The ten suspects of Where in the World (1985)

The 1985 manual is blunt about the odds: “There are 10 possible suspects, any one of whom could be the thief. Carmen Sandiego is the most elusive of the lot.” Nine of those ten are her henchmen, cycled case to case; the tenth is Carmen herself, held back for detectives who have already climbed the ranks.

The pool

• Dazzle Annie Nonker — disinherited heir to a shoelace fortune who opened the yogurt bar Chez Acidophilus, which doubles as V.I.L.E.’s headquarters; drives a Bugatti limousine.
• Lady Agatha Wayland — a red-haired English mystery-novel devotee with no talent for solving crimes, forever speeding through the countryside in her “Denghby super-chauvinist speedster” hunting Mexican restaurants.
• Nick Brunch — a hard-boiled ex-private eye who fancies himself Sam Spade; rides a Kamikaze-1250 motorcycle in a soiled trenchcoat and fedora. See his full dossier.
• Fast Eddie B. — an impeccably groomed society cat burglar famous for lifting a tablecloth off a state-dinner table without anyone noticing until dessert. See his full dossier.
• Len “Red” Bulk — an ex-professional hockey player barred from the rink for trying to bribe himself; a puffy black eye from one too many pucks to the head.
• Scar Graynolt — a mild-mannered folk guitarist who is, per his dossier, “a complete plug-ugly” underneath.
• Merey LaRoc — a freelance aerobics instructor who tours the world running a mobile health spa for wealthy clients.
• Ihor Ihorovitch — a pretender to the Czarist throne who can vanish for months at a stretch, then resurface for a world-class croquet tournament.
• Katherine “Boom-Boom” Drib — a three-time Trans-Siberian motorcycle race winner who serves as V.I.L.E.’s official hostess.
• Carmen Sandiego — the ringleader, reserved for the highest-ranked detectives.

Reading a dossier

Each crook’s file listed hair colour, a hobby, a favourite food, a getaway vehicle and a distinguishing feature — the same categories a witness would drop into conversation and the player would later type into the Crime Computer to request a warrant. The manual made the files available two ways: through the in-game Police Dossiers menu, and again “at the end of this manual in a slightly different form,” printed as paper crime files a player could flip through without touching the keyboard.

A cast that outlived the disk

All nine henchmen above reappear, largely unchanged, when Brøderbund rebuilt the game as the Deluxe Edition five years later — see the twenty villains of the Deluxe Edition for the expanded roster they joined.