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"Mature Content Warning!" |
Stefan Tanzic (Serbian: Стефан Танзић, Stefan Tanzić), also known as Steven Panachek and Steven Green, is the overarching antagonist of "Payback", the pilot episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He is a Serbian war criminal, mass murderer, and serial rapist.
His actor is unknown as he was not credited.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?[]
- He was a genocidal officer in the Serbian army who commanded an ethnic cleansing on a village, taking numerous men and boys over seven and bringing them into a school where he led his men in machine-gunning them all dead. He took the women and children prisoner, keeping 67 women prisoner so that he could rape them, possibly killing many of them as well after he spent time raping them.
- He personally butchered Anya Ragova's husband and grandson to death before abducting her to rape.
- He raped one woman, Marta, every night for 23 days straight, telling her she was "too pretty" to be kept in the tents and taunting her about how he might kill her when he was done with raping her. Sometimes when he was drunk, he would use objects to rape her including a wrench, a pistol, and a broom handle. She ended up becoming pregnant with a son as a result of him raping her.
- He raped Ileana Jashari and permanently blinded her by presumably pouring hot liquid in her eyes, leaving her with burn scars on her face as well and deeply traumatized. Benson is deeply appalled upon seeing the damage that was inflicted upon her to the point that she vomits and cries.
- Marta and Anya were so traumatized over what he did, that upon finding him living in New York, they both snapped and killed him by stabbing him to death and castrating him. When they are caught, Anya kills herself.
- His brutal death is ultimately not played for sympathy and was deserved for how much of a monster he was.
- While the heinous standard is high, his brutal murders, tortures and rapes, and genocidal butchering of hundreds of men and kids makes him stand out as one of the worst villains in the franchise.
What Prevents Him From Being Pure Evil?[]
- He suffers from off-screen villainy as the horrible crimes he committed took place before the episode and are only discussed rather than shown. This causes him to lack enough characterization as he only appears in the photos and as a corpse, and while it is the same for Larry Moore, Tanzic lacks the level of on-screen villainy of Moore and is not given the level of sufficient characterization that he gets throughout his episode, though it is still firmly established what a violent and sadistic person that Tanzic was.
- He is said to have genuinely loved his son and wife, both of them having fond memories of him and being devastated over his death. His wife genuinely mourned his loss and described him as being the greatest father she's ever seen. He is stated to have deeply loved his son and to have talked about him often.
External Links[]
- Stefan Tanzic on the Villains Wiki
