Daydream Believer (Season 16, Episode 20)
Premise: SVU and Chicago’s Intelligence Unit hunt a doctor suspected of a decade of rape-murders after he abducts a young woman from Voight’s office and drives her to New York.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 20
- Starring
- Sgt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Judge Elana Barth (Jenna Stern)
- Guest stars
- Dallas Roberts as Greg Yates, Stella Maeve as Nadia Decotis, Jason Beghe as Hank Voight, Sophia Bush as Erin Lindsay, Mary Bacon as Susie Frain
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Story: Warren Leight & Matt Olmstead; Teleplay: Julie Martin & Ed Zuckerman
Summary
“Daydream Believer” continues a manhunt that began in Chicago, where SVU and Sgt. Hank Voight’s Intelligence Unit tied the rape and burning death of a maternity nurse to three New York cases from 2004 and questioned, then released, Dr. Greg Yates, a former Columbia professor. Yates abducts Nadia Decotis, who works in Voight’s office, as she goes out to collect a birthday cake for Det. Erin Lindsay, and heads east in Lindsay’s car, changing license plates in Indiana and again in Pennsylvania. Back in New York, Benson’s squad traces a stolen credit card he uses in New Jersey to buy a shovel and an ice pick.
Lindsay’s car turns up empty near the Broadway Bridge, with Nadia’s scarf inside. Soon after, two young women are beaten and sexually assaulted in an apartment in Elmhurst, Queens; one dies and the other is left brain-damaged. An old parking ticket places Yates in the area, and the squad storms a house nearby to find him eating lunch with Susie Frain, his girlfriend on and off for 19 years. Questioned by Rollins, Yates says Nadia offered him a ride and muses that a killer might bury a body somewhere sacred. Shown photos of the Queens victims, Susie mentions sand in his shoes from a beach he visits to meditate. In the woods near that beach the police dig up years-old remains, then Nadia’s body; she was raped, tortured and killed in Lindsay’s car. Dental records tie two sets of remains to the nurse who vanished in 2004 and a Syosset high school student.
With no forensic link to the older killings, Barba tries Yates for Nadia’s murder. Yates insists on representing himself, keeping his lawyer, Crane, as co-counsel. He paints Nadia as a prostitute; Lindsay testifies that she once arrested Nadia for escort work and heroin use, then saw her through rehab and a sober year as her roommate. Questioning Benson, Yates raises Dr. Will Halstead, who knew a 2004 victim and was cleared by the unit where his brother, Det. Jay Halstead, works. Testifying, Yates says Nadia told him Voight was raping her, so he helped her escape, and that she left him in New York to buy heroin. Barba recalls Dr. Warner, who finds no sign of multiple partners; Yates’s cross-examination of her lingers on Nadia’s suffering until Crane asks for a recess.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Yates of first-degree rape, sodomy and murder, and Nadia’s colleagues raise a toast to her. In the final scene a man catches Yates off guard in custody, says he would rather Yates live in fear and warns that someone will do to him what he did to Nadia.
Why it stands out
- Ends a three-part story told across Chicago Fire (“We Called Her Jellybean”), Chicago P.D. (“The Number of Rats”) and this episode.
- Chicago P.D.’s Jason Beghe, Sophia Bush and Jesse Lee Soffer join the SVU cast, and Tamara Tunie appears as Dr. Melinda Warner.
- Dallas Roberts plays Greg Yates, who returns in Season 17 when more remains wash up on the beach where he buried his victims.