Star Trek: 10 Characters Who Got Away With Murder

All the galaxy's a stage, and they were just a travelling band of players with a mass murderer in their midst. Once you have retired from a career in killing, you can always do a bit of Shakespeare, apparently. However, no amount of thespianism, nor latter-day heroism, could make up for the prior crimes of Anton Karidian, aka Kodos the Executioner. In The Conscience of the King, Kodos' past was about to catch up with him, and it had only taken 20 years!

In 2246, Kodos, before Karidian, had become governor of the Earth colony Tarsus IV, seizing power after an "exotic fungus" had destroyed most of the food supply on the planet. He got the 'Executioner' epithet for his 'answer' to the crisis — sentencing over 4,000 of the 8,000 or so colonists to death. Kirk was there to survive the massacre, but, at least according to an unseen part of a personnel file from In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II, Hoshi Sato and family weren't so lucky.

Bizarrely, even though only a burned body was found, and no "positive identification" ever made, Kodos was simply presumed dead by most (including Kirk). This presumption ended when Karidian and Company came aboard the Enterprise in 2266. Karidian was revealed as Kodos and then accidentally phasered to death by his equally murderous daughter. Never having faced any formal justice, other than perhaps the rigours of Shakespeare, Kodos forever got away with murder.