Captain Malone: A chamber of horrors. That box probably contains half the unsolved murders in San Francisco County. A real maniac.
Lieutenant Stone: The man that kidnapped and murdered a six-year-old boy. Holly's brother was the first man to identify Praxas as the killer. The killer of little Joel Ramsey. That's why Praxas had to kill Del and Holly...and frame somebody else.
Lieutenant Stone: The man that kidnapped and murdered a six-year-old boy. Holly's brother was the first man to identify Praxas as the killer. The killer of little Joel Ramsey. That's why Praxas had to kill Del and Holly...and frame somebody else.
—On Gregory Praxas, pilot movie
Lieutenant Mike Stone and Inspector Steve Keller face many crooks of all shapes and sizes in their patrols of San Francisco, but even the hardened duo are repulsed by these particularly evil criminals.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Pilot Movie
- Gregory Praxas is a B movie actor turned vicious Serial Killer out to prove his status as an "angel of death." His most recent victim a 6-year-old boy, Praxas is discovered by a pair of street-faring siblings, whose attempts to blackmail Praxas result only in him beating the brother and sister to death. Later kidnapping another potential witness to his crimes, Praxas tries to murder him as well as Stone and Keller. After his death, police discover a chest full of mementos from Praxas's countless victims, one of the officers outright noting that the sheer number of victims Praxas has could make up half of San Francisco's unsolved homicides.
Season 1
- "Legion of the Lost": Roy Richardson is a greedy businessman who seeks to ensure that the rightful heir of his boatyard corporation, Paul Thomas, never claims his inheritance. Knowing Paul is currently homeless and living among vagrants, Richardson has his hatchet man, Terry, go about beating homeless men to death over the course of several nights, leaving three bodies in his wake. Richardson then tries to have Paul himself beaten to death, hoping for it to look like just another serial killing, and Paul's best friend Jake is killed in the process. When confronted with his crimes, Richardson just smugly remarks that he "did the city a favor" by thinning the homeless population.
Season 2
- "Harem": William "Billy" Jeffers is a former rock star who has turned his charisma to the business of teenage prostitution. Jeffers seduces and manipulates young teens into becoming hookers, pimping them out to clients while he rolls in the dough. When one of his workers contracts an STD, Jeffers beats her to death to cover it up from some of his clients, then stabs another girl to death when she discovers the truth—Jeffers had also murdered his personal girlfriend in the past for undisclosed reasons. A despicable parasite preying on naive young girls' love for him, Jeffers cares naught for any of them, reacting to his supposed "favorite" girl's horror at his crimes by calling her a tramp no one will believe when she turns witness for the cops.
- "The Twenty-Four Karat Plague": Vic Tolliman is a greedy crook who leads a gang of three other men in violently robbing a shipment of gold, leaving one of the guards they assault to die of a heart attack. Even when he learns that the gold is irradiated, Vic doesn't care and tricks one of his allies into handling the gold without proper protection, which gives the man lethal radiation poisoning. Vic plans to sell the gold on the Black Market, flippant to the fact that the radiation will kill hundreds of thousands of people, and he bludgeons two of his allies to death to ensure he gets away with it.
- "The Victims": Lee Wilson is an escaped convict, locked up for attempted murder, who kills a guard on his way out by taking him hostage then flinging him from a speeding vehicle. Later murdering a pawn shop cashier to rob the place, Lee holds an elderly couple at gunpoint and plays a "shooting gallery" game with them as the targets, executing the couple for fun. Lee takes a woman as a hostage after sexually assaulting her and having her husband beaten, threatening to shoot her in the head before abandoning one of his partners who has grown horrified by Lee's actions. When asked by Keller why he carried out such a horrible crime spree, Lee just laughs and spits on him, having no real reason for his day-long reign of terror.
- "Blockade": Chet Barrow is a vicious thug who moonlights as a Serial Rapist and killer. Manipulating the young Russ into helping him capture his latest victim, Barrow rapes and murders her while planning for several more in the coming days. When exposed for his crimes, Barrow takes Russ, the boy's mother, and friend Jill as hostages, smacking them around and planning to kill them all once he escapes. Even when Russ and his mom escape, Barrow tries to rape and strangle Jill to death.
Season 4
- "No Place to Hide": Jack Constantine is the co-leader of the White Brothers prison gang. Operating on the outside of the prison, Constantine forces new inmates to smuggle in drugs via their terrified wives; if either of the couple refuses to comply, both are killed by Constantine's cronies. When one of Constantine's minions refuses to carry out a hit for him, Constantine murders the man without a second thought. Constantine takes a particular liking to his latest puppet, Rita, and after forcibly kissing and otherwise terrorizing her, Constantine tries to stab her to death while promising that her imprisoned husband will die shortly.
- "Murder by Proxy": Quincy Lloyd is hired by the company CCI to aggressively buy out entire neighborhoods from their homeowners so that CCI can use the land for its own purposes. Going far beyond what his horrified employers anticipated, Quincy hires criminals to turn the neighborhoods into wretched hives where assaults, arson, and child endangerment run rampant so that he can force the homeowners away with ease. Seniors' bones are broken; children's pets are killed; and entire families are attacked by gangsters wielding crowbars, all under Quincy's orders. Any citizens who still refuse to sell are killed by Quincy, and he ultimately has his thugs go on a drive-by shooting spree through a neighborhood to finalize his latest buy-out.
- "Merchants of Death": Buddy Winston, leader of the Kingsmen, represents the worst of the youth gangs roaming San Francisco. Running drugs to children, Buddy is a violent, homicidal bully who reacts to encroachment on his turf from a rival gang by stabbing one of their members to death. Desiring to wipe out the competition entirely, Buddy abuses the teen boy Rudy into handing over a shipment of M-16 rifles that Rudy accidentally found, after which Buddy beats Rudy into a coma. Buddy plans to use the rifles to massacre a meeting of rival youth gangs and their dozens of members, and even tries to gun down the kindly local youth advisor Jeff.
