Recap: This episode provided an intense mashup of some fictional and real serial killers, including Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, General Zaroff from “The Most Dangerous Game,” the Craiglist Killer, and the Long Island Serial Killer.
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We open with Olivia and Harry Connick coming out of a movie theater. They banter about how many memos they’ll have to write in order to have this relationship, but seem to be having a great time on their date. Enjoy the moment, folks, because things are about to get decidedly more disturbing.
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A pasty middle-aged guy calls for a pretty young blond escort. But he doesn’t just want a quick hookup in a hotel room. He ties her up in the backseat of his car with his mean-looking dog, and smugly drives her to an unknown location while she cries and begs for her life.
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Olivia wakes up the next morning, cuddled into Harry’s bare chest. (Now that Elliott’s off the show, we needed some pectoral action, and Mr .Connick Jr. proved himself well qualified in that department.) Later that morning, Nick notices his partner looking happy. He doesn’t come right out and say, “Hey, you got some action! Good for you!” But his smirk says it all.
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Olivia throws herself into the missing persons case, which gets grimmer as we see the blonde running, sobbing, through the woods, with her pasty predator and his mangy mutt in pursuit.
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The detectives try to get a newspaper to show them the website traffic for the missing girl’s online ad, but the newspaper editor resists, saying that’d be like revealing their sources. “Have the DA call my lawyer,” the editor huffs.
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Olivia tells Harry the newspaper is a front for escort services and underage sex trafficking. She asks Harry to prosecute it, while scoffing at his choice of donut shop for their mid-day coffee break. (There’s nothing cops hate more than donuts and all their negative connotations). Harry thinks the newspapers have a plausible defense. In any event, Harry tells Olivia, if the two of them are going to date, he can’t go near a case she’s working on. Later, he changes his mind and goes after the newpaper. I hope that doesn’t mean he’s breaking up with Olivia.
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The detectives soon find another escort whose date made her feel so uncomfortable, she refused to get in the car with him. They guy had a creepy dog and shovels in his car, and said he wanted to take her to a secluded beach. She trusted her instincts and got out of there.
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For some reason, the detectives now believe this guy is their killer. Maybe I missed something, but there must be hundreds of escorts in New York City who’ve had “bad feelings” about dates over the last year. Why weren’t the detectives tracking all of them down?
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Anyway, a cop at a nearby beach recognizes the type of dog the escort described and points to where his owner was walking with a shovel. The police comb the area and find eleven corpses of women aged 18-25. All are escorts. One has tick bites, acorns in her stomach, and the kind of armpit hair you don’t normally see on working girls.
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NYPD tracks the DNA of the lyme disease in the tick to a region in upstate New York. (They have the most amazing scientists on SVU! Suffice it to say, I’ve never seen anything remotely like this in real life). There, a beautiful but incoherent young woman in a mental hospital becomes articulate long enough to tell Olivia that a man kidnapped her and made her run from him and his dog. He would chase her, shoot her with a tranquilizer gun, and then rape her in his shack. She could end “the game” only if she killed herself. She escaped, but not with her sanity.
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The detectives match her description of the location (lots of trees and water on three sides) to an isolated state park where there’s a single park-keeper. They then invade his neat suburban home (miles away from the park), and find his diaries detailing the murders. “Seal this place off til we get a search warrant!” Ice-T commands the SWAT team. “I don’t want any of this stuff tossed out in court!” Oh, Ice-T. You are waaaay too late.
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A SWAT team, along with Olivia and Nick, then go tromping through the woods to find the cabin. They find the girl alive but drugged, laying on a bed. Olivia holds her hand and the rest of the team then proceeds to leave Olivia and the girl alone in the cabin! Are you kidding me!? Did they have something more important to do? Maybe they were giving away free donuts at that donut shop? The pasty killer predictably walks in and points a gun at Olivia, who is now completely alone and unprotected. “You’ll be my next game,” he cackles diabolically. He toys with her for a few minutes, until Nick shoots him through the crawl space under the cabin.
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As a reward for this, Cragen suspends Nick. Nick then lies to wife about what happened. “He gave himself up right away,” Nick says with a forced smile. Uh oh, I don’t think that marriage is long for this world. Poor Nick.
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Verdict: B
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What they got right:
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I thought this episode provided a creative and intelligent melding of the stories of some modern serial-killer cases. First, there was the real case of Phillip Markoff, aka the Craiglist Killer. Markoff was a good-looking medical student, engaged to a lovely young woman, with a seemingly perfect life ahead of him. He was arrested on charges of killing three prostitutes in posh Boston hotels. In jail, he fashioned a shank out of a pen and stabbed himself to death, a year to the day after he was supposed to get married. Before dying, he scrawled his fiancee’s name on the prison cell wall with his own blood.
Phillip Markoff, "The Craiglist Killer"
Next, there’s the still at-large Long Island Serial Killer. In December of 2010, a police officer and a dog were doing routine training on a beach north of Ocean Parkway. The dog discovered a cadaver. Several more bodies were found on the beach and surrounding area. So far, eleven bodies have been found. Only 5 have been identified – all of them were women working as prostitutes. There’s also one male body and one body of a toddler.
While some people speculate that the male and baby victims are not connected to the others, serial killer expert Scott Bonn told the Huffington Post that they probably are related:
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“It’s not uncommon for prostitutes to take a child along. There’s no prostitute daycare I am aware of,” Bonn explained. In regard to the male victim’s remains, Bonn said, “This person was cross-dressed. Think about it. Let’s say the serial killer picked up this individual, not knowing this was a man. When he found out, he bashed the victim’s head in, which is contrary to how the other victims were killed, which appears to be strangulation.”
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You may have also noticed a resemblance to the fictional Buffalo Bill from “Silence of the Lambs.” That serial killer also had a special relationship with his dog, and kept his victims locked up for a long time before killing them. And did you read “The Most Dangerous Game” in middle school? It’s a story of a rich hunter who grew tired of hunting animals and decided he wanted more intelligent prey – and began hunting people.
Another authentic point was that there’s been a big outcry about adult services ads in online sources. Bowing to pressure from state and federal authorities, Craigslist shut down its “Adult Services” section in September of 2010, and replaced it with the word “censored.” It was a major economic move – that section accounted for 30% of its overall revenue — approximately $36.6 million out of $122 million. Many other sites have now jumped in to fill the void.
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What They Got Wrong:
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Olivia got upset that the newspaper wouldn’t reveal its advertising data — but that would be easily resolvable in real life. A DA would simply serve the newspaper with a subpoena, and the newspaper would have to turn over the data. Freedom of the press gets newspapers a number of protections, but there is no privilege for online advertising.
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I’m not sure what Ice-T and Amanda were doing in the killer’s tidy home, but it had nothing to do with the American justice system. They broke in without a warrant, rifled through his stuff, saw the incriminating diaries, and then decided they should get a warrant. Crazy bad police work here. The police can’t break into your house, see if there’s anything good, and then decide to get authorization to re-break in. Except for a few exceptions, the police need probable cause, as delineated in a search warrant, signed by a judge, to search someone’s house. They didn’t have PC here: a semi-coherent mental patient says that someone held and raped her in a wooded location. So they do a warrantlesss search of the home of a park-keeper because there are woods around his workplace? I also have woods around my house. They can’t come rifle through my underwear drawer. Even if the police get a warrant now, the defense will have a good argument that anything they find is “fruit of the poisonous tree” — that is, that it stemmed from the initial illegal search — and get it suppressed.
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Finally, there was that ridiculous part at the end where the police left Olivia alone in the cabin with the girl, while the crazy killer was still on the loose. Come on. You don’t need a law degree or police training for this one. Anyone who’s watched a horror movie knows not to do that.
Andrew MacKie-Mason says
23 February, 2012 at 2:18 amMy impression of the search of the house was that it was pursuant to an arrest warrant for the guy. If they had one (which they probably didn’t have probable cause to get based on the sketchy description of the location, but Law & Order hasn’t really had any legal content for a few seasons now) wouldn’t they have been able to enter the house to look for the guy, notice things in plain sight while they were in there, and then do a more complete search once they had a search warrant for the building?
Allison Leotta says
23 February, 2012 at 11:33 amInteresting point, Andrew. I don’t believe the police could have gotten an arrest warrant here, because they didn’t have anything close to probable cause. If, hypothetically, the police got an arrest warrant, they could go into the suspect’s house to effectuate the arrest. If they saw evidence of a crime in plain view, they could then go back and apply for a search warrant. But they could only look in places where the person they’re trying to arrest might fit — say, a closet, or under the bed. Not inside a diary, as Amanda did.
Jeremy Pierce says
23 February, 2012 at 3:56 pmThey did have the report from the girl about the fence, and there probably weren’t too many nearby, plus the car fitting the description they had was outside his house. I think they could have argued that they were in the house out of reasonable suspicion that they needed to check there to see if she was being held in the house, and they saw this stuff in plain view while there, looking at it to see if it would give them anything on where to find her. It might not be so easy to throw it out as you suggest, but it might not be a slam dunk either.
Andrew MacKie-Mason says
24 February, 2012 at 3:39 amThey’d need probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, to enter the house.
Anyways, I agree that there probably wasn’t enough to get an arrest warrant. “Water on three sides and a fence” doesn’t really narrow it down. But assuming they had a search warrant explains most of their behavior.
And I’m sure Amanda would just “forget” to mention that she opened the diary in her report…
Allison Leotta says
26 February, 2012 at 3:23 pmAndrew’s right, they need probable cause to go into the house, not reasonable suspicion. But, Jeremy, I take your point that they had a little more than just woods and water. That said, I still think the whole house search is getting suppressed.
Malcolm says
23 February, 2012 at 3:07 amGreat review. Very informative on the IRL serial killers. I just have two comments.
I think the comparison to Buffalo Bill is a bit of a stretch. It never even occurred to me to equate Buffalo Bill’s toy dog to the hunting dog of ‘Brewster’ (the SVU serial killer). Also, Bill didn’t rape his victims, he shot and skinned them. Brewster’s killing method was entirely different.
Second:
“The detectives soon find another escort whose date made her feel so uncomfortable, she refused to get in the car with him. The guy had a creepy dog and shovels in his car, and said he wanted to take her to a secluded beach. She trusted her instincts and got out of there.
“For some reason, the detectives now believe this guy is their killer. Maybe I missed something, but there must be hundreds of escorts in New York City who’ve had “bad feelings” about dates over the last year. Why weren’t the detectives tracking all of them down?”
I think they gave the name Brewster to the escort services to narrow the search to the lady who got spooked by him.
Regards
Allison Leotta says
23 February, 2012 at 11:34 amHey Malcom, thanks for your comments, and for the info about the “Brewster” point. My show got interrupted a few time last night for some breaking local news, so I must’ve missed that part. It makes more sense to me now!
TokoBali says
23 February, 2012 at 11:43 amThis was a great episode (finally again). I think Malcolm is right. The spooked girl mentioned his name, so than it would make sense. And leaving Olivia alone… face palm, epic fail and all the other internet memes. I was actually half expecting someone to shout “Stay two by two” as they passed the gate.
Allison Leotta says
26 February, 2012 at 3:15 pmEpic Fail. Totally.
James Pollock says
24 February, 2012 at 12:04 amThey had the guy go out of his way to taunt the current victim’s mother… but they didn’t check to see if anyone else (say, family of previous victims) had also gotten taunting messages. Among other things, this might have cleared up the ID of some of the other victims down on the beach (if he’d done this before.) Sloppy police work.
FWIW, I thought they did the warrantless entry to the guy’s home because they thought they might have to render immediate aid to the current victim. Also constitutionally shaky, but not as bad. (Of course, once in, they shouldn’t have been reading books…)
Allison Leotta says
26 February, 2012 at 3:18 pmI don’t think they had any reason to believe a victim would be at this guy’s home. Even the shaky info they had suggested a musty cabin in the woods, not a shiny pre-fab condo in the city. I think they could’ve gotten the PC they needed with one more simple step: Pull Brewster’s DMV photo and show it to the girl at the mental institution. If she IDs him as her abductor, they’re good to go.
Good point about the taunting. That doesn’t actually happen much in real life. If it did happen in a case, it would be a major point to follow up on.
Alenna says
24 February, 2012 at 8:48 pmGreat review! I liked this episode, although I’m not really a fan of the Horror/Slasher genre. Another movie with a similar theme to this would be “The Last House on the Left”; perhaps Wes Craven is doing some guest screen-writing for SVU? Anyway, that pasty guy was very good as the evil “zombie” serial killer. And at least in this episode they took care not to glamorize the violence against the women (unlike so many slasher movies do these days).
I noticed they had their Time & Luck Machine going on full tilt – as they went from the escort service, to escort #1, to newspaper, to escort #2 (who just happened to mention) escort #3, to beach cop (who just happened to remember dog), to finding 11 bodies, to autopsies with revealing acorns and “special” ticks, leading to a mentally ill girl and a state park, that just happened to have the one bad guy they were looking for, who just happened to show up at the cabin when Olivia was there alone with the girl. Fortunately, Nick just happened to show up in the “nick” of time.
Anyway, entertaining episode. I learn something new from each episode. From this one I learned that if I don’t shave my armpits, I won’t have to worry about police mistaking me for a prostitute. 🙂
Allison Leotta says
26 February, 2012 at 3:20 pmAhahaha! Alenna, I love your “lesson” about shaving. You made me laugh out loud. And yeah, that Time & Luck Machine must be nuclear powered.
Stan says
2 May, 2012 at 11:27 pm” (They have the most amazing scientists on SVU! Suffice it to say, I’ve never seen anything remotely like this in real life).”
Indeed.
Funny you should mention that– it brought back an encounter I had a couple of years ago down here in Miami:
A Miami-Dade Police vehicle merged in front of me on I-95. Not a cop car, but one of those dogcatcher-style half-trucks they use for follow-up stuff. It wasn’t in great shape: a lot of dings on the back door panels–rusty ones– and the letters “ADE” in MIAMI-DADE were gone, and the “-D” was on life support. An uppity Volvo or something tried to cut him off, and the cop stomped the accelerator, spewing out a nasty-smelling blue cloud of my property taxes. A few blocks later, the cops headed over for Miami Beach, and I pulled up even with them.
There it was, in fading Blue-and-White (and rust-red)— MIAMI-DADE POLICE/ CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION.
I raised my eyebrows and imagined an evidence tech in the front seat, trying to get the lid off his coffee and balancing a dead dog’s head in a baggie on his lap, to be delivered to a surly old Cuban tech who runs the MDPD’s battered and rusty 1950’s-era electron microscope. I replaced my sunglasses with an ironic half-smile, and made an enigmatic yet pithy and epigrammatic non-sequitur about weasels. Then my entire world cut to a commercial …..
But, anyway, the part about the beat-up old police van from the Miami-Dade CSI is true. Probably delivering evidence to beat-up old scientists.
Allison Leotta says
6 May, 2012 at 9:47 pmHa! Stan, I love your description of the crime scene van — so true! And I love your musings with the dog’s head, coffee balancing, etc. Hilarious. And something just like that has probably happened.
Dave says
10 May, 2012 at 9:37 pmLots of holes as mentioned above, but definitely one of the more enjoyable episodes. But Olivia drives me mad with the way she deals with her weapons. Obviously I doubt any cop relishes the idea of having to shoot someone, but Olivia is so quick to lose control of her weapon it amazes me she hasn’t been shot dead by some lunatic by now–and this time she let him get *both.* Good lord. I was watching a 12th season episode where a mom whose kid was killed in a kidnapping attempt loses it and grabs an officer’s gun, starts waving it around and manages to gut-shoot the medical examiner. Olivia has her gun out, pointed at a target maybe five feet away and is dealing with someone not exactly practiced in the art of firing a gun, and she *sets her gun on the floor when the crazed mom demands she do so.* Now I may be wrong, but my impression is that if you have a weapon of any kind and an officer points his gun at you and says “put your weapon down,” refusing to comply will most likely end with you being very dead.
Susan says
26 May, 2012 at 9:45 amI just discovered your wonderful blog when someone retweeted it.Love it.Love SVU.!My fave crime procedural show of all time.I love that you are able to dissect each episode with a such a discerning eye based on your own work history. I really liked “Hunting Ground” episode for a couple of reasons.Its nice to see Liv finally happy, in love(perhaps) and have some semblance of a romantic life outside of this gruesome work.One note”Harry Connick Jr. PLAYS EADA David Haden, not Harry Connick Jr.lol.. He played the part of Haden well, but he wouldn’t have been my first choice for the role as Livs lover.Too polished and urbane. Her past history with lovers- though only a few- seemed to be working class types.I loved the little scene in the beginning teaser when Liv and David, arm in arm walked right past the serial killer with his dog while he got a newspaper, unbeknownst to any of them.Wonderful little nuanced scene I thought. I agree: at the end,no police squad in a hostage-situation would have left Liv on her own in a cabin with said armed serial killer. We always have to suspend our disbelief though- its only a tv show…..