Lind L. Tailor

Black hair falls past his jawline, framing a notably pale face. For his televised appearance he is dressed formally in a suit and tie. The video-game version lightens his complexion somewhat.

The series reveals little of the man behind the broadcast, since he merely recites the lines L feeds him. On air he projects bold authority, branding Kira evil and swearing to stop him whatever the price. The television drama recasts the role as a sneering figure who laughs cruelly in his final seconds.

L selects the condemned prisoner to pose as himself in a broadcast announced as global. Speaking in English and translated for Japanese viewers, the substitute introduces himself as the detective able to direct police forces everywhere, calls the Kira murders the largest killing spree on record, and pledges to hunt the culprit down. Provoked by the insult, Light writes the name, and the impostor collapses from a heart attack mid-broadcast.

The real L then takes over the airwaves, revealing that the dead man was an unpublicized death-row convict whose name no outsider could possibly have known. Because the feed had in truth reached only the Kanto region, the stunt narrows Kira's whereabouts to that area, and L vows to see the killer caught. Later adaptations flesh out the prisoner's backstory: the live-action film makes him an American convicted of assault and murder, while the drama presents him as a Westerner with a British accent.