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| “ | I was a good sheriff. I put away a lot of bad people. | „ |
| ~ Burkhart rationalizing his corruption. |
John Burkhart is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Knock Off". He is a corrupt county sheriff who uses his position to smuggle and sell drugs and who murders a confidential informant to prevent him from exposing the drug ring.
He was portrayed by Clancy Brown, who also portrayed Lex Luthor in the DC Animated Universe, The Kurgan in Highlander, Byron Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption, Kurt Caldwell in Dexter: New Blood, Viking Lofgren in Bad Boys, Dr. Neo Cortex and Uka Uka in the Crash Bandicoot franchise, Savage Opress in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Surtur in Thor: Ragnarok, General McGuffin in Wander Over Yonder, Silas in Transformers Prime, Mr. Sinister in Wolverine and the X-Men, Grune in Thundercats, the Evil Entity in the Scooby-Doo franchise, Mr. Freeze in the animated series The Batman, Kojak in Recess!: School's Out, Blackhand in Warcraft, Bloodwolf in Puss in Boots, General Wade Eiling in The Flash, Gunmar in Trollhunters, Trident in Teen Titans, Harry Bordon in Cast a Deadly Spell, Baron Praxis in Jak II, Parallax in Green Lantern, Siege in the animated Mighty Ducks TV series, the Taskmaster in Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble, the Harbinger in John Wick: Chapter 4, Dark Dragon in American Dragon: Jake Long, Long Feng in Avatar the Last Airbender, Undertow in The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea, Hades in God of War, Ray Schoonover in Marvel's Daredevil, Rahzar in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, Edgar Volgud in Atlantis: Milo's Return, and Mr. Krabs in SpongeBob SquarePants.
Early life[]
Burkhart was the head of the Dargerville, New York Sheriff's Department, celebrated for bringing down several meth rings in the county, and a close ally of Donald Shalvoy, the Governor of New York. Beneath his heroic façade, however, Burkhart was actually part of the drug cartel he was supposedly fighting against, using his position and influence in the police department to covertly smuggle and sell drugs, particularly meth.
He used meth dealer and addict William Timmons as a confidential informant and occasional muscle. When Timmons raped a bartender named Dianne Cary, Burkhart pulled strings to make the sure the investigation was dropped, reasoning that Timmons' usefulness as a henchman was more important than Cary getting justice. Just to be on the safe side, however, he had his deputy, Robbie Linz, give her basic firearms training - ostensibly for self-defense, but really so she would be the first suspect in Timmons' murder should he become a liability in the future.
A few years later, Timmons achieved sobriety, became a born-again Christian, and tried to make amends to the people he had hurt during his addiction, especially Cary. When Cary told him that Timmons had been bothering her, Burkhart realized that Timmons was going to tell her that the Sheriff's Department had buried her rape case, which would ultimately expose the drug ring. Deciding that Timmons had finally outlived his usefulness, Burkhart arranged a meeting with him in New York City, where he shot him dead.
"Knock Off"[]
While investigating Timmons' murder, NYPD Homicide Detectives Kevin Bernard and Cyrus Lupo travel to Dargerville and question Burkhart, who says of Timmons that "a bullet never found a more deserving home", and quickly gets rid of them. They arrest Cary after ballistic tests match the bullet that killed Timmons to shells found at the place where Linz trained her, but she insists that the shells are from Linz's firearm, and that the one she owns is of a different caliber.
New York County Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter and Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa go to Dargerville with a court order compelling Linz's testimony, which makes Burkhart nervous; he gets Shalvoy to suppress the warrant and personally arrests Lupo for interfering with a police investigation. Lupo, who is studying to become a lawyer, represents himself, and gets the charges against him dropped with help from Cutter.
Cutter and Rubirosa investigate Burkhart and discover that he had been using Timmons as an informant, that he got the rape case against Timmons dropped, and that Timmons had planned to tell Cary the truth about how he got away with assaulting her. Cutter and Lupo then persuade a local judge to sign a warrant for Linz's files, from which they discover that Burkhart had "disappeared" on the day Timmons was murdered, along with an unmarked police car belonging to the department.
When they look for security footage of the car from the Tappan Zee Bridge, however, they find that it has been erased, something that only State Trooper Thomas Volchak has the security clearance level to do. They suspect that Shalvoy ordered Volchak to erase the footage to protect Burkhart and preserve more than 100 arrests he made while breaking meth rings. Before they can compel Linz's testimony to prove it, however, he commits suicide with the firearm used to kill Timmons, which makes him look guilty and jeopardizes the case against Burkhart.
District Attorney Jack McCoy, who knows that Shalvoy is corrupt, tells the Governor he plans to empanel a grand jury to investigate the lost footage and call Volchak as a witness. Knowing that opposing the grand jury would be political suicide, Shalvoy has the security footage revealing Burkhart's guilt anonymously delivered to McCoy's house, and publicly announces that Burkhart is being charged with murder and that the District Attorney's Office - led by Joe Chapell, McCoy's opponent in the upcoming election - will investigate every one of his arrests. Burkhart, meanwhile, sees the writing on the wall and pleads guilty to first-degree murder, with a prison sentence of 25 years to life.
External links[]
- John Burkhart on the Law & Order Wiki
