Perverted (Season 11, Episode 9)
Premise: A biker’s mutilation murder is pinned on Benson through her car and her DNA, and the squad races to prove the evidence against her was manufactured.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 9
- 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), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Patrick Heusinger as Brady Harrison, Robert John Burke as IAB Lt. Ed Tucker, J. Robert Spencer as Joseph Soltice, Emma Myles as Starla, Tom Pelphrey as T-Bone
- Ripped from the headlines
- The fabricated-DNA plot is based on research by an Israel-based team led by Dan Frumkin, published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics.
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Perverted” opens when tourists near a park fountain find Clyde Vandyne, a Death Knights biker recently out of Attica, tasered, slashed and castrated, with Benson’s business card on him. Stabler finds Benson home with the flu; she does not know the man. Munch and Fin get nowhere at the gang’s clubhouse but bring in member T-Bone, whose video shows the gang raping 19-year-old Starla, who later became Clyde’s woman. Starla calls it consensual, admits Clyde had her steal blank birth certificates from the city clerk’s office, and says he rode off on his motorcycle the night he died.
A 911 caller reported a brunette in a black Mustang ramming Clyde’s bike, and the partial plate matches Benson’s 1965 convertible, which has front-end damage. Cragen notifies IAB and sends her home. CSU finds a bloody Bowie knife with two blood types, and Benson asks Warner to test her own DNA. The 911 call came from a student whose phone was borrowed by a well-dressed stranger. A gang intelligence detective shows Stabler a photo of a man who put a GPS tracker on Clyde’s bike. Lt. Ed Tucker of IAB then arrests Benson: her DNA matches the knife. Feverish, she talks to Tucker without a lawyer while he presses her about therapy for post-traumatic stress, then asks for counsel.
Trevor Langan, paid by unnamed friends, represents her, and when Judge Alan Ridenour sets bail at $250,000, Stabler mortgages his house to free her. A tipster names the man in the photo as Lawrence Jasinski, a former private investigator, whom the bikers beat before police arrive. He says he was paid to follow Benson by Brady Harrison, a date rapist she and Stabler sent to prison, who had fought Clyde at Attica. Harrison recently had a dent fixed on his silver Mercedes. Warner finds the knife DNA lacks normal chemical markers: someone copied Benson’s DNA, taken from utensils she used at a diner, and added it to other blood, a technique recently developed in Israel. Posing as a client, Fin gets Harrison’s number from geneticist Joseph Soltice, and it traces to Benson’s neighborhood.
Spoiler, the ending: Harrison gets past the officer guarding Benson and confronts her with a Taser. He says Clyde raped and brutalized him in prison and blames her for once telling him prison would teach him what his victims felt; she apologizes for the remark but denies arranging anything. He refuses to say where he got her blood. After a struggle, Stabler finds her unhurt. Soltice, picked up after a raid on his lab, says he broke no law, though his records show a dozen other people charged or imprisoned on DNA he made.
Why it stands out
- Benson is arrested and charged with murder in this episode, and Stabler mortgages his house to post her bail.
- Robert John Burke returns as IAB’s Ed Tucker, now a lieutenant, and Peter Hermann’s Trevor Langan defends Benson.