Written By Dawn De Noon and Lisa Marie Petersen
Directed By Constantine Makris
While attempting to falsify a paternity test naming him as the father of an infant who was murdered shortly after birth alongside her mother, a doctor sets in motion a trail of events leading to his own murder and the capture of a serial pedophile.
This episode was also the first appearance of Casey Novak, who would be the show's lead ADA until the end of Season 9.
Tropes
- Asshole Victim:
- Dr. Archibald Newlands, who murders his mistress and their child to cover up their affair, and then tries to avoid justice by beating a paternity test using stolen blood. The fact that he ends up getting implicated in the crimes of the person whom his stolen DNA belongs to and is then murdered by that person to close their case indicates that he has gotten exactly what he deserves.
- Nestler was a serial child rapist who Stabler subjected to the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique.
- Big Damn Heroes: Casey saves the girl that Nestler had abducted.
- Break the Haughty: From the second she's introduced, Casey treats the detectives like her servants, ordering them around and telling them how to do their jobs, which only makes things harder for them. But as the episode goes on, she learns the reality of working in Special Victims and even asks Arthur Branch to take her off the case as she feels she cannot handle it. He reassures her she'll be fine and after this episode, Casey is much more friendly to the team.
- Contrived Coincidence: Dr. Newlands probably would have gotten away with murdering Brianna and their baby but for one unfortunate choice: the person whose DNA he picks to hide his own in the paternity test just so happens to be a pedophilic serial rapist.
- Death of a Child: The episode starts with the discovery of a dead infant in the sewer.
- Dislikes the New Guy: It wouldn't be Law & Order without this trope. Casey's haughty attitude immediately caused a conflict with the detectives, especially when it interfered with the case. It wasn't until Benson found her crying in her office after a failed line-up and she ended up locating a missing girl, who was found hidden alive in a cooler, that the ice was finally broken.
- Everyone Has Standards: Benson starts to berate Casey about a line-up gone wrong, but once she sees Casey crying, she can't bring herself to continue, and instead offers Casey some friendly advice on coping with her job.
- Fetishes Are Weird: Peter Nestler's penchant for pedophilia aside, he also has a strange obsession with the taste and smell of honey during sex, so much so that it's basically a compulsion to use it during his assaults. The detectives immediately link the new child abduction to Nestler even though it doesn't match his typical MO due to the presence of honey at the crime scene, and when they search his apartment, they find multiple shelves in his pantry dedicated to an almost ritualistic display of honey bottles.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Newlands tried to cover up his crimes by using the blood of one of his wife's patients. Unfortunately for Newlands, the blood he stole turns to belong to a serial child rapist. The actual child rapist then murdered Newlands out of fear that he will identify him to the police.
- Karma Houdini: As usual, Stabler faces no consequences for using torture (which didn't work, at least not quick enough) to get a suspect to talk.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Archibald Newlands, while trying to cover up that he murdered his mistress and their newborn child, implicates himself in multiple child rapes committed by the person whose blood he stole to beat the paternity test. This leaves him screwed either way: if he stays quiet about his deception, he goes down for the rapes he didn't commit and gets a reputation as a pedophile, and if he tells the truth and turns in his own blood to clear that up, it's off to death row for him for the double homicide he did commit. He eventually decides to meet with his lawyer, tell him the truth and then possibly flee the country, but is murdered by the rapist, Peter Nestler, before he can do any of that.
- After killing Newlands, Nestler, believing that he's in the clear and that everyone believes him to be dead, deviates from his usual MO of just cornering little girls, forcing them to arouse him, and then raping them, and outright abducts a new victim, planning to kill her once he's done with her to conceal the fact that he's still alive and active. However, he is unable to lay off his compulsion of using honey as a turn-on; this helps the detectives to discover that he is the true rapist, and eventually track him down and arrest him, saving his victim just in the nick of time, and sending him on a one-way trip to death row for all of his crimes.
- Morton's Fork: Newlands ends up in this situation after he inadvertently used a DNA sample of a serial rapist to fake his own test results. Whether he admits the truth or not he'd be convicted of a horrible crime and go to prison.
- Naïve Newcomer: Casey came from white collar crimes and is shocked by what SVU turns out to be. At the end of the episode, she asks Branch to reassign her, but he declines, stating that the fact that she was so affected by the case proves that she's the right person for the job.
- Off on a Technicality: The detectives interview one of Nestler's victims in the hopes that her information will lead to his capture, but they are unable to prosecute Nestler for what he did to that girl, as the statute of limitations on her case has run out.
- Stupid Evil: The cops thought Newlands was guilty of all of Nestler's crimes, and Newlands couldn't say anything without putting himself on the hook for the even worse crime he did commit. Nestler would have gotten away with everything if he had left well enough alone. Instead he killed Newlands, which was the only reason the cops ever looked for him.
- Sweets of Temptation: Peter Nestler, a pedophile, locks himself in a bathroom stall with a little girl, squirts honey on his penis and tells her to lick it off because it's sweet and tastes like a lollipop.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Loosely based on the John Schneeberger case. Schneeberger, however, was trying to beat a rape case and not a murder investigation. Schneeberger also wasn't using the blood of a sex offender and was instead caught because of a second victim.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Casey gets a few of these throughout the episode from various members of SVU, since their styles of handling cases initially clash very badly.
- One moment in the middle of the episode is subverted; Olivia storms into Casey's office to complain about a failed line-up, but when she sees the crying and apologetic Casey, she softens long enough to give Casey some advice.
- Would Hurt a Child: Peter Nestler is a child molester and Archibald Newlands murdered his infant daughter from his mistress.
