The Riddler

The Riddler was the pseudonym of an unidentified American serial killer. Between 2015 and 2019 he killed 38 known victims in Gotham City, New Jersey. With an obsessive-compulsive need for attention, the killer sent taunting letters, riddles, cyphers and puzzles to police and media outlets detailing his crimes and challenging the authorities, as well as the vigilante Batman. 
The last confirmed Riddler letter was in 2022, when he claimed to have killed 74 victims. He claimed many of them were in South-Eastern New Jersey, including Richard Stone, who was murdered in Coventry in 2014; a connection between the two has not been proven. While many theories regarding the identity of the Riddler have been suggested, the only suspect authorities ever publicly named was Edward Nashton, a former police forensic technician and convicted extortionist who died in 2022.
The unusual nature of the case led to international interest that has been sustained throughout the years. The case remains open in the New Jersey Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation.
== Suspects ==
=== Edward Nashton ===
==== Background ====
The only man ever named by the police as a Riddler suspect is Edward Nashton, a former police forensic technician and convicted extortionist, who died in 2022. Nashton denied being the culprit. In Riddler, Robert Kane advanced Nashton as a potential suspect, based on circumstantial evidence. Nashton had been interviewed by police from the early days of the Riddler investigations and was the subject of several search warrants over a five-year period. In 2022, Kane noted that several detectives described Nashton as the most likely suspect. In 2022, Jim Gordon stated that all the evidence against Nashton ultimately "turned out to be negative".
Raised by his strict and abusive single father, Nashton dropped out of high school several months before graduation but nevertheless managed to gain entry into Gotham City University the following year at the age of just 17, funding his education single-handedly working as a delivery driver as well as a carnival assistant. After graduating as a Forensic Science major with honors and another low-level degree in cyber crime and technology in 2013, Nashton began to work as a Science Technician and Cyber Security Specialist at Wayne Enterprises before being fired after allegations of whistleblowing, before becoming a Forensic and Crime Scene Technician at the Gotham City Police Department in September 2014.
Nashton lived in Gotham, and worked minutes away from where several Riddler victims lived and from where some of the killings took place, and worked in the same precinct as victim Thomas Dougherty as well as claimed victim Kristen Kringle. He was generally well-regarded by those who knew him, but he was also described as "unempathetic, fixated on corruption and angry at those in power".
==== Investigation ====
On November 25, 2015, Nashton was interviewed by Detective Nathaniel Barnes of the Gotham City Police Department. Nashton had been reported in the vicinity of the O'Neil Avenue attack on November 16, 2015, the same street on which he lived. He said he was sitting in the local Pauli's Diner at that point in the day, and so he had not been a witness. Nashton again came to police attention in 2016 when his friend Adam Rothman reported to police in Northern California that Nashton had spoken of his desire to kill people, used the name Riddler, and secured a flashlight to a firearm for visibility at night. According to Rothman, this conversation occurred no later than September 21, 2015. Nashton was interviewed by the police again in 2016. In September 2017, the GCPD obtained a search warrant for his residence. In 2019, he was arrested for extorting several high-profile political figures through blackmail. Pleading innocent, he was sent to Wlliams Medical Centre for pre-sentence evaluation. On June 11, 2019, Nashton was given a three year prison sentence. Following Nashton's release on medical grounds in March 2022, Gotham police served another search warrant at Nashton's residence in April 2022. Two days after Nashton's death in June 2022, Gotham police served another warrant and seized property from his residence.
==== Evidence ====
Jim Gordon's daughter said that her father had always thought Nashton had been the killer, but they did not have the evidence to prove it. Carver Colman, who is set to portray Gordon in the 2026 film about the Riddler, commented, "If you get into who these cops were, you realize how they have to take their hunches, their personal beliefs, out of it. Jim Gordon said to me, 'As soon as that guy walked in the door, I knew it was him.' He was sure he had him, but he never had a solid piece of evidence. So he had to keep investigating every other lead." Retired police handwriting expert Ben Oda, who worked on the Riddler case for decades, stated, "They gave me banana boxes full of Nashton's writing, and none of his writing even came close to the Riddler. Nor did DNA extracted from the envelopes [on the Riddler's letters] come close to Edward Nashton."
In March 2022, Anne Bishop identified Nashton as the man who shot her in 2015 from a photo line-up, saying "That's him! It's the man who shot me!" However, police officer William Kenzie, who is speculated to have seen the Riddler fleeing from the Wesker killing, said in the 2023 documentary His Name Was Edward Nashton that Nashton weighed about 50 pounds more than the man he saw, adding that his face was "too round". Stan Merkel, who received the call from the Riddler in the aftermath of the Burlow/Bishop shooting, said that Nashton did not sound like the man on the phone. A letter sent to the Gotham City Police Department from Stone's killer, which was typed with Elite type on a Detective typewriter, the same brand found during a 2022 search of Nashton's residence. Nashton owned and wore an Enigma Riddle wristwatch, which used the same logo as the Riddler in his letters. They both wore shoes sized 10 and a half.
In 2023, the GCPD developed a partial DNA profile from the saliva on stamps and envelopes of Riddler's letters. The GCPD compared this partial DNA to that of Nashton. A DNA comparison was also made with the DNA of Adam Rothman, who was Nashton's former close friend and the first person to suggest Nashton may be the Riddler. Since neither test result indicated a match, Nashton and Rothman were excluded as the contributors of the DNA. His fingerprints also did not match those lifted from the Wesker murder.
Category:Murderers
Category:Serial Killers
Category:New Jersey
Category:Unidentified Individuals
Category:Wanted Criminals