| "Devil's Dissections" | ||
|---|---|---|
| ← | SVU, Episode 17.01 | → |
| Production number: 17001 First aired (US): 23 September 2015 First aired (UK): 18 October 2015 First aired (CAN): 23 September 2015 First aired (AUS): 11 February 2016 | ||
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| Teleplay By Warren Leight & Julie Martin Story By Kevin Fox Directed By Jean de Segonzac | ||
Plot[]
The SVU is called to a familiar crime scene - the beach where serial killer Greg Yates buried his many victims. When another body washes ashore, Rollins tries to coax him into confessing, but the surprising information he provides sends shockwaves through the police department. As the case goes to court, Barba faces off against two hotshot defense attorneys in a trial that leads to blackmail, an incriminating confession, a new victim and a fugitive suspect.
Summary[]
Episode summary
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Mariska Hargitay as Sergeant Olivia Benson
- Kelli Giddish as Detective Amanda Rollins
- Ice-T as Detective Odafin Tutuola
- Peter Scanavino as Detective Dominick "Sonny" Carisi, Jr.
- Raúl Esparza as A.D.A. Rafael Barba
Recurring Cast[]
- Dallas Roberts as Greg Yates
- Elizabeth Marvel as Attorney Rita Calhoun
- Mary Bacon as Susie Frain
- Karen Tsen Lee as DNA Tech Susan Chung
- Bronwyn Reed as Lucy Huston
- Tamara Tunie as M.E. Melinda Warner
- Jefferson Mays as M.E. Carl Rudnick
- Cody Lindquist as Brooke Groves Norwalk & Rachel Groves
- Stephen C. Bradbury as Judge Colin McNamara
- Edelen McWilliams as CSU Tech Martin
- Bradley Dubow as Noah Porter-Benson
- Stephen W. Tenner as Green Haven Corrections Officer
Guest Cast[]
- Purva Bedi as Sarita Charma
- Anthony Mangano as Sergeant
- Ashley North as Courtroom Gallery (uncredited)
References[]
- SUNY Plattsburgh
- Nick Amaro
- Will Halstead
- Zurich
- Paris
- Grindelwald
- Nadia Decotis
- Rachel Groves (victim)
- Lena Grunwald (victim)
Quotes[]
- Tutuola: We got nine dead bodies found here, all by the same killer
- Carisi: And now we've got the tenth. Occam's razor.
- Benson: No guys, listen. We have two options: one is bad, the other one is worse. Either we missed one or... Yates has a copycat
- Benson: Amanda, I don't know what you're doing, but this isn't police work.
- Rollins: I am cultivating a source. Listen, Yates hinted that he might know who the killer is.
- Benson: Hinted, but didn't say. So what, do you have to go back there again and then he'll tell you?
- Tutuola: He's playing you. This guy's a psychopath.
- Benson: Not to mention, Amanda, you went up there without clearing it with me. I'm not trusting your judgment right now.
- Rollins: [putting coins in a vending machine] Yeah, they spend all this money renovating the squad room, and there's still nothing to eat.
- Tutuola: How you feeling?
- Rollins: I'm just tired. I've been taking too many shifts since Nick left.
- Tutuola: You talk to him?
- Rollins: Yeah. Yeah, he's happy. He's doing physical therapy in Laguna Beach and he's got some kind of lead with the U.S. Park Police, so...
- Tutuola: You miss him. Is that what this is all about?
- Rollins: No. I'm pissed off, man. I get grounded and this is my case? I mean, I know more about how Yates thinks than Carisi does.
- Tutuola: Olivia's just looking out for you, Amanda.
- Rollins: Yeah? How do you figure?
- Tutuola: You're good at getting inside these guys' heads. Don't let them get inside yours.
- Carisi: These are the Changs. They bought the house four years ago, did a renovation. Before that, it had fallen into disrepair after the 2007 death of Manon Favreau. She was a widow whose husband's family actually built this house in the 1880s.
- Benson: Thanks for the history lesson, Carisi.
- Rollins: Yates is appealing his conviction. Why would he tip us off to another victim? He's sick, but he's not stupid.
- Barba: Rollins, all due respect...
- Rollins: Don't start a sentence that way.
- Greg Yates: Lena was a lovely girl. She was over from Switzerland for her doctorate and they met at Columbia.
- Benson: Met who?
- Greg Yates: Her fiancee. Well, on the night I that stitched him, he said that it was a sex game gone wrong but he had to have tortured... Oh... He might have sealed her in that wall while she was still alive.
- Rollins: Stay with us, Dr. Yates.
- Greg Yates: Oh, yes. I'm sorry. That poor woman.
- Benson: You were going to give us a name?
- Greg Yates: I was. Apologies. Uh, Carl. Yes, when I was a senior resident on call, he was an attending. Strange man. A little delicate, pale. He kept to himself which is why were so sort of surprised when he got engaged to Lena.
- Rollins: Does this delicate man have a last name?
- Greg Yates: Rudnick. Uh, Dr. Carl Rudnick.
- Benson: That's it, we're done. Rollins...
- Rollins: [to Yates] I went out on a limb for you. You think this is a game? You are gonna be transferred so far upstate your ass is gonna to freeze.
- Benson: Rollins, let's go.
- Greg Yates: What did I say?
- Rollins: Dr. Carl Rudnick. Deputy Chief Medical Examiner in the borough of Manhattan. He's a serial killer?
- Greg Yates: Wait. Carl became an ME? Oh, no that... That really is... That is perfect. He never liked people but he always liked cutting.
- Benson: Don't even try, Yates.
- Greg Yates: No, stay, please. I need to know, did he do any of the autopsies on the girls you found? Nadia, maybe? Come on, a man like that, with all those female bodies being delivered to the morgue, having been tortured to death... That is a trigger. He would get off on them and then he would want to go do another one for himself. That girl... The girl in Pelham Bay... Did Rudnick do her autopsy, too? Have another ME recheck the body. His report didn't say so but I'd bet dollars to donuts that he cut that girl up while she was still alive.
- Barba: Accusing the Deputy Chief ME of rape and murder? And they offered this conspiracy theory up right after their conjugal visit?
- Rollins: Yeah, I know.
- Barba: He worked you two.
- Tutuola: And the fiancee worked us. Give Yates points. That's a bold move.
- Rollins: I'm sorry. You all were right, I was wrong.
- Carisi: Hold on, Rollins. Now, look, I'm still only mid-search, but there was a Lena Grunwald from Switzerland who went to Columbia at that time. Now, as far as I can tell, she never graduates. She just disappears off the grid in the winter of 2002.
- Barba: You actually looked into this?
- Carisi: Yeah, Counselor, I did. 'Cause if Yates is taking a flyer for an appeal, then we have to rule this out. Now, I'm still new here. But how well do you guys know Carl Rudnick?
- Benson: [to Carisi] He got here right before you did. He came out of Miami-Dade, I think.
- Barba: Carisi's right. Yates is looking to overturn his conviction. Did Rudnick ever mention that he went to medical school with Yates?
- Rollins: No, he didn't.
- Benson: So what if he did? Yates kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered Nadia. He is guilty. The only reason he's bringing up conflicting evidence is for his appeal.
- Carisi: Still, if they did know each other, then Rudnick should have recused himself.
- Barba: That's easy enough to confirm. And while you're at it, see if Rudnick has any connection to the townhouse in Harlem, or if he even knew this supposed fiancee Lena Grunwald.
- Benson: Okay, so Yates and Rudnick overlapped in medical school and Lena was in business school at the same time.
- Tutuola: And Susie just told us they were all friends.
- Rollins: Which, as Carisi said, Rudnick should have disclosed.
- Benson: It still doesn't mean that Rudnick is good for this. Remember, Rollins, Yates tried to pin Nadia's death on Will Halstead. He's an opportunist.
- Rollins: I know he is. And I know he's good for Nadia's murder and, a dozen before. But this woman in the wall, I'm not sure about. 'Cause, look, I did a search, I was trying to find out who exactly lived in this house in 2002. Now Con Ed and phone bills both went to Manon Favreau. The name on the cable bill, it's under Carl Rudnick.
- Benson: While it was owned by Manon Favreau? So he was renting?
- Carisi: More like house-sitting. It turns out her maiden name was "Manon Rudnick." She's Carl Rudnick's great-aunt. I mean, these ancestry websites, you'd be surprised what they know about you.
- Benson: Okay. So Rudnick neglected to mention that the body we found was in his aunt's house, and he was living there when it was plastered in the wall.
- Tutuola: Damn. He autopsied his own fiancee?
- Rollins: Thirteen years after he killed her.
- Benson: We don't know that yet. We don't even know if the body is Lena's.
- Tutuola: Susie told us that Lena sent her a picture of herself from Switzerland.
- Carisi: Yeah, well, if she did send that photo, that's the last trace of her.
- Benson: Do we have proof that the body is even her's? DNA, dental records, anything?
- Tutuola: I called Warner. She said, according to Rudnick, there's no way to ID her.
- Carisi: There's a shock.
- Benson: Okay. I'll call the chief Medical Examiner and see if he'll authorize Warner to independently redo both autopsies, preferably when Rudnick's not there.
- Barba: What am I looking at here?
- Rollins: It's proof that the body in the wall was Lena Grunwald. Okay, Warner found these gold overlays on her teeth that are specific to German-Swiss dentists.
- Carisi: Yeah, another detail Rudnick did not put in his autopsy report.
- Tutuola: We confirmed with her dentist in Switzerland. It is Lena's body.
- Barba: She never went home?
- Carisi: Well, here's where it gets tricky. I finally heard back from my guy at TSA. Now according to them, Lena Grunwald left JFK for Zurich on February 11, 2002.
- Barba: So? We can't pinpoint her time of death. She must have come back and been murdered sometime later.
- Carisi: Yeah, but there's no record of her coming back. So, on a hunch, I looked at Rudnick's travel. Now, this guy, he's got the opposite problem, all right? He returned from Paris to JFK on February 15 but there's no record of him leaving the US or even Canada.
- Barba: Okay, you got a theory to go with this travel log?
- Carisi: What if Rudnick left the US using Lena's passport and then came back as himself?
- Barba: You're suggesting he was able to pass as a woman, post 9/11?
- Tutuola: Yeah. A red-haired lady with a Swiss passport. So outside their profile no one took a second look at her.
- Rollins: And Rachel, the victim from the bay, I mean, she was last seen leaving her shelter with a woman. Or someone dressed like one.
- Barba: You using facial recognition software?
- Tutuola: We are. Liv is headed to 1PP now to get the okay to bring Rudnick in for questioning.
- Barba: Call her off. We'll ask forgiveness later. For now, I'll find a pretext to invite him to my office.
- Rollins: So while he's with you, how about a warrant for his house? I mean, knives, dresses, who knows what we'll find.
- Barba: All right
Background information and Notes[]
- While conjugal visits are a common plot device in any movie or show involving people in prison, it's a not-commonly-known fact that only a third of the states (17 total) allow them in any capacity. New York, however, is in fact one of those states, so it's proper and realistic for it to pop up here.
- In this episode, Gregory Yates mentions the saying "If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras". That saying was also mentioned in and inspired the title of the episode Law & Order: Special Victims Unit season 10 "Zebras".
- Olivia tells Barba to "pick your poison" when deciding whether to give Greg Yates a conjugal visit as trade for information about a potential serial rapist and murderer. "Pick your poison" was the name of the nail polish Yates used to paint his victims' finger nails in the episode "Daydream Believer".
- Goof: The body is claimed to have been found in Pelham Bay, which is in the Bronx. The Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial bridge is seen in the background of this scene, which is in Queens.
Episode scene cards[]
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
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Green Haven Correctional |
Residence of |
Midtown Mission |
397 Convent Avenue |
Residence of |
| Previous episode: "Surrendering Noah" |
"Devil's Dissections" Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 17 |
Next episode: "Criminal Pathology" |