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Vindex. Vindex was created by Tracy French and appeared in three stories in Detective Fiction Weekly in 1934 and 1935, beginning with “Vengeance of Vindex” (Detective Fiction Weekly, Dec. 29, 1934).

Vindex is a Killer Vigilante. “Captain” Vindex is a former actor whose children were kidnaped and then killed, with his wife dying of grief soon afterwards. This propelled him on to a “crusade of vengeance and extermination against the kidnaping racket.” He hires four men:

a few select associates who had been hardened to adamant in hell-fire, men who were too strong to crumble into slag or ashes. Men unable to forget and eager to repay—as keen as tigers for the hunt and as hungry for the kill. Men who, unhampered by hypocritical scruples, would help me in carrying on a ruthless counter-reign of terror among the snatch gang preying on thousands of helpless homes. For that all lawful methods are utterly inadequate either to prevent or to suppress or to punish them, we know to our bitter personal cost!

When they capture and kills the kidnapers, they burn Vs on the center of their corpses’ foreheads. Vindex is driven places by Kato, his chauffeur.

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