"Do you really think I give a shit about this girl? I told you she was dead weight. Exactly how dead is up to you."
Brenda Johnson: So that's Evolution's End? You and Darren Melman killing some kids at school?
John McFadden: No, no, no, no. You keep on reducing this to some minuscule high-school shooting but it's so much more than that. I'm talking about setting the record. Killing the most people ever. It's about inspiring others. Columbine was a great idea. But they just didn't execute it right. We will. And people will remember us as they line up to die.
John McFadden: No, no, no, no. You keep on reducing this to some minuscule high-school shooting but it's so much more than that. I'm talking about setting the record. Killing the most people ever. It's about inspiring others. Columbine was a great idea. But they just didn't execute it right. We will. And people will remember us as they line up to die.
— The Closer, "Time Bomb"
Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson and the Major Crimes Unit have faced a large variety of vile rapists, murderers, and others. Even among the array of baddies, some stand out as especially heinous.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Franchise-wide
- Phillip Stroh is the most personal and recurring foe Brenda Leigh Johnson and the Major Crimes division have ever faced. When first encountering the team, Stroh uses his position as a defense attorney to mask the fact that he is a Serial Rapist who has raped over six women and killed his latest victim. After ditching his client to take the fall, Stroh returns and is ousted as a Serial Killer who has further raped and murdered five women by strangling them to death with a chain, and after trying to stab the teenager Rusty to death, Stroh is captured. Though locked in prison, Stroh's evil continues as he uses two men he assisted in becoming serial killers to murder specific targets for him, including his own minions, before escaping confinement by murdering several innocent people. Stroh goes on a bloody rampage while tracking down his mother to acquire her fortune, butchering numerous people from his childhood, including his stepparents and first girlfriend. Stroh is revealed to have been truly wicked since birth, as he tortured his stepsister; tried to burn his family alive; and raped and murdered three young girls while only a teenager. In the end, Stroh leaves a teenaged girl to slowly be strangled to death so he can attempt to escape justice, and uses his final moments to plead for mercy from Lieutenant Provenza, then try to shoot Provenza In the Back.
- "Head Over Heels": Morgan Bloom is the owner of Opulence Films, a porn company that employed Chris Mundy. When her carelessness led to Chris being infected with HIV, Morgan covered it up to keep him working and profit from it. This led to Chris unknowingly infecting thirteen innocent women with HIV, including his wife, and putting all of them at risk of spreading HIV further. After Chris found out the truth, attacked Morgan's son Oscar, and was killed in self-defense, Morgan covered up the death by dismembering him and spreading his corpse across LA, then attempts to frame her son for her crimes. Even without killing anyone herself, Morgan's selfish desire for profit drives her to one of the most disgusting crimes in the entire series.
- "Borderline": Hugo is a coyote who takes cruel advantage of the immigrants he smuggles across the border into America. After receiving payment to transport people, Hugo and his two partners hold them hostage once they have arrived in America, threatening their lives before they will let them go. When one truckload of immigrants failed to cow to his demands, Hugo left all 15—a child among them—locked inside the storage unit in the middle of the desert to slowly boil alive. Even when the orphaned son of two of his victims murders his partners, Hugo tries to lie his way to freedom while showing no remorse for his own countrymen whom he has extorted and murdered for years.
- "Manhunt": Lucas Daniel "Danny" Jones is the "PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) Killer". He kidnaps women who have gone through a divorce, brings them out on his boat into the middle of the ocean, and subjects them to hours or days of heinous torture and sexual assault with a cattle prod and lit cigarettes. Jones's abuse of his victims is so brutal that their internal organs are damaged from his attacks, and after he has strangled them to death, he leaves their bodies for the police to find. Having killed half a dozen women in the past, Jones restarts his spree when his wife divorces him by torturing and raping her to death, decapitating her new husband, and subjecting more women to his vicious sadism.
- "Time Bomb": Evolution's End is a gang of teenage psychopaths comprised of Darren Melman, John McFadden, and Frank, who seek to solidify themselves in history as the worst mass murderers ever. Believing Columbine to have a good idea but lacking in execution, the group plans to detonate a variety of propane tanks at a highly-populated mall, then kill the hundreds of shoppers as they try to flee through the mall's exit. The only motive for Evolution's End is their own fame and a twisted belief in weeding out the weak, hoping that their actions will inspire even more mass murders across the world.
- "Waivers of Extradition": Jesse Ray Moore is a misogynist Serial Killer with a body count of at least 16 women. Moore uses his job as a delivery driver to cross state lines from Arizona to Texas and locate women whom he attacks and stabs to death while dressed as a ninja. Moore intentionally draws out the killings for maximum agony, mutilating and grotesquely brutalizing his victims. So repulsive and brutal are the murders that the knowledge of what he has done leads Brenda to revoke a deal so she can send him to Texas to face the death penalty.
- "Help Wanted": Joe Meyers is an ICE agent who uses his position for truly horrifying purposes. Having eliminated his wife from the picture years ago, Meyers uses his own son—who he regularly abuses—to find nannies and babysitters in the area who are illegal immigrants. Meyers then attacks, tortures, and rapes the women, using the threat of deportation out of America to keep them silent. When his latest victim turns out to be in the country completely legally, Meyers beats her to death and begins rounding up every last woman he has ever assaulted, hoping to either deport them or kill them to ensure the police don't find them. When the Major Crimes division tracks him down, Meyers uses one of his victims as a hostage and attempts to kill her out of spite.
- "Executive Order": Kevin Mason is a dyed-in-the-wool narcissist who turns to terrorism to satisfy his raging desire for attention. Rejected from law enforcement due to his psychopathy, Mason responded by blaming affirmative action and trying to lure dozens of firefighters into a booby-trapped explosive and kill them all. Having failed in this initial scheme, Mason fatally shoots two paramedics and strangles an elderly man to death, using the latter's oxygen tanks as a carrier for home-brewed sarin. Mason plans to unleash his nerve gas onto the funeral for the paramedics and kill thousands of people in a horrific fashion, all as a racist "stand" against diversity hiring.
- "Living Proof" two-parter: Zoran Antunovich is a vile Serbian war criminal hiding out in Los Angeles. Once an elite soldier for the Serbian death squads who earned the name "ghosts", Zoran was part of the mass murder and raping that went on in the Marku family's village. Zoran personally gunned down multiple members of the Marku family—including an infant girl—before violently raping and torturing multiple women with a heated knife. Taking the identity of one of his victims in an attempt to escape justice, Zoran learns years later that some members of the Marku family survived and want to expose him. In response, Zoran hunts down and murders two of the women he raped, Sara and Anila Marku, and even when he learns that Anila birthed a boy as a result of Zoran's rape, Zoran intends to kill the child to tie up all loose ends of his past.
- "Drug Fiend": Wally Sanders is a supplier of pharmaceuticals meant to treat cancer patients. In truth cheaply selling saltwater to numerous hospitals in big cities under the guise of cancer medicine, Wally's fake drugs have resulted in hundreds of deaths, children included, with Wally even willing to commit murder to keep the truth hidden. Despite claiming to be giving cancer patients a painless death, Wally's massive bank account shows that his motives ultimately boil down to money.
- "The Deep End": Charles Frey is a high school swim coach who is convicted of killing his former champion Mateo "Matty" Torres for breaking into his home. In reality a serial child molester who has raped many underage men on his team by gaining their trust, Frey has ruined their lives knowing that the statute of limitations would prevent his arrest by the time they confess. When Matty threatened to expose him after he's kicked off his swim team, Frey killed him in an endeavor to frame him for attempted murder.
- "Special Master" two-parter: Markos Christakis, "The Burning Man", is a Serial Killer with a god complex revolving around his astrological sign. Obsessed with Sagittarius and Mars since his youth, during which time he assaulted and mutilated a teenage girl, Markos began acting out his depravity on prostitutes by kidnapping, raping, and strangling them. Killing 15 women over the years, Markos kidnaps another woman to make his latest victim and tries to murder several members of Major Crimes when they come to her rescue.
- "Fifth Dynasty": Chandler Ryan is a truly despicable son of a powerful judge who uses his connections to get away with atrocities. Chandler molested his own cousin Henry for years until Henry grew too old for his tastes, at which point Chandler began using his position as an immigration lawyer to isolate and molest his clients' children. After at least three families accused Chandler of assaulting their children, he shifted his attentions to Henry's little brother Sean, raping the boy multiple times before Henry learned of it and confronted Chandler. Chandler simply laughed in Henry's face and mocked him that both brothers "wanted it".
- "Conspiracy Theory" four-parter: Dr. William "Bill" Landon is a motivational speaker who uses his self-help seminars to mask his proclivities as one of the most prolific serial rapists the Major Crimes Division has ever faced. Landon uses his manipulated puppet Craig Curtis, owner of the restaurant franchise Tackles, in selecting Tackles waitresses to be lured to Landon's apartment, where Landon drugs, ties up, and rapes them. Landon has raped at least 14 women across the country—heavily implied to have many more than even that—and the attacks are so brutal that multiple victims attempted or succeeded in suicide. When one woman tried to report Landon, he used his status to instead get her thrown into prison for months and continue his assaults.
