Written By Judith McCreary
Directed By Chris Zalla
Stabler and Tutuola must overcome the team's mistakes and team up with a hostile, obsessed lone wolf detective Victor Moran (Delroy Lindo) from outside their squad to track down a serial rapist/killer who is obsessed with bondage and his victims' hair color.
Tropes
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Angela, the perp's mother, doesn't like him because he once tied a cat to a bus and dropped another from a sixth-floor window.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: A particularly twisted variation. The perp is obsessed with cycling through his victims this way. He is also insistent that they be the victims' natural hair colors.
- Bound and Gagged: The perp ties up his victims and seals their lips with superglue.
- Cowboy Cop: This turns out to be not okay with the svu detectives when it's not one of their own doing it.
- Downer Ending: The cops finally catch the perp, after their screwups have allowed him to attack more women, but Moran's daughter is taken off life support and used for organ donation.
- Family Theme Naming: The final suspects are brothers named Luke, Mark, John and James because their father was a part-time minister.
- I Work Alone: This is Moran's M.O.Cragen: You're not a team player, Moran. You hold anything else back, I'll have your ass.
- Married to the Job: Moran neglects his family in order to catch the serial killer. After his wife is killed in a car crash and his daughter is rendered comatose he becomes even more obsessed with his work, blaming the serial killer for his family's injuries.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Somebody leaks to the press that the cops have the killer's DNA, so he burns his next victim alive to avoid leaving DNA evidence.
- Stabler and Moran manage to get the killer to lawyer up by gloating about how they have a search warrant for his place and are going to "violate" him:
Stabler: We're going through your private things.
Moran: How does it FEEL. To be VIOLATED, Mr. Ocurro?
Ocurro: I want a lawyer. Now.- Warner screws up the time of death on the key victim, falling for the perp's ruse, which enables his manufactured alibi to work, which enables him to go free temporarily and assault another woman.
- Police Brutality: Moran kicks the crap out of the handcuffed, unresisting perp.
- Prison Rape: Stabler so intimidates the Red Herring suspect with the threat of this that he pisses himself and then cuts his throat in holding.
- Shaming the Mob: after a sketch is released to the public, an angry mob hunts down and beats up the Red Herring suspect, so Tutuola has to shame them.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: SVU detectives clash with the lone wolf who's been working this case for months and with the chief of detectives who clearly prefers him.
