Laura Pfeiffer is the wife of Derek Pfeiffer, and a subordinate both in business and criminal enterprise of drug ringleader Keith Gerard, later a liability to the operation.
Background[]
Pfeiffer and her husband Derek, along with her sister Denise Draper, used her nephew Tommy as a cover for "family visits" to Mexico to obtain canisters of cocaine in baby formula bottles as part of Gerard's operations. They were most likely recruited from Derek filing for bankruptcy and needing a better income source. Their home was regularly cleaned by Lynn Hauser, a black woman who recently earned enough money to move to an apartment, partly from cleaning the Pfeiffers' apartment. The operation was threatened when Lynn stole a canister of the cocaine assuming it was baby formula, as she didn't have enough money at that time to get another canister. When she fed it to her son Jawan, he overdosed and eventually died.
Risk[]
Pfeiffer is notified by Detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson about Jawan Houser's accidental overdose, and she pretends to be horrified over the tragedy. When asked by Benson where she got the formula canisters, Laura intentionally misdirected them towards Gentry's Market in Columbus, where Derek supposedly bought the canisters. Afterwards, an unidentified dirty cop, later revealed as Brad Kendall, arrives at the residence to get the canisters, but he gets upset once Laura tells him that Stabler and Benson confiscated them all. After Derek's death at the hands of Kendall, Laura lies to Stabler and Benson that Derek would never be involved with drugs, and that he would not want her or Tommy in his business affairs at home, as she continued denying everything. Benson proposed to Laura having two detectives at her residence for protection. Laura nervously rejected it, as she would feel more comfortable at her sister's residence while she feared being exposed. When Stabler asked her if somebody threatened her, she told them about her previous encounter with Kendall.
As Derek's travel records had been under review, the SVU detectives realized Laura was also involved with the operation, as she took frequent round trips with Tommy without taking suspicion from the border authorities as they would not give a second thought over a mother and an infant bringing extra baby formula canisters filled with cocaine. Benson and Captain Donald Cragen question Gerard, who states that Laura and Derek do not have any children. Benson and Cragen determine that the cocaine ring comprises mothers with babies, and based on this revelation, they track down Laura and Denise at their residence. Tommy was crying as Benson and Cragen arrived, assuming the women had already escaped, and they checked around the house to look for anything, only to find a broken window with shattered glass. Once they got inside, as Benson tended the baby, they found Laura and her sister already dead, with gunshots in their heads. The investigation occurs afterwards as CSU found a pillow used by the shooter to muffle the gunshots, and Benson finds a plane ticket to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which Laura was planning to head to avoid prosecution.