Is my premise believable?

If he has such a smart plan, enough to get himself acquitted, should you also not credit him the intelligence enough to be able to evade the police? Could there not be an equally clever plan to do that?

Cops generally don't have the resources or the legal right to tail someone who has been acquitted and isn't suspected of any other crime. Probably a more interesting twist is to have the criminal friends of this vigilante's victims go after him. Or you can create a detective as an antagonist, someone who is this vigilante's match but is the opposite of him in his ideas about respecting the law. Cat and mouse game.

that's what I thought too, but he has to be temporarily caught for things to go a certain away, otherwise the he would never be suspected and the movie would be over.

#1 - You should probably do some research to figure out a good technicality for him beating trial

#2 - If he almost got caught, wouldn't it be more realistic for him to keep his hands clean and maybe orchestrate his work through "employees" of some sort? Maybe he is adamant about keeping his hands clean and then all of that changes because of some personal connection/attachment to a certain "assignment" or whatever you would call it...just an idea

If you haven't seen it before watch Seven to see how they came up with red herrings for the audience, played with expectations and executed surprises.

Forget about the legal aspects for a moment and work on the character of the vigilante killer - what are his motivations? To what extent does he go to in order to cover his tracks? Does he just go out there without hiding his identity in some way or does he dress a certain way to conceal his identity?

I'm just throwing this out there but what if the audience doesn't know about the vigilante killer, someone is seen doing the killing but the audience doesn't know who he is yet, and this vigilante killer is copying the MO of a notorious criminal who is still on the run, and the vigilante, since he's very intelligent, is able to make the police think that this fugitive is behind these killings but you have a detective who has been studying that particular case for a long time and has their doubts.

In this way you can have three characters - the vigilante killer (not revealed until the fugitive is caught), the fugitive and the detective, and when you think the detective finally has caught the killer you discover that they have the wrong person and the killings continue even though the fugitive is now in custody. So now the audience is wondering who is doing these killings because until that reveal they've been seeing someone doing the killing but because the killer's identity was hidden the audience just assumed it was the fugitive all along.

Another movie I would suggest to watch is The Prestige. Not a film to do with killers of course but it's another movie that plays with an audience's expectations and reveals surprises.

The issue here is YOU have have plan the crimes and be smart enough get away with it. Are YOU smart enough? If you have to ask the questions you have posed you haven't thought it all the way through. If you can't do it, neither can your protagonist.

Also, how/why did you/he get caught? What did he/you overlook? Also, he/you would have learned from his/your mistakes, so after his acquittal he's even more circumspect and devious.

Another issue; if there is no body this greatly inhibits the investigation. If there is no other evidence the investigation is at a standstill from the beginning. Maybe your protagonist is a cop himself, so he would be investigating his own crimes, which is how he thwarts the authorities.

Or, rather than the legal authorities chasing him - they've given up for lack of evidence - how about his future targets figuring it out what is going on and trying to solve the who-done-it? Their "investigator," maybe a dirty cop, doesn't play by the "legal" rules, so the protagonist has to figure out the new rules to escape vengeance upon himself.

Okay thanks for the ideas, but I already have most of the plot worked out. It's just the legal technical things that need tweaking. Even though he is smart in his crimes, there is always something that could go wrong, a person being there that you didn't plan on or would suspect, which is what happens. A person is at the wrong place, at the right though, and manages to get the killer arrested.

The killer manages to destroy all the evidence cause he already thought of that, but the police go by the witnesses word and arrest him, and he is caught at a road block still. The killer gets off the charges by planting evidence that him and the lead detective in the case, were involved. That's how he gets off. It's conflict of interest and it makes the whole case look suspicious and stinky. The witness brought in by the detective cannot be trusted therefore.

However, after he gets off, even if other cops are ordered by their superiors not to bother to tail him, the lead detective can still do so on her own time, and she feels inclined to something to redeem herself and prove she was framed. So she will still tail him and wait for him to do something to get caught again.

Also the killer could have hired employees do his dirty work, and he does, but the detective could still use her creativity and resources to monitor his transactions or communications with them or something. It's still not safe for the killer. So it seems to me that the only way for him to loose the police and her more so, is for no one in court to be able to know his name. Not even his own lawyer, but the lawyer still has to defend him even though it's not legally customary to keep your client's name from the courts. Even if he doesn't give his name to his lawyer, a judge again will not try someone who does not give their name realistically. Even though the killer could still technically get away with future murders, and not be monitored all the time by cops or her, I need to the audience to feel he has won, and that the thread linking him to any future crimes has been completely cut. The audience will not feel he has completely won and can do whatever he wants, if the cops know who he is. The audience will still think there is hope therefore, and I want to remove all hope.

But perhaps it's also not believable because how hard would it be for the cops to find out who someone is in their custody, in this day and age really? There are lots of ways. So maybe it's still not plausible.

harmonica44 said:

The audience will still think there is hope therefore, and I want to remove all hope.

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In this situation, I don't think it's possible to to that entirely.
The audience may still wonder how determined the detective is - she has seen him now, and might even manage to get him on that - somehow.

Imagine the end of 'The Silence of the Lambs' - that is, I think, what you are aiming for. As the audience, we completely assume that Lector has now escaped for ever - despite the fact we all know his name, appearance, and he has officially been through the penal system. We believe it because of how clever he has proved himself to be. If the cleverest thing your protagonist has done is plant some evidence, we might not think he can escape just on a technicality with a name.

It depends if you really must have his name remain unknown - whether that is a key plot element.
I think that that element could stay in, but that his escaping should not rest entirely on it.

I think it's more believable for the lead detective to be following him on her own time if she got kicked off the force (or suspended) because of the fake evidence that suggested that she was involved. Then (a) she has the free time and (b) she's super motivated.

Yes that's exactly what happens she is motivated and doing it on her own time. But I still need the audience to believe that he has one and that she has to fix everything herself. How is the audience going to feel that, if the police knows who he is, and where he lives? The audience will think, well it's only a matter of time before he gets caught again with them knowing that.

identity theft + keep moving.

I think that a criminal going through the court system in contempt and somehow still being acquitted is less believable than anything you can concoct with the vigilante holding multiple fake identities etc.

Have you watched the TV show 'Fargo' (not the movie)? It features a sequence of events quite similar to what you describe.

No I haven't see the Fargo show. In the Silence of the Lambs example posted before though,
However in Dirty Harry,