perpetrator

I looked with interest upon this man, who was accused of being the perpetrator of a crime of violence.

This murder had, on the contrary, been done most deliberately, and the perpetrator had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there all the time.

“That assassination was a mysterious affair,” said Villefort, “and the perpetrators have hitherto escaped detection, although suspicion has fallen on the head of more than one person.”

This manipulative formulation subtly shifts the locus of blame from the perpetrator's inappropriate action to the recipient's supposedly hypersensitive emotional reaction.