Confidential (Season 11, Episode 15)
Premise: A woman’s murder in a Manhattan tower matches a 1987 killing, and the case turns on what the killer’s lawyer has kept secret ever since.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 15
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Judge Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light)
- Guest stars
- Lena Olin as Ingrid Block, Richard Burgi as Richard Morgan, Yul Vazquez as Daniel Hardy, William Bogert as Thomas Rooney, Daniel Hartley as Matt Simmons
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Confidential” begins when building security sees a woman pulled into a 58th-floor men’s room seconds before a scheduled blackout. The cleaner they think is missing turns up safe with a boyfriend, and the squad then finds a body wrapped in plastic in the dumpsters: Renee Simmons, a secretary laid off that morning by building owner Richard Morgan. Munch recalls a nearly identical 1987 murder at nearby Trent Towers, where accountant Nancy Pierce was raped and strangled. Maintenance man Daniel Hardy has been in Sing Sing for it ever since, and he begs Benson and Stabler for a DNA test. Renee’s ex-husband, Matt Simmons, caught with a large bag of marijuana, says Renee was having an affair with Morgan.
Morgan was a Trent Towers tenant in 1987 and had just bought Nancy’s firm. His books hide a Ponzi scheme, and Renee was an IRS informant. Arrested for fraud and grand larceny, Morgan is put under house arrest by Judge Linda Maskin, but an 80-year-old investor, Thomas Rooney, shoots him dead as he leaves with his lawyer, Ingrid Block. The DNA from Nancy’s case is missing. Benson presses Block, who admits Morgan confessed Nancy’s murder to her in 1987 and, after both killings, gave her a shadow box holding his karate belts to keep. Tests find both victims’ DNA and Morgan’s on a belt. Hardy, told he is going free, is furious that Block kept quiet for two decades, and Judge Elizabeth Donnelly sets aside his conviction.
Stabler then arrests Block for facilitating Renee’s murder, since the belt returned to Morgan, without clearing it with Cragen or Cabot. Acting as her own lawyer, Block questions Stabler about Victor Tate, a man he wrongly put away for rape who is still in prison, and Cabot’s cross-examination leaves her saying Renee’s death is her fault. Stabler, now regretting the arrest, takes Hardy to see Tate, and Hardy testifies that in 1987 Morgan had him use his master key to take the box from Block’s office.
Spoiler, the ending: The judge directs a verdict of not guilty and rebukes the prosecution for pursuing a political point. Block then takes on Rooney’s defense. Benson and Stabler confront her with a call she made to Rooney two hours before the shooting, telling him where Morgan would be. She denies urging him to kill and says that this time she made sure justice was done. The episode ends with no charge against her.
Why it stands out
- Lena Olin, Richard Burgi and Russell G. Jones guest star as Ingrid Block, Richard Morgan and Morgan’s head of security.
- A press release listed Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy, but the character is only mentioned, when Cabot says McCoy will not let her drop the case.
- Victor Tate is the man Stabler learned he had wrongly imprisoned in the season premiere, “Unstable”; Chike Johnson plays him in both episodes.