Shortland Street's best male villains
Over the years,
Shortland Street has seen all
types of people come through its doors, but none have been more
notorious (or dangerous) than our classic villains!
We take a look back at some of the best male villains of the
last 20 years - and man, there have been a few!
Darryl Neilson
Shortland Street's original bad boy/ villain was Darryl
Neilson (Mark Ferguson), son of Tom and his wife Marj (Elizabeth
McRae).
Street fans quickly learnt that Darryl was less than honest when
his younger brother Stuart (Martin Henderson) felt obliged to claim
paternity for a baby that was actually Darryl's, but who Darryl
refused to acknowledge because he was already married.
Kirsty Knight had a brief moment when she was interested in the
charming Darryl, despite Stuart's warnings that Darryl would only
use her and then throw her away.
However this flirtation came to a halt when Darryl attempted to
rape her. Kirsty pressed charges for sexual assault, but she was
forced to drop the charges after Darryl's wife lied to the police
and provided an alibi for her wicked husband.
Shortly after this, Darryl became obsessed with Alison and drugged
Chris in order that he would miss the wedding. Alison, thinking
that Chris had jilted her, fled the country, leaving Chris to
escape and pick up the pieces.
Darryl was also involved in several dodgy deals to do with
pharmaceutical drugs, including secretly transporting illegal drugs
and selling dodgy drugs to hospitals.
Darryl even had the audacity to set his own unwitting mother up
with a case full of drugs to transport to him in Australia.
When Kirsty confronted Darryl about this, the two had a showdown on
the Toroa. Kirsty escaped, but Darryl was missing. His body
eventually washed up on shore and it was discovered that Kirsty had
in fact killed him.
Darryl's twin brother Damien later turned up at Shortland Street
scaring Kirsty in to thinking that her arch nemisis had returned
from the dead.
However, Damien was nothing like his twin brother, and he and
Kirsty eventually fell in love.
***
Paul Churchill
Head Nurse Carrie Burton left Shortland Street after having
triplets and was replaced by Paul Churchill, who shared a past with
Carmen back in the days when she had been a prostitute.
Paul began making advances towards Nurse Jo Jordon and made it
clear that if she didn't sleep with him then she would lose her
job.
Steve and Carmen eventually found out what was going on and
convinced Jo Jordon to press charges for sexual harassment. Paul
was fired, much to everyone's relief.
However Ellen Crozier re-hired Churchill a little while later, much
to Carmen and Jo's disgust.
When prostitutes began turning up at the clinic badly beaten,
Carmen put the facts together and realised that Paul was the
culprit.
Paul attempted to attack Carmen, but fortunately Guy rescued her
and Paul was sent to prison.
However, Carmen and Guy faced a momentous ordeal when he escaped
from prison, took them hostage on the Toroa and then left them
adrift out at sea.
***
Ian Seymour
Dr Ian Seymour (David Press) arrived in town, and after a brief
flirtation with Caroline, began dating Jenny Harrison.
Nick initially suspected Ian of being involved in shady business
dealings and was reluctant to let Ian date his mother. However
Ian's charming and persuasive manner eventually won Nick over and
he soon wholeheartedly accepted his mother's new
relationship.
Kirsty was a little more reluctant to accept the suave doctor and
began to suspect that Ian was planning to take over the
clinic.
She managed to foil Ian's sabotage of a project proposal but didn't
have the proof she needed to fully expose him.
Kirsty then learned that Ian may have been responsible for
Rebecca's death as he was involved with the development of the
faulty heart valve that killed her.
As Ian and Jenny prepared to get married, Ian's mother turned up
and also threatened to expose his dodgy dealings. As they were
arguing, Ian's mother had a heart attack and collapsed and Ian
stood there sipping whiskey and watched his mother die.
Ian and Jenny married shortly afterwards and then Ian was able to
take over the clinic. Kirsty and David teamed up to expose Ian, and
finally found the evidence that they were looking for.
But when Kirsty confronted Ian, he attempted to drown her in his
swimming pool. Jenny saved Kirsty, but Ian fled the scene.
When Jenny received news that her fugitive husband Dr. Ian Seymour
had apparently drowned she was devastated.
However, it was soon revealed that Ian had faked his death and was
living under Jenny's house!
He almost persuaded Jenny to run away with him, but when Nick
discovered that Ian was still alive, the two had a confrontation
which ended up with Ian almost drowning Nick in the pool!
When Jenny learned that Ian had almost killed her son, she
informed the police, but Ian managed to escape once again and still
remains on the loose to this day.
***
Oscar Henry
Oscar Henry replaced Jenny as business manager after she took a job
down in Wellington with Marj.
While Oscar seemed efficient and competent, he quickly made people
feel uncomfortable with his controlling behaviour.
Young teen Minnie Crozier tried dating him but quickly began to
feel uneasy around Oscar after he began to control her appearance
and lifestyle.
Minnie soon decided that she had to break up with Oscar - however,
he wasn't having any of this and attempted to blackmail her with
several pornographic pictures that he had taken of her.
When Minnie insisted that it was over, Oscar was so enraged he
forced himself on her and raped her.
Minnie told Mackenzie Choat what had happened, but Oscar framed
Mackenzie for fraud, leading to her dismissal from the
clinic.
Several weeks later, Oscar stole $1 million from the clinic's
takings, and shortly thereafter Minnie found him bludgeoned and
unconscious on the floor of her house.
The mystery of who bludgeoned Oscar Henry continued into the
following year as Fergus Kearney and Minnie Crozier were both
suspected of the crime.
Soon afterwards, Mackenzie realised Oscar was faking his coma and
had a final showdown with him in his hospital ward.
She managed to overpower him, and then caused an oxygen fire and
explosion in his room, escaping with the money Oscar had stolen,
only to be robbed of it all by Greg Feeny.
***
Jack Hewitt
Lawyer, Jack Hewitt (Manu Bennett) was the adopted son of CEO
Patricia Hewitt. He originally appeared as the lawyer for the
nurses' union, and quickly dazzled Rachel McKenna (Angela
Bloomfield) with his charm and good looks.
However, despite the charm and wit, there was also a very dark side
to Jack Hewitt. He suffered from a bi-polar disorder and had a
tendency to neglect his medication.
One began as a one-night stand with Rachel, eventually grew into a
relationship, but despite her best intentions, Rachel was still in
love with Chris and never fully committed to Jack.
Becoming increasingly aware of their friendship, Jack grew jealous
of Chris and Rachel and purposely tried to sabotage Chris when a
lawsuit was laid against him by exposing Chris' prior drug
addiction.
When Rachel learned of Jack's actions, she dumped him and in
retaliation, he cut the brakes in Chris' car.
By this time Jack was growing increasingly erratic and unstable,
stalking both Rachel and Chris.
At the end of the year, Jack kidnapped Rachel and took away to the
family bach in the bush to marry her against her will, threatening
that unless she did, neither of them would leave the bush
alive.
Luckily, aware that her son was unstable, Patricia put two and two
together and sent Chris off to rescue Rachel.
Realising that Rachel could never be his, Jack threw himself in
front of a car and Rachel and Chris finally declared their real
feelings for each other.
***
Dominic Thompson
Murderous Dominic Thompson(Shane Cortese) was one of the show's
most successful villains and Chris Warner (who once believed Dom
was his brother) was his ultimate target.
When Dominic first appeared on screen in early 2003, no one
imagined that Toni's (Laura Hill) handsome brother, back from his
OE, would go on to cause so much trouble.
Dominic's first murder was Geoff Greenlaw who froze to death in
late 2003 when Dom knocked him out and locked him in the Dog's Day
Inn chiller.
When the heat got too much for Dom, he left Ferndale for several
months, making a dramatic return in Shortland Street's 3000th
episode.
He was determined to make Chris's life a misery. When nosy PA
Avril tried to stop him, Dom drowned her in the bath to the sounds
of NZ music classic 'Pink Frost.'
But his bad deeds were catching up with him. Dom decided to
take Chris down with him. He strung Chris up in an abandoned
hunting lodge, and doused them both with petrol.
Toni arrived just in time to save Chris, but Dom flicked the
lighter! The lodge exploded and Dom burned to death.
***
Joey Henderson
When shy and awkward nurse Joey Henderson (Johnny Barker)
arrived at Shortland Street in 2007, nobody would have ever
expected that he would become one of the most notorious villains in
the show's history.
By the time of his demise in early 2008, Henderson had killed five
Shortland Street staff members and had attempted to kill several
others.
Claire Solomon was the first body to be found in the rubbish skip
by the ambulance bay, leaving the staff of the hospital
reeling.
But it wasn't until the second body was found that people began to
realise that this was not an isolated incident.
The second victim was Meg Harris, a friend of Alice Piper's and a
part-time nurse at the hospital.
She was followed by much-loved bar owner, Jay Copeland whose body
was found in the bushes outside of the hospital shortly after she
said farewell to friends and family and backed her bags to move to
Australia.
Victim number four was a nurse called Beth Wilson who hadn't been
working at the hospital for long. She opened her door to somebody
she clearly knew and then disappeared for several weeks.
Her body was eventually found in a similar scenario to Jay's. The
fifth victim was alcoholic nurse Brenda Holloway who had been close
to discovering the identity of the killer after she began going
through records at the hospital.
She was on her way to a meeting with Chris Warner to reveal her
discoveries when she was stopped in the wards by a person with a
mask on and was injected with a lethal dose of Suxamethonium.
The piece de resistance came when Joey kidnapped Alice after a
night out drinking and took her to his lock-up where he proceeded
to operate on her and remove her appendix.
Alice found the strength to fight back and wounded him with his
scalpel.
In an intense chase with the police, Joey was finally cornered at
the top of a high rise building, and realizing that the game was
up, he stepped off the building and plummeted to his death.
***
Ethan Pierce
From the minute he arrived at
Shortland
Street
as Head of Surgery, Doctor Ethan Pierce (Owen
Black) made few friends and collected plenty of enemies.
2008's final week saw the escalation of Ethan's dastardly deeds as
his connection with dodgy medical supplies company Nessus-Bio was
revealed.
Ethan was its owner (and predominant shareholder) and had been
creaming money off hospitals world-wide, while supplying them with
infected and diseased body parts.
This included infecting Shortland Street receptionist Yvonne
Jeffries with cancer after an operation for a bone graft in her
neck.
His other sadistic pleasures including manipulating nurse Maia
Jeffries, to the point where she was given warnings for her
behaviour at work, cheating on his girlfriend Alice Piper and
unwittingly turning hwer into an internet porn star.
When an unseen gunman confronted Ethan in his apartment as he
hurriedly packed his bags to leave town, 2008's final moments saw
Ethan shot three times.
He lay bleeding on the ground, as someone meted the
punishment they thought he justly deserved.
