Contact (Season 1, Episode 19)
Premise: A box-cutter rapist preys on women riding the subway, and when tainted lineup identifications sink the case, the squad turns to a pregnant victim who never reported her attack.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 19
- 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
- Audra McDonald as Dr. Audrey Jackson, Tom McCarthy as Nick Ganzner, Sal Viscuso as Sal Avelino, Bruce Bohne as Bruce Abbott, Nicole Sullivan as Jen Caulder
- Director
- Michael Zinberg
- Writers
- Story: Wendy West; Written by: Robert Palm & Wendy West
Summary
“Contact” opens with Jen Caulder attacked on a train between the Fulton Street and Chambers Street stations, the latest of seven assaults in six months by a man who carries a box cutter and slips away just before each train pulls in. Munch clashes with transit detective Greenberg, and Post reporter Nick Ganzner trails the investigation. A passenger, accountant Schreiber, recalls paint-streaked trousers and a navy pea coat, and the deputy commissioner assigns forensic psychologist Dr. Audrey Jackson to the squad.
The next day, window-display maker Bruce Abbott is wrestled down on a train near Columbus Circle after an older rider shouts that he is pushing himself against a young woman. He has paint on his trousers and a box cutter, but the woman says he never raped her, and none of the earlier victims picks him out of a lineup. Talking with Jackson, Abbott says he is lonely and only wanted some contact. Jackson argues that the real attacker is a power rapist, and Abbott is left facing a lesser fondling charge.
Benson, who has been seeing Ganzner, throws him out of her apartment when he proposes that he play the subway attacker. Cragen later notes that Ganzner’s articles read like inside information, and Benson learns he got hold of a confidential police document. She answers by handing him an old torture-murder file and telling him the killer is a man like him.
After another rape at the Delancey Street station, a parking stub the attacker dropped leads to a Queens lot and then to Dewell’s Painting Contractors, where part-time painter Sal Avelino is carrying a second driver’s license belonging to a woman named Sidra Lonstein. Caulder and the other victims identify Avelino in a lineup, but Caulder makes a remark about him in front of the women still waiting, and a judge dismisses the charges after the defense argues that the identifications are tainted and that the DNA shows only that sex took place.
Munch and Stabler track down Lonstein, a pregnant subway cleaner. She says only that a man bumped into her about seven months earlier, though she picks out Avelino’s photo. Because she will not call it rape, the detectives tell Avelino they have a court order to test her unborn child’s DNA.
Spoiler, the ending: When Avelino sees Lonstein at the station house, he recognizes her by the flowered dress she wore, admits he attacked her, and announces that the baby is his and that they will be a family once he is free. The episode ends as he is taken away; no trial is shown.
Why it stands out
- Audra McDonald makes her first appearance as forensic psychologist Dr. Audrey Jackson, a role she plays again in the season finale, “Slaves.”
- Tom McCarthy, who later won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for “Spotlight,” plays reporter Nick Ganzner.