Eric Byers was a teenage pedophile.
History[]
When he was young, his father abandoned him before his mother remarried. At seventeen, Eric began having sexual feelings for his five-year-old stepbrother Cory. When he told his mother Dana and stepfather Sean about his desires, they disowned him and threw him out of their house. Afraid that he would eventually hurt a child, he went to the Special Victims Unit and confessed to being a pedophile, in hopes that they would put him in a treatment program. As he had committed no crime, however, they could do nothing except monitor his behavior.
Detectives Benson and Stabler discovered that Eric had posted on Pediaphax, a self-help site for pedophiles that displayed non-sexual pictures of prepubescent children for would-be predators to use as a sexual release. The site's webmaster, Jake Berlin, said that Eric had contacted him, and that he offered to help him find a way to vent his sexual feelings without hurting anyone.
Soon afterward, however, Eric gave in to his urges and raped a boy. He was then found brutally sodomized and murdered. His body was discovered and cradled by his grieving mother. His stepfather Sean admitted to having sodomized Eric because he believed that Eric had abused his son, but denied killing him. Benson and Tutuola then learn that Berlin killed Eric after Eric told him about abusing the boy, because he was jealous that Eric had done what he could only fantasize about. The police released Eric's picture to the media, but were unable to find his victim. However, the post that he'd made in graphic detail caused them to believe that the victim would eventually be found because Eric had caused enough trauma that no parent would be able to ignore it. (SVU: "Confession")