Devil's Dissections (Season 17, Episode 1)
Premise: A dismembered woman found near Greg Yates’s old burial ground leads the squad, through Yates himself, to a second body hidden in a wall and to the city’s deputy chief medical examiner.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 17, Episode 1
- Starring
- Sgt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Judge Colin McNamara (Stephen C. Bradbury), Defense Attorney Rita Calhoun (Elizabeth Marvel)
- Guest stars
- Dallas Roberts as Greg Yates, Jefferson Mays as Dr. Carl Rudnick, Mary Bacon as Susie Frain, Cody Lindquist as Brooke Groves Norwalk
- Ripped from the headlines
- Drawn from the case of Robert Durst, including his murder trial and his possible links to the Long Island serial killings of the past two decades.
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Kevin Fox & Brianna Yellen; Teleplay: Warren Leight & Julie Martin
Summary
“Devil’s Dissections” opens with a woman’s dismembered body floating off Pelham Bay, close to where convicted serial killer Greg Yates buried his victims. Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Carl Rudnick reports a fractured skull, signs of rape, surgically precise cuts and traces of green nail polish, all echoes of Yates, though the victim is a redhead and Yates favored brunettes. Rollins visits Yates in prison on her own; he denies the killing and hints that he may know who did it, and Benson, angry that Rollins went without asking, keeps her off the next lead. A DNA hit names Brooke Groves, who turns out to be alive in the suburbs. The dead woman is her identical twin, Rachel, a drug user last seen leaving a shelter with an older, gray-haired woman.
Visited again with backup, Yates recalls stitching up a senior doctor’s bite wounds at a Harlem town house around 2002 and sensing a frightened redhead hidden inside. Ground-penetrating radar finds a suitcase sealed behind an old chimney wall there, holding a mummified young woman, and Rudnick does the autopsy. Yates trades the killer’s name for a conjugal visit with his longtime fiancée, Susie Frain, which Barba grudgingly allows. Afterward Susie identifies the body as Lena Grunwald, a Swiss graduate student, and Yates names Lena’s fiancé: Rudnick.
Rudnick and Yates were in medical school at the same time, and the town house belonged to Rudnick’s great-aunt while he lived there. Susie says the four once traveled together and that Lena warned her Carl would be to blame if anything happened to her, though a later note and photo from Switzerland reassured her. Warner, asked to redo both autopsies, finds that Rudnick misjudged how long Rachel was in the water and left out that she was cut apart while alive; Swiss dental work confirms the mummy is Lena. Travel records suggest Rudnick left the country on Lena’s passport, dressed as a woman. Questioned by Benson and Barba, he calls Lena an old flame, blames Yates and asks for his lawyer, Rita Calhoun, and Benson arrests him for both murders. Bail is set at $2 million, which he posts at once.
Spoiler, the ending: Facial recognition shows the passport photo was not Lena, and Rudnick’s home holds a closet of wigs and dresses. Yates reports that Susie has missed her morning call after telling him she had found the Switzerland photo and thought it looked like Rudnick in drag. Her apartment has dried blood, Rudnick has vanished, and the episode ends as bags of freshly cut body parts wash in with the tide and the squad confirms they are Susie’s.
Why it stands out
- Opens Season 17 with a two-hour premiere; this episode and “Criminal Pathology” both aired on September 23, 2015.
- Dallas Roberts returns as Dr. Greg Yates, the serial killer from the Season 16 crossover with Chicago P.D., “Daydream Believer.”
- Jefferson Mays guest stars as Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Carl Rudnick.