The Third Guy (Season 1, Episode 16)
Premise: Two teenage burglars are charged after an elderly widow dies following a rape, and a plea deal steers SVU to a delivery man whose mental capacity becomes the center of the case.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 16
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek)
- Guest stars
- Denis O’Hare as Jimmy Walp, J.K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda, Vincent Guastaferro as Stan Bosick, Eugene Byrd as Carlos Medina, Rick Gonzalez as Alfonso Cardenas
- Director
- Jud Taylor
- Writers
- Story: Wendy West; Written by: Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen
Summary
“The Third Guy” begins with 72-year-old widow Lenora Bernstein discovered in her trashed apartment, bound with her own stockings; she was sexually assaulted and has died of a heart attack, which makes the case a homicide because it happened during a felony. Cragen calls in police psychiatrist Dr. Emil Skoda, who profiles a young, inexperienced attacker. A pawnbroker describes two teenagers who tried to sell him her fake jewelry, and a woman on her block names them from sketches as Carlos Medina and Alfonso Cardenas, who used to heckle the victim as she walked to synagogue.
The boys are arrested with the widow’s pills, but neither one’s DNA matches the rapist’s, and they refuse to name a third person. An old friend, Emmanuel Clemente, has an alibi. Offered a lenient deal for whichever of them talks, Carlos takes it: he says the pair fled when a cuckoo clock went off at 9:30, then watched a man in a beige uniform walk into the open apartment. Medical-supply driver Stan Bosick, praised in the papers for calling 911 and attempting CPR, turns out to be an ex-convict who boasts of sleeping with customers, but he says his partner, Jimmy Walp, carried up her oxygen tank and that he lied only to keep his job. Carlos picks Walp from a lineup. The final autopsy finds two heart attacks, the first during the robbery.
Walp admits he found Mrs. Bernstein tied up but denies touching her. A note from Skoda to Cragen questioning Walp’s mental capacity lands in the defense file, and his lawyer moves to suppress the statement, arguing that he could not grasp his rights. Detectives point to his job, his independent life and his apartment full of books, and they find a bondage video staged like the crime scene; a defense test scores his IQ at 68, just under the cutoff of 70. At the hearing, Walp recites the Miranda warning but cannot explain it. Asked by the prosecution, he denies being disabled, and the judge lets him go on off the record: he says he imitated what he had seen on video and tried CPR when she stopped responding.
Spoiler, the ending: Afterward, Skoda sees a man with a disability who made a terrible mistake, while Cragen reads Walp’s remorse as proof that he understood his actions. No ruling is shown on screen. The episode closes as Walp is checked into an institution for an intake interview.
Why it stands out
- J.K. Simmons plays police psychiatrist Dr. Emil Skoda, a role he played across three Law & Order series and New York Undercover.
- Denis O’Hare plays Jimmy Walp, and Lance Reddick appears as Assistant ME Taylor.
- Before the squad looks hard at the delivery man the papers have made a hero, Cragen cites the Richard Jewell case as a warning.