Recap: The real-life story behind this episode was hard to stomach, and the story was hard to watch even as a fictional SVU episode. I was actually relieved by the moments when the writers got something ridiculously wrong, because at least that created some levity in an otherwise horrific case.
In this episode, a little Romani boy is excited when his parents allow him to walk to school alone for the first time. But on the way home that afternoon, he disappears. At first, his parents believe he was killed because they stopped paying their tithes to the Rom-Baro, the head of their tight-knit clan. But soon they get a hopeful sign that he’s still alive: the boy’s voice mailbox, which had been full, is now accepting their messages – he must have deleted earlier ones, they think, and still be alive. With the help of Gilbert Godfrey (in a terrific cameo as a snarky police tech geek), our detectives discover that the person deleting the messages was actually a slimy British reporter who hacked into the boy’s voice mail to try to get a story.
Soon, the boy’s body is found in a construction site. The little body is covered with cigarette burns, and the boy wet himself from terror. The detectives hone in on a mentally-retarded Romani man named Mark (with Amanda – always more of a pit bull – arguing that Mark’s the killer, and Nick – always slower to judge – voicing his doubts). They track Mark to a woodsy gypsy encampment, complete with a bonfire and corral of goats, and arrest him there. But they soon discover that the killers are actually two pretty, lip-glossed tweenage girls who were the boy’s schoolmates. The girls teased the little boy for being a “gypsy,” then burned him, and when that got out of hand, they strangled him with his own scarf.
Verdict: B-
What they got right:
This episode was based on the horrific death of little Leiby Kletzky. This July, the parents of the eight-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy allowed him to walk home alone from day camp for the first time. It was only seven blocks, and they’d practiced with a dry run. But Leiby got lost in his close-knit Brooklyn neighborhood and asked a stranger for directions. That stranger took the child home, killed him, and dismembered him, police say. Most of Leiby’s body was found in a dumpster. His feet were found in the man’s freezer.
The terrible journalist was based on the real phone-hacking scandal involving Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and other newspapers. Reporters hacked into the phones of celebrities, politicians, and the British royal family to get exclusive stories. Most despicably, they hacked into the phone of a murdered 13-year-old girl named Milly Dowler, who disappeared on her way home from school. They listened to her voice messages; when her voice mail box filled up, they wanted to hear more incoming messages, so they deleted messages that had been left in the days immediately after her abduction, not only raising the hopes of the girl’s family, but destroying crucial evidence in a homicide investigation. Murdoch’s company is now under investigation by British authorities, the FBI, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
What they got wrong:
Goats. I was a prosecutor for 12 years. I handled cases in twenty different states and the District of Columbia. Never once did I see a goat. I loved that the writers themselves laugh about this:
David Matthews, I challenge you to work a dolphin into your next episode.
Dangerous search warrants. When the detectives searched Mark’s room, he, his mom, and the creepy Rom-Baro all hovered nearby as the detectives flipped over his mattress and rifled through his underwear drawer. Detectives, secure your scene, please! Any of these leering civilians could’ve jumped you. Every real police officer knows that the first step in executing a search warrant is securing the scene. Usually that involves corralling all civilians in an area that isn’t being searched, frisking them, and having at an officer guard them while the search is done.
Adorable tween killers. We’ve seen a lot of them on SVU. The housemaid’s middle-school-aged son who killed the Ambassador’s boy in “Blood Brothers.” The beautiful heiress who killed her society rival in “Wet.” There are real predators out there. They typically aren’t cute high school girls.
TokoBali says
2 December, 2011 at 2:15 pmThis episode was ok, not bad but not memorable either. But for heave’s sake, the show is called LAW & Order. Where are the courtrooms?
Allison Leotta says
2 December, 2011 at 2:52 pmAbsolutely! The DA’s only role in the whole episode was to be dismissively called “sweetheart” by the defense attorney.
Sam S. says
6 December, 2011 at 4:22 amI liked trying to count the charges against the tweens, since we never got to see the trial half of the case.
Yikes for the principle! Premeditated murder with special circumstances. And she did it because he was a gypsy, so let’s throw in a hate crime bias while we are at it. I guess the breaking and entering charges, rape / molestation, planting of false evidence, and obstruction of justice charges really doesn’t matter too much in the end after all that. And the ring leader is apparently a remorseless psychopath just to add to the mix. A little disappointed in the SVU writers this go around. I like things a bit morally ambiguous. Usually the SVU writers will make the bad guy at least a little sympathetic. Not so much here.
I spent more time trying to imagine my life as the accessory’s defense lawyer. The conspiracy charge is going to ruin my day. What do you think my chances are of getting a plea down to something? It probably helps a bit that the principle has exposed themselves as a total psychopath. Maybe the accessory can get some mercy from the DA by comparison. Any chance of keeping this half in juvie, so she might see the light of day?
Allison Leotta says
6 December, 2011 at 12:24 pmHey, good points, Sam, are you a lawyer? I think the slightly-evil girl’s best chance is to cooperate with the authorities and testify against the truly-evil girl. With credit for cooperation and some goodwill from the DA’s office, you might have a shot at keeping her half of the case in the juvenile system.
Sam S. says
7 December, 2011 at 4:47 amYes, I am a lawyer. Don’t practice trial law currently. But I am still young, I may have to switch focuses, because trial law looks like a lot of fun to me. Is your old job at the DOJ still open? If so, where should I send my resume? 🙂
However, a good lawyer would have probably spelled the word PRINCIPAL, but we can’t all be perfect.
I prefer characters that are more complicated. It isn’t that hard to write a character that is legally in the wrong but morally sympathetic, if not morally justified. And it isn’t that hard to write a character that is legally in the right but is totally morally bankrupt. To me, these scenarios are always more satisfying intellectually, and raises the unsolved problem of how one defines “justice”.
When Law and Order has done these kinds of characters right, sometime the question of justice can be mentally perplexing long after the episode has ended. I always in particular enjoy it when there is a character legally wrong who I can identify with. It really makes you wonder what you would do in that situation, and makes you wonder what the “right” outcome is: the legal one, or the moral one. Sometimes, the Law and Order writers write these characters in such a way that even the cops or the DA look the other way and let the person go free. Which raises interesting questions about the proper role of the police, the proper role of the DA, the proper role of the judge, and the proper role of the jury. When an episode can make you think that much, to me that’s golden.
The psychopath who is totally legally and morally bankrupt is by comparison much less interesting, and for that matter, much less realistic. People, even criminals, are usually more complicated than that.
In short, complicated = better.
Allison Leotta says
7 December, 2011 at 6:55 pmI agree, Sam. If you’re a reader, check out George Pelecanos and Laura Lippman, who are the masters of complicated characters, from flawed heroes to lovable bad guys and everyone in between.
Andrew MacKie-Mason says
10 December, 2011 at 5:00 amI’m always surprised by how easily parents let their children talk to the police on SVU. I’d think parents would be even more protective than defense attorneys as soon as they get a whiff of the fact that someone’s trying to throw their kid in prison. In this episode, all we got was a half-hearted “you’re scaring my daughter!” from the one mother (after which she sat meekly by while Nick yelled at her to “Look!” at the pictures of the tortured kid) and a belated “I think it’s time to stop” from the father once it was too late to do any good.
Do you have any experience with this? Do parents really do that little to defend their children’s rights?
Allison Leotta says
21 December, 2011 at 6:07 pmActually, a lot of parents fight like hell to keep their kids from talking to the police. That was not a particularly realistic part of this episode.
RAF says
31 December, 2011 at 2:36 amI love your blog and read it after each SVU episode
There are actually two other cases this episode was based on, the first was Robert Gonzales. He was a kind man in his early 20 with an i.q. of 62 what was friendly with local kids. He was falsely accused of abducting and raping an 11 year old girl and they clamed he was able to climb threw small windows to get to kids.
The other was the Mary Bell case in the 60’s ware a 10 year old serial killer and her teenage sidekick would tick young boys into coming with them to construction sites and sadistically beat and kill them. The girls would then pretend to be sympathetic and helpful to the families. Then they would point the police to an innocent man that was easy to blame. Were you aware of either of these cases?
Allison Leotta says
31 December, 2011 at 12:42 pmHey Raf, thanks for your comment and the info! I hadn’t heard of those cases before. Very interesting! Thanks!
Vicky says
11 October, 2012 at 7:08 pmAllison, I have just watched this episode and I think if you read up on the James Bulger case, you’ll see the similarities.
Two schoolboys took a young child from a shopping centre whilst his mum’s back was turned – so whereas the start of your story correlates with the young Jewish boy’s story that you refer to, this I think is where the similarities stop.
James was burned with cigarettes, all over his body including on his scrotum. The boys killed him when he cried for his mother. There were overtly sexual overtones to his injuries. One boy, Thompson, was considered the ringleader, whilst the other boy, Venables, was considered the weaker, who just went along with it because his friend did.
Thompson showed no remorse when discovered; nor did they ever find out why they decided to do it. It was, as Courtney in the episode said “Why not?”
Allison Leotta says
12 October, 2012 at 10:23 amJust looked it up. Wow, terrible stuff. You’re right, a lot of similarities to this episode. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger
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