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Sister : Claire Kelton

Former known girlfriends : Dr. Heather Donnelly (198?), Dr. Diane Bentley (1988)

Profession : Gynaecologist

Leigh J. McCloskey :
August 08 1988 (# 1012) to February 03 1989 (# 1137)

Of all the villains of the show, Zack Kelton is the most terrifying, because he acts without motive, by madness, in the only purpose of doing evil.

At his arrival in Santa Barbara, Zack is presented as an old medicine school friend of Dr. Heather Donnelly's. This latter agrees to host him at her home by friendship, to her boyfriend Scott Clark's despair, who sees in Zack a potential rival. Because Zack has above him a benefactor : Arthur Donnelly, Heather's father, who seeks with Zack to separate his daughter and Scott, whom he does not consider good enough for her. Besides Arthur goes fast to hire inside the city hospital this gynecology specialist in the only purpose of facilitating the break-up between Heather and Scott. Zack will also intervene regularly at the clinic run by the couple.

So that he ceases to turn around her, Heather organizes a meeting between Zack and another doctor, Dr. Diane Bentley, a beautiful and gentle pediatrician. Zack begins dating her, but shows himself incapable to act at the appropriate moment. It is after the occurrence of this impotence that his true identity appears to daylight : Zack is the author of the wave of rapes and murders that shocks the town for several weeks. The surprise is even greater since, despite a few unnoticed coincidences, there was no indication of such an interiorized monstrosity in this amiable and without surprises character. Nicknamed the video rapist because he uses to film his crimes and to offer to his victims the videos he has shot, Zack counts among his victims : Eden Capwell (of whom he is the gynecologist), the nurse Wendy McMahon, Andrea Bedford and Diane, whom Zack joins one evening in her apartment. Diane finds a camera installed in the middle of her living room, but she has no time to escape, and the drama happens. It is a smell of antiseptic which then leads her to suspect Zack to be her assailant, some suspicions she tells to the police. Zack's only parry is to use a tramp to divert in vain the suspicions.

Fascinated by his first victim, the blonde and rich Eden Capwell, Zack discovers with disappointment that he is not the father of the baby to whom she gave birth after the rape. However he does not hesitate to divert and change the results to let believe for a time the opposite to Eden and Cruz. He kidnaps the child in the maternity and gives her to a nurse, Catherine Thoreau, who then deals with her adoption. This is a new type of misdemeanour to Zack's credits, who embarks on his trail Cruz Castillo, the baby's father. The prostitute Celeste DiNapoli proposes to help trapping Zack, but the trap closes on her when Zack almost rapes her at her turn.

Discovered by the police, Zack flees to the mountains, pursued by Cruz. After a chase that ends in a car explosion, Zack is caught by Cruz when he stumbles and almost falls off a cliff. Zack refuses Cruz's help and let himself falling into the drop, not without causing a last drama : he says a last lie to Cruz while telling him that his child is dead.

Zack dies immediately after his fall, leaving after his death many past dramas, but also concerns for the future. A beginning of humanity into Zack will have only be outlined in his last moments, when he recognizes to Cruz to have been sexually abused by his sister as a child. But so far, no mitigating circumstances can excuse the abuses of the most violent character of the show...

To read : Andrea's death