Russian Love Poem (Season 1, Episode 12)
Premise: A wealthy bisexual businessman is found strangled in a leather harness, and his long list of lovers leads the detectives to a pair of Russian women and the man who loves one of them.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 12
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd), Det. Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek)
- Guest stars
- Olek Krupa as Alex Strizhov, Nadine Stenovitch as Katya Ivanova, Deborah Rush as Christina Harlin, Zhana Londoner as Sonya Pietrovicz, Melissa Sagemiller as Becky Sorenson
- Director
- Rick Rosenthal
- Writers
- Story: Wendy West & John Chambers; Written by: Eva Nagorski
Summary
“Russian Love Poem” begins when Christina Harlin and her daughter, Emily, come home from a weekend away and find multimillionaire Andrew Harlin dead, strangled while wearing a black leather harness. A banana has been inserted into his body, and Christina says he was allergic to bananas. She has an alibi, stands to share an estate of more than $100 million with her children, and openly tells Benson and Stabler that her husband slept with men and women alike.
The detectives work through his lovers: an aspiring adult-film actor who goes by Bull Dozer, painter Becky Sorenson, who also dated Harlin’s son, Adam, and Charlie Poe, a married boat captain who says Harlin helped with his children’s school costs. None of them has a motive. A fingerprint in the study belongs to Sonya Pietrovicz, a Russian immigrant now singing at a Brighton Beach restaurant. She claims she was covering for Harlin’s housekeeper, Katya, but the real housekeeper turns out to be someone else.
Emily brings the detectives papers from her father’s private drawer showing he was suing his former mistress, Katya Ivanova, for $2 million in gifts; his widow dropped the suit the morning after his death. Christina scorns Katya but denies shielding her. A frightened Sonya then phones the squad, and Munch, who speaks some Russian, takes the call. By the time detectives reach Brighton Beach, Sonya and her aunt have been killed with a hatchet.
Alexander Strizhov, who brought Katya to America and is devoted to her, walks in and confesses to shooting Harlin, though Harlin was strangled, and he denies killing Sonya. Tracked to the Peninsula Hotel and warned about immigration, Katya admits that she and Sonya tied Harlin up to tease him, that she put the banana there, and that they left him alive. At the restaurant a Russian businessman hints that Strizhov is to blame, and Sonya’s cousin, who had pretended not to speak English, says he heard Strizhov kill her.
Spoiler, the ending: Threatened with arrest, Katya agrees to confront Strizhov at the restaurant while the detectives watch and Munch translates. Strizhov draws a gun and, offering what he calls a Russian love poem, confesses: he strangled Harlin after the women left him tied up, to make Katya pay for rejecting him, killed Sonya because she had called the police, and killed her aunt when she returned home early. He then turns the gun on himself and dies, so the case ends without an arrest or trial.
Why it stands out
- Polish-American actor Olek Krupa, known for villain roles in films such as Eraser, Blue Streak and The Italian Job, guest-stars as Strizhov; he had already played four different characters on the original Law & Order.
- The title comes from the final scene, where the killer announces he will recite a “Russian love poem” and instead gives his confession.