William Lexner is a psychopath who stalks, and eventually murders, TV news reporter Sarah Logan.
A Queens College graduate, Lexner wanted to be a firefighter, but he was rejected by every fire department he applied to after evaluating psychiatrists found him to be narcissistic, paranoid, and unwilling to work with others. Lexner began stalking Logan shortly before the events of the episode, sending her flowers and harassing letters.
After Logan does an on-air report about her own gang-rape three months earlier, Lexner is outraged - not out of concern for her health and well-being, but because the fact that she had been raped and that she talked about the assault on the air ruined his fantasy of her as "pure", "unspoiled", and "the perfect woman". He dedicates himself to killing her and her rapists, believing he could be her avenger and "put her out of her misery" at the same time.
Lexner constructs a bomb he anonymously mailed to Sarah, hidden beneath a bouquet of flowers in a cardboard package. He watches her from a park across the street from her apartment as she opens the package, and he delights in seeing her smile at the sight of the flowers - seconds before the bomb goes off, killing her.
He surreptitiously follows the NYPD's Special Victims Unit's investigation of Logan's rape and murder, eventually finding out that they had arrested petty criminal Mark Krieger, the ringleader of the assault. After Krieger is released on bail, Lexner murders him by planting another homemade bomb in his car, which explodes when Krieger turns the key in the ignition.
The SVU team suspects that both bombings were committed by the same person, so they investigate Logan's correspondence and discover that someone had been stalking her. They identify Lexner by fingerprints on his letters and arrest him after evacuating his apartment building.
Aware that he needs Lexner to confess to get a conviction, Detective John Munch, who had bonded with Sarah during the investigation of her rape, flatters his inflated ego by calling him "the Nietzschean superman" and feeds his obsession with Logan by describing her kindness and dedication to her job. Lexner, delighted to have Munch's attention, rants about how he alone understood her and that her rape had "ruined" her by turning her into "damaged goods". When Munch presses him, Lexner confesses to mailing Logan the bomb that killed her and describes, with relish, watching her die.
Lexner is convicted of stalking and murder and imprisoned for life. (SVU: "Remorse")
Known Victims[]
- Sarah Logan
- Mark Krieger
- Tommy McConaugh (attempted)