Michael Sullivan

Michael Sullivan, aka The Butcher of Sligo is the main antagonist of the Alex Cross novel Cross. Sullivan is an organized crime freelance mercenary, getting the nickname from gruesome means of murder, including cutting up victims' faces. Sullivan also reveled in serial rape, using murder photographs the threaten into silence. Sullivan was always the prime suspect of the murder of Alex Cross' wife, Maria Cross.

Biography
Michael Sullivan was scarred in youth from being molested by a combative biological father, which would pervert Sullivan enough to turn to freelance contract killing. Sullivan has the nickname "The Butcher" from using gruesome means to commit murders. Sullivan is also a serial rapist of women, always having a signature of showing victims and potential victims photographs of dead victims' corpses to silence them and prevent them from reporting the crimes. Alex Cross always suspected Sullivan of killing Cross wife Maria, leading to Cross hunting down The Butcher and killing the sadist out of vengeance. It's revealed Jimmy "Hats" Galati is the real killer, having been murdered by John Sampson and Rakeem Powell to prevent Cross from turning into the felons he catches every day. Cross accepts this and finds peace in the unexpected closure.

In the movie Alex Cross, highly deviated from the films, The Butcher is known as Picasso from charcoal sketches taunting about the next victims to be targeted. Picasso is killed by Cross and revealed to have been hired by supposed victim Giles Mercier, hiding in Indonesia and having hired a doppelganger to be killed by Picasso, along with accomplices to Mercier's disappearance. Maria and Cross' partners were targeted as collateral to stop the chase to get the Butcher. Cross gleefully frames Mercier for drug charges, which are punishable by execution, to avenge Maria.