toying with Alicia about his role in her sister's death by stalking her and sending her bloody pieces of old evidence from the case. When Alicia insults him on live TV, Grafton flies into a rage and brutally murders EADA Sonya Paxton, including before trying to hunt down and murder Alicia, which leads to his arrest. At the end of the episode, even on Death Row, Grafton coldly and smugly, if not gleefully, tells Detective Benson about all the women he's killed without so much as a hint of remorse.
- "Jersey Breakdown": Robert "Bobby" Masconi, the Hudson County Prosecutor, is a corrupt New Jersey legal official and the clandestine business partner of nightclub entrepreneur and racketeer Perry Cannavaro. In addition to facilitating the trafficking and prostitution of underage girls using Perry's clubs, Masconi abuses his position as a prosecutor to have 90% of juvenile offenders who come through the chambers of Judge Daniel Dolan — who Masconi had extorted by having the latter photographed being serviced by an underage prostitute — sent to the routinely abusive and inhumane Knollwood Juvenile Facility. In turn, Masconi receives money for every offender Dolan sends to the institution, laundering the money through a bogus publicity firm, and using the money for real estate purchases. Having sexually assaulted Claire Wilson, a teenage server working at one of Perry's clubs, Masconi has Claire sent to Knollwood on fraud charges — behind Perry's back — to silence her when he realizes that Detective Olivia Benson and her squad are investigating the matter.
- "Undercover Mother" & "Surrendering Noah": Johnny Drake, alias Johnny D., is a brutal sex trafficker and rapist, having spent the past two decades kidnapping women and selling them into prostitution. Often, Johnny would rape them himself or order his men to gang rape them. One of his victims was a young woman named Eli, with whom he conceived a child. When first arrested, Johnny is caught with four prisoners in his hideout, taking one of them at gunpoint. Johnny is charged with seventeen accounts of kidnapping, rape and trafficking, but learns of his son Noah, whom Benson is adopting; he decides to use Noah as his ticket to freedom, making Benson out to be a woman with a vendetta, and seeks parental rights for Noah to spite Benson's wish not have Noah be part of that kind of life. To intimidate his witnesses, he has one of his pimps murdered, but when five of them testify anyways, he snaps in court, taking one officer hostage, and shooting another officer and the judge, before killing said hostage and attempting to kill Detective Nick Amaro.
- "Exchange": Richard Matthews poses as a benevolent foster father when in reality he's a serial predator. Taking in teenage girls, Matthews would rape them while forcing his wife to watch, recording the act for his own purposes; he would also pimp them out to other men and record those sessions as well. Setting his eyes on the Barassi twins, Matthews gaslit them into believing their father raped them before taking them himself, raping them for years under the guise of love. When confronted with his crimes, Matthews insists that what he did to his victims was "beautiful", choosing to commit suicide rather than face justice for his crimes.
Examples
- "Death Roe": Tommy Onerato is a seemingly charming restaurant owner who hides a deplorable agenda. Murdering a food critic who had criticised his restaurant via poison, Tommy scapegoats his daughter's husband as the culprit, killing the latter and hiding the evidence via a meat grinder due to him trying to break away from the business with Tommy's daughter. Tommy's most horrific crime, however, is that he has been sexually abusing his own daughter since she was a child, seeing her as a sex object. Despite being arrested, Tommy mocks his daughter over her trauma and how no one will take her after what he's done to her, leaving her psychologically damaged.
- "Shibboleth": Frank McNare is a repulsive Serial Killer with a penchant for targeting young, physically fit women. Choosing his victim, Frank would then strip them to their underwear and tie them up by their neck and ankles, causing the victim to asphyxiate themselves when they got too tired from holding their position. A sadist at heart, Frank would repeatedly taunt the police by sending letters about their failure, and in one instance forced an officer to hear the dying pleas of one of his victims. Despite stopping his killings due to marrying a woman who'd he repeatedly abuse, Frank resumes his homicides when said wife was diagnosed with cancer. Hearing his son, who he had abandoned, was a suspect for his latest murder spree, Frank happily lets him take the fall for his crimes, viewing him as weak and pathetic.
- "To the Bone": Chesley Watkins is a Control Freak extraordinaire motivated by greed. Taking in several young boys, Chesley uses them so she's able to collect the money given for them, also corrupting some of them by teaching them robbery and murder. Chesley would then have her sons rob several houses and have their occupants butchered via a machete. Chesley later has an investigating officer killed and even orders the murder of one of her own adopted sons to stop him from speak to the detectives. When arrested, Chesley tries to scapegoat one of her sons by forcing him to admit he's responsible and has him commit suicide after, allowing her to be released and continue her twisted operation.
- "Abel & Willing": Dr. Abel Hazard is a psychologist who became obsessed with pushing the limits of human goodness after learning that Nazis forced his grandfather to kill his grandmother. Hazard would kidnap innocent couples for him to experiment on before forcing them to kill each other, or else he would kill them himself, having already done this to eleven couples in five different cities. Even when one person chose to kill herself to save her spouse, thus disproving Hazard's theory, Hazard continues his murders anyway, refusing to believe that he is wrong.
Examples
- "After Shakespeare": Clark Redmond is the greedy CEO of Mohawk Enterprises. A Shady Real Estate Agent looking to sell more rooms in his apartments, Redmond hopes to start a gang war in order to scare the original tenants out of their homes. Redmond has one of his associates manipulate some younger gangsters to kill a rival leader, while having guns sold to the gangs to further the conflict and violence, no matter how many people might die.
- "Color Lines": Duane Armstrong, otherwise known as the "Omega Bomber", is a racist former US Army Sergeant turned terrorist who holds progressive society in contempt. Having killed six people previously, Duane leaves fragments with the Greek letter "Omega" in his bombs, calling and taunting the police after each attack. Antagonizing NYPD Detectives Eddie Torres and J. C. Williams after his most recent attack, Duane subsequently attacks a Congressman with a bomb in his smoke detector. Eventually, Duane plans to attack a US Army General who received a promotion instead of him at an event with 100 people in attendance, but is thwarted by the police.
- "A Time of Faith" two-parter: Robert Olsen is a plain-looking White supremacist responsible for the firebombing of multiple churches in the Black community, endangering scores of civilians and successfully killing two people. After his accomplice, Jeffrey Lloyd, is caught attempting to burn down an unoccupied church by NYPD Detectives J. C. Williams and Tommy McNamara, and is subsequently used as an informant, Olsen snaps Jeffrey's neck and tosses him out the window, resulting in his own eventual arrest.
- "Spare Parts": Dr. Royce, the respected chief of medical staff at the Gramercy Clinic, secretly harvests organs from the less fortunate, having targeted multiple impoverished teenagers and had them killed for their organs. Upon realizing that undercover Detective Nell Delaney has the same blood type as his favorite violinist, Royce attempts to extract her heart, only for NYPD Detectives J. C. Williams and Alec Stone to interfere. When confronted, Royce tries to argue that he has the right to choose who lives and dies due to his position.
- "Don't Read the News": Franklin Barnes is a family man who moonlights as a vicious Serial Killer who preys on young African-American sex workers on the South Side. After luring a girl into his car, Barnes drives them to a secluded area, where he strangles and shoots them before having sex with their dead body, taking photographs all the while. In 2008, Barnes claimed at least ten lives, with his only surviving victim being Cherry, a fifteen-year-old who was rendered infertile after she was brutally assaulted and left for dead by Barnes. After seemingly taking a nearly decade-long break, Barnes resurfaces and kills three more girls, with one of them being his son Ricky's girlfriend, Grace. Barnes sets Ricky up to take the fall for all of the murders, but is caught anyway after he is recognized by Cherry. During interrogation, Barnes smugly implies that he has dozens of other victims, and when asked how he could throw his own son under the bus, coldly replies, "He'll get over it."
Examples
- Law & Order's "Charm City" & Homicide: Life on the Street's "For God and Country": Colonel Alexander Nathaniel Rausch (only appearing in "For God and Country") is a former intelligence officer turned racist killer. He manipulates the recently-laid-off Brian Egan into setting off a gas bomb of silver arsenic on the New York Subway, killing 20 Black people and injuring others. Several years earlier, he had Egan commit a similar attack on a Baltimore church, resulting in six fatalities, all Black people. Once Egan is captured, Rausch kills Egan's wife to prevent him from talking, with Egan's teenage son surviving due to hiding. When captured, Rausch admits that his goal is to provoke a race war, claiming he wants "the mongrels to stop feeding on the hard work and good faith of the rest of us", and that when "you have a cancer, you cut it out".
- Chicago Fire's "Nobody Touches Anything", Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's "Chicago Crossover", & Chicago P.D.'s "They'll Have to Go Through Me": Bob Clinton (only appearing in "Chicago Crossover") is the sadistic "middle man" of the "Chess and Checkers Club", a depraved child pornography ring which exploits troubled street children and orphans. Getting children from a local youth center, Clinton livestreams the abuse, torture, and rape he inflicts on them, with pedophiles from around world adding their own recommendations of what disgusting and vile sex acts they want said kids to experience. Clinton taunts his victims before the livestreams begin and draws out their pain, and in the past had even been responsible for forcing Detective Lindsey's brother into this and totally destroying him. Clinton has done this to dozens of kids over fifteen years and is even stopped right before he attempts to rape his latest victim.
