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Sebastian Moran, a.k.a. "M", was an assassin.

Biography[]

M was originally thought to be a serial killer, although he was later revealed to be a hired assassin paid by Moriarty. He was active from January 2002 in London and had a total body count of 36 people.

He began killing again in New York and upon seeing the crime scene Sherlock Holmes immediately realises it is the work of M, who he believes killed Irene Adler.

Holmes tracks M down and captures him whilst he is just about to kill again, knocking him unconscious with a baton. Holmes intends to torture and kill M in revenge for Irene's death. Holmes takes M to one of his father's buildings, chains him up and begins to torture him. Moran is defiant at first, claiming that he's a former Royal Marine: "Death's an old friend, mate."

M reveals that he was in prison for GBH (Grievous Bodily Harm) when Irene was killed and that he is an assassin, working for Moriarty. He tells Holmes that if he kills him, Holmes will be losing the best clue he has to finding Moriarty. M reveals to Holmes that he receives orders from Moriarty as to who to kill, via a coded text message sent to his phone, and is paid for the killings. He tells Holmes that it is Moriarty who made his crimes look like the work of a serial killer.

M tells Holmes that he knows he won't kill him saying that; "You're a rare thing in this world, you're an honorable man." Holmes stabs M in the stomach with a scratch awl and then takes him to the police. M covers for Holmes, telling Captain Gregson that it was he who had intended to kill Holmes and that he got stabbed whilst Holmes was defending himself. Moran is imprisoned in Sing Sing Prison for his crimes.

After the death of Van Der Hoff due to the assassin Daniel Gottlieb, Moran requested a meeting with Sherlock to inform him that he was another target of Moriarty's. After chasing down leads to Moriarty and subduing Gottlieb, Sherlock received a coded text message from Moriarty. Gottlieb is not able to decode the message, because the code it's encrypted with is not the same one Moriarty used to contact him. Sherlock brought the message to Moran who asked Sherlock to show him the time of the message. After re-reading the message knowing the time, Moran told Sherlock not to worry about the message. Sherlock eventually works out the code on his own; it is a message intended for Moran that says:

"Moran,
you never told me you had a sister. She dies or you do, your choice.
M."

Moran then attempts to commit suicide in order to protect his sister by continually smashing his head against a mirror in his cell. He was last reported by Gregson to be in critical condition, but it is unknown if he recovered or not.

Modus Operandi[]

After M got his targets, he would take a home-made tripod device to their home. He would break in, restrain their arms and legs, and tape their mouth shut. After watching a game of football and his favorite team, Arsenal, on the target's TV, he would build the tripod device in the middle of the room and drag the target by their leg bindings over with a hook on the device and hang them upside down. He would then take a knife and slit their throats, causing them to bleed out. After all the victim's blood had been drained, he would dismantle the device and take it, along with the body and dispose of the latter.

Notes[]

  • In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, Sebastian Moran appears in the short story "The Adventure of the Empty House", where he is an associate of Professor Moriarty as well as an assassin, though there he is a highly skilled marksman who uses an air rifle that fires revolver bullets and not the tripod seen in Elementary.
  • The "Arsenal fan" status is an in-joke, since Vinnie Jones, a former professional footballer, played against them for several other London teams, like Wimbledon and Chelsea. He also admitted, in an interview, that it was extremely difficult to play an Arsenal fan, since in real life his favorite team is Arsenal's rival, Tottenham Hotspur.
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