Pattern Seventeen (Season 16, Episode 9)
Premise: A serial rapist who hums hymns and chokes his victims strikes in New York, and Rollins links him to Atlanta cases whose rape kits were never tested.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 9
- Starring
- Sgt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Deputy Chief William Dodds (Peter Gallagher), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Harry Hamlin as Chief Charles Patton, Jordan Lage as Albert Beck, Myk Watford as Captain Sam Reynolds, Samantha Futerman as Annie Lin, Lou Martini Jr. as Dr. Joseph Conklin
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Kevin Fox
Summary
“Pattern Seventeen” opens with Benson walking Annie Lin through a reenactment of her attack: early on a Sunday a man in latex gloves forced her into a restaurant, choked her unconscious and raped her while humming what sounded like a hymn. A second victim, student Nina Carr, describes the same gloves, choke hold and humming after being attacked while moving her mother’s car. Rollins remembers an Atlanta rapist who hummed and choked his victims around 2008. Her former captain, Sam Reynolds, confirms three open Atlanta cases whose kits were never tested, and Benson sends her and Fin south while Carisi works the ViCAP database.
Child services, meanwhile, sets a hearing on Noah’s care after Benson’s doctor found healed rib fractures from early infancy. In Atlanta, Reynolds dismisses the victims as a prostitute, an addict and a teenage mother, and Deputy Chief Charles Patton, Rollins’s former boss, hands over the kits he pulled before she arrived and agrees to have them tested. Victim Ashley Miller, who has kept the attack from her husband, identifies the hymn and recalls the rapist’s pager. The DNA ties all three Atlanta rapes to one man, dubbed Pattern 17, with likely cases in Las Vegas and Milwaukee. Deputy Chief Dodds warns Benson she is in the hot seat at CompStat, where Deputy Commissioner Hank Abraham grills her until word comes of a new attack.
Ryann Catalano, 12, was dragged into a car while walking her puppy, who bit the attacker; she wedged her headphones between the seats and remembered part of a Connecticut plate. The car belongs to Dr. Joseph Conklin, who trades oxycodone for sex, but Annie cannot pick him out of a lineup and his blood type does not match the Atlanta DNA. Footage from the hospital garage, where EMTs can take keys from the booth, shows Albert Beck, a decorated ambulette EMT who worked in Atlanta and Milwaukee, driving Conklin’s car. At the Family Court hearing, Noah’s legal representative, Trevor Langan, defends Benson against caseworker Chantal Jackson.
Spoiler, the ending: Beck’s former girlfriend, Lauren Burns, threw him out for eyeing her 15-year-old daughter, Beth, who has been sending him explicit selfies. Benson and Rollins threaten Beth with child pornography charges; when Beck comes to meet her, she shouts at him to run, but he is caught. DNA from the dog’s bite matches, and told he will otherwise be known in prison only as a child molester, Beck confesses to the three New York attacks and 28 rapes elsewhere. Judge Ruth Linden sees Benson privately before ruling on Noah. At CompStat Benson blames the national backlog of untested rape kits. Rollins tells Patton Atlanta can prosecute; he says he will see her at a January conference.
Why it stands out
- Harry Hamlin first appears as Charles Patton, Rollins’s former commanding officer in Atlanta; he returns in the next episode, “Forgiving Rollins.”
- Peter Hermann returns as attorney Trevor Langan, here acting as baby Noah’s legal representative in Benson’s custody hearing.
- Jayne Houdyshell returns as Family Court Judge Ruth Linden, who also presided in “Glasgowman’s Wrath.”