Abel Hazard

✓
This villain was proposed but was rejected by the community for not being heinous enough or lacks what is necessary to be a Pure Evil villain. Therefore, this villain shall be added to our "Never Again List", where proposed villains rejected by the community shall be placed to prevent future proposals of the same evil-doer. They can be proposed again (with the permission of an administrator) if new elements appear in their series that can change their status as non-PE villains. Any act of adding this villain to the Pure Evil category without a proposal or creating a proposal for this villain without the permission of an administrator will result in a ban. Additional Notice: This template is meant for admin maintenance only. Users who misuse the template will be blocked for a week minimum.

This article's content is marked as Mature
The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, strong drug use, extremely traumatic themes, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older.

If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page.
Note: Content classification services hold no influence over the template's criteria and usage. Only the content itself matters.

“	All done under the most stringent of circumstances, nothing manipulated or altered. Age, sex, religion, income, race. All painstakingly factored in. Five years, nine different cities, out of ten trials only one subject shows selfless altruism, and that was just because of their age.	„
	~ Abel bragging about "proving" his theory to Detective Zach Nichols.

Dr. Abel P. Hazard, formerly Abel Vorsichtiger, is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Abel & Willing". He is a deranged sociologist who kidnaps married couples and gives one spouse the choice of killing the other or being killed themselves as part of an experiment to disprove the existence of altruism.

He was portrayed by Dallas Roberts, who also played Dr. Greg Yates in Chicago P.D. and Thomas Mathers in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Biography[]

Abel Vorsichtiger was born to Leon Vorsichtiger, an Austrian Jew who migrated to the United States after surviving the Holocaust. When Abel was ten, his father told him a story of his family's time in the concentration camps of when Abel's grandfather was given the choice of either himself or his wife being killed and chose his wife. Abel was fascinated by this story and began studying sociology in the hope of finding a way to prove that anyone would have done the same under similar circumstances, thus exculpating his grandfather of guilt. He also anglicized his name to Abel Hazard.

As an adult, Abel promoted his thesis that human behaviour was naturally selfish and that, given a choice between their death and somebody else's, people would always choose to kill the second person, even if it was somebody they cared about. His controversial thesis was not accepted by the scientific community because he lacked any empirical evidence. Abel became obsessed with finding the evidence to prove his theory was right and devised a way to recreate the death of his grandmother: he would kidnap married couples, using his job as a county psychiatric assessor to access social service records so he could account for every variable, and strap them into custom-built chairs in his lab. He would then place a gun in the hand of one spouse with the laser sight aimed at the other and order them to shoot; if they did not pull the trigger within 25 seconds they would be shot themselves. The survivor would be released wearing a bracelet reading either CTS (Chose To Shoot) or CNTS (Chose Not To Shoot) depending on the choice. After nine trials only one subject chose not to shoot, which Abel attributed to their age. At least one survivor, Veronica Kalen, was later convicted of murdering her husband after police didn't believe her story, with Abel himself assessing her and judging her fit to stand trial.

"Abel and Willing"[]

Abel kidnaps a tenth couple, Ted and Linda Stoddard, who he came across after being asked to assess their fitness to adopt a child. Ted is given the gun and the usual ultimatum, and as Abel expected he chooses to shoot Linda and is released. He later goes on the run after telling police officers that he killed his wife. Detectives Zach Nichols and Serena Stevens of the Major Case Squad begin investigating Linda's murder, soon discovering similarities with nine other murders in a number of cities, including the Veronica Kalen case; when Ted is apprehended and tells the same outlandish story as Kalen, the detectives realize they are looking for a serial killer.

Abel is briefly interviewed during the investigation as a matter of course due to his connections to Kalen and the Stoddards, but tells the detectives nothing. He is later shown in his apartment with an escort, who he has hired to watch a video of the Milgram experiment with him so he can explain his theory, remarking that Milgram's problem was that he tried to simulate conflict rather than using genuine conflict. Meanwhile, Stevens come across Abel's thesis on human nature and altruism and realizes how it correlates to the killer's experiments, and discovers on further investigation that Abel had given sociology lectures in the location of every murder when they took place. Nichols manages to obtain a search warrant for Abel's house, but finds nothing as that is not where the murders took place.

Nichols and Stevens investigate Abel's background further and discover an interview his father gave where he told the story of his father's choice in the camps, realizing this is where Abel got the idea from. Nichols does further digging and discovers that Abel owns another house registered under his birth name, which he had bought under that name eleven years after changing his name to Hazard, a suspicious enough circumstance to obtain a search warrant. While Stevens is getting the warrant, Nichols goes down to the house and encounters Abel, playing on his ego to get him to let him in. Once inside, Nichols begins taunting Abel that his theory is worthless if he can't prove it, and he can't prove it if he doesn't confess. Abel is sufficiently antagonized by this that he agrees to let Nichols into his lab and shows him the videos of his experiments, bragging that all but one of the results fit his theory. Nichols replies that his experiments haven't proved anything that the Nazis didn't already "prove" and he has contributed nothing to science, outraging Abel. Stevens then arrives with the search warrant and Nichols tells her that Abel has shown him everything they need to convict him before the two of them arrest him for 10 counts of murder.

External links[]

Abel Hazard on the Law & Order Wiki

Navigation[]

Villains

Exiled: A Law & Order Movie
Gianni Uzielli