Leland Coyle

Sergeant Leland Coyle is a corrupt and delusional police officer obsessed with maintaining his own distorted notion of the law, who enjoys electrocuting and sexually assaulting people with his shock baton.

Appearance: Leland is a man of average build and tall height, adorned in a "standard" police uniform and hat, along with a police force hat and black sunglasses. Irrespective of average build Leland demonstrates peak-human strength and durability, he is strong enough to lift a full-grown man using one arm. His face is shown to be disfigured, with the right side of his face being blistered and scabbed over, likely due to either electrocution burns or the experiments that Murkoff conducted on him. Coyle's hair is black, shown by his eyebrows and the short, trimmed beard on his face. Between his blistered lips is a constantly burning cigarette.

His outfit is a white button-up and red tie covered in a black leather jacket, with his rank shown by two metallic badges on the left of his jacket (one on the breast, the other on the bicep of the sleeve.) The right sleeve of his jacket is covered in tubes or wires that are connected to the car battery in a cross-body wrap. His uniform also includes a navy leather belt with a silver buckle looped through grey work pants covered up to the knees in leather boots.

Coyle speaks with a significant drawl which is typical for the southern States of the USA.

Personality: Leland Coyle behaves akin to an exceptionally cruel police officer, exhibiting extreme brutality in his pursuits and showing no reluctance in hurling insults and making sexual remarks and threats at his victims. He often takes pleasure in tormenting individuals who are disadvantaged or unable to defend themselves. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan, Coyle is deeply bigoted and patriotic in his convictions. He frequently indulges in ranting about ideologies that differ from his traditionalist beliefs, such as Communism, which he believes undermines his ideal vision of America, and he regularly expresses racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic views.

Aligned with his weapon of choice, an electrified cattle prod/baton, Coyle holds a fascination for electricity. During surveillance conducted by Murkoff, he was observed standing in a field amidst a lightning storm on five occasions. He is also shown to be sexually aroused by electricity, pressing his weapon to his groin or bare hand out of pleasure, and many of the mannequins and corpses seem to have been sexually assaulted with his weapon or electric wires.

He has been shown in both Trials and Documents to be incredibly rash and will not hesitate to resort to physical violence such as when he attacked an Ex-Pop trying to avoid him. He happens to have his own view in laws, even if it's technically wrong as he thinks the true laws are the one that fits his ideology. This can be shown during his interruption of the "lawyers" in Vindicate the Guilty and his belief that anyone on trial is a criminal regardless of the court's decision.

When patrolling, Coyle sometimes comment about women and seems to be only value them when it comes to his own benefit, like The Judge and Lady Justice from the Courthouse trials. He also shows concern when they held power tools such as Mother Gooseberry, who has unstable mental health condition and armed with the drill. He mentioned that a woman shouldn't given any weapon (or power), reflecting his classic 1950s era sexist view. While the reasons are unknown, he also killed all his wives under one year of marriage, shows no remorse and cracks a joke about their death, such as the telling the Snitch that he looked like his second wife. With how he remarks on how Mother Gooseberry reminded him why he killed his wife, there's a possibility that all his wives turned against him at some point, perhaps to the point of fighting him.

Though he frequently shown interest in women, Coyle had also shown that he enjoyed tormenting men sexually (as evidenced by The Snitch), making sexual remarks about him and shocking his own hand during the interrogation. A number of male mannequins also had burn marks on their thighs, butt and crotch, and they had lost their pants. Regardless of gender, every mannequin in his trials is depicted as being used in a sexual manner; examples include a woman mannequin being shattered into pieces with sperm spilled on it and a scorched male mannequin bent over the table. This suggested that, despite his homophobic beliefs, Coyle might lean more towards bisexuality in terms of his sexual preferences. However, this also could be taken as his form of power abuse and showing his dominance regardless his victims's gender.

Background & Life: Leland Coyle was born in the year 1923, in Blackwell, Oklahoma, a small yet well-known sundown town. There are anecdotal accounts of animal abuse and sexual assault during his childhood, which prompted him to enroll in a military academy. Despite exhibiting criminal tendencies, his involvement with the local Ku Klux Klan as a teenager swiftly quelled such behavior.

At the age of nineteen, he entered into his first marriage. However, his spouse passed away six months later under circumstances officially attributed to a fall down the stairs. To circumvent any scrutiny from local authorities, he voluntarily enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. Serving honorably for two years in the Pacific theatre during World War II, he earned three confirmed enemy kills and his company witnessed two suspicious American deaths.

Following his return to Oklahoma post-war, he resumed his involvement with the Klan, eventually transitioning to a career in law enforcement. Since 1947, Coyle proved exceptionally adept in his role as a police officer, accumulating numerous commendations for his service. However, his achievements and success were tainted by allegations of profiting from the exploitation of prison labor, extortion, and civil forfeiture, implying corruption on his part. Additionally, he held esteemed positions within the Elks Club and the VFW.

After marrying for the second time, Coyle promptly extorted his new family. Following their deaths in a fatal electrical fire, his wife fled to Chicago, where she was found deceased under circumstances officially labeled as 'natural causes' on Kostner Ave. on the South Side.

Sometime later, Coyle was promoted to Sergeant and entered into another marriage. However, his third wife succumbed to multiple gunshot wounds to the head, ruled as suicide. Within a year, her family members also passed away under mysterious circumstances, purportedly by suicide, though the methodologies became increasingly violent and complex.

In February of 1956, Coyle encountered Murkoff's Clyde Perry at a bar on Route 177. While chatting, Coyle drank alcohol heavily and casually ate nuts from the table. Perry's pretext was bribery, but Coyle quickly discerned his deception. The interaction turned physical, resulting in Perry sustaining two broken fingers, extensive bruising, and urinary complications. Despite Perry's survival, he believed Coyle toyed with him akin to a cat with its prey, surmising Coyle's restraint from killing him as evidence of this. Nevertheless, or perhaps due to this incident, Perry vehemently endorsed Coyle for PROJECT LATHE.