Drake Hogestyn | John Black

John Black arrived in Salem with selective memories about his shady past. He turned to Dr. Marlena Evans for help in sorting out his identity. Together they pieced together the idea that he was in fact Marlena's long lost love, Roman Brady. Years later, the "real" Roman returned to Salem, knocking both John and Marlena for a loop. Eventually, John determined that he was Forrest Alamain - heir to the Alamain fortune. John began a romance with Isabella Toscano. John and Isabella had a child, Brady, before Isabella died tragically from cancer.

John eventually married Marlena and started his new business, Basic Black. Despite Roman's untimely return on their wedding day, John and Marlena did great and welcomed daughter Belle. Tony DiMera soon returned to Salem and announced that he was actually John's half-brother, just as Marlena was discovering she had somehow given birth to Cassie and Rex while imprisoned by Stefano years ago. The next challenge the couple faced was accusing each other of being the Salem Stalker!

When Stefano wiped John's memory, John and Marlena endured a divorce, as he decided to live a life below Marlena's moral standards. But when John regained his memory after a traumatic incident that left him paralyzed, he and Marlena reunited and remarried and left for Switzerland in a bid to help John regain the ability to walk.

After a two-year break, John and Marlena returned to Salem on September 26, 2011 for the dedication of the new Horton Town Square. During their visit, the couple announced that John's physical therapy was a success; he was able to walk again. Their shared joy was short-lived however, when the FBI and the Salem PD order Rafe Hernandez to arrest John. Despite Marlena's pleas not to do so, John accepted a guilty plea on charges that he embezzled from Basic Black's pension fund. John believed that this was the only way to insure his family's safety after a rogue Salem PD cop went on a shooting spree at the Brady Pub in a vain attempt to kill John.

Given the FBI's compelling case against him, and his own plea, a Salem judge sentenced John to 25 years-to-life in prison without parole. In the following days, Carrie and Rafe concluded that one of the most compelling pieces of evidence against John, a photo of John in Paris, was doctored. With Marlena's consent, Hope and Bo used a recently discovered promissory note from Stefano thanking Alice Horton for saving then-toddler EJ's life in order to gain a crucial piece of evidence from Salem's arch villain. Rafe was finally able to solve the puzzle of the manufactured evidence against John upon which the FBI's case hinged.

With all charges against him now dropped, a newly freed John and his supporters begin the painstaking process of unraveling EJ DiMera's nefarious plot to win the mayoralty of Salem, embezzle Basic Black's assets and destroy John.