Sheltered Outcasts (Season 17, Episode 19)
Premise: Carisi lives undercover in a shelter for sex offenders to find a serial rapist, but the attacks point to more than one man and a killer outside the shelter.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 17, Episode 19
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Michael Rapaport as Richie Caskey, Scott Grimes as Tom Zimmerman, Leo Fitzpatrick as Gerald Loomis, Kevin Tighe as Gregory Searle, Lisa Arrindell as Robin Daughtry
- Director
- Mariska Hargitay
- Writers
- Story: Brianna Yellen; Written by: Ed Zuckerman
Summary
“Sheltered Outcasts” opens as Sofie Nomaks, 25, is raped at knifepoint in her Inwood building’s vestibule by a masked man who tells her to do as he says and she won’t get hurt. It is the third such attack in a month, and neighbors blame a new homeless shelter that houses registered sex offenders, where Carisi is already living undercover as “Dominick Smith,” a parolee caught with child pornography. The squad brings in the shelter’s offenders for a voice lineup, including Richie Caskey, who served ten years for raping a waitress; Gregory Searle, paroled on compassionate grounds with cancer; and Gerald Loomis, who stutters. Sofie cannot pick out the voice, and Tom Zimmerman, lawyer for Caskey and Searle, comes to collect his clients.
In group therapy led by psychologist Robin Daughtry, Caskey challenges Carisi’s denial, and when Sofie’s father and two other men attack Carisi with a baseball bat outside the shelter, Caskey drives them off. A neighbor then places Caskey near Sofie’s building, and his wife, Sharon, gives him an alibi that turns out to leave a gap. Next Robin is raped and stabbed to death at her car on her way to the group; black threads under her nails suggest she pulled off her attacker’s mask. Loomis, who came back late that night and once raped a teacher at knifepoint, will not talk, but his storage locker holds a mask and jewelry from rape victims in Hempstead, where he lived in a shelter a year earlier.
In both towns the attacker spoke only during the third rape, Loomis’s locker holds jewelry only from silent attacks, and his mask does not match the threads. Suspecting a copycat, the squad finds Caskey was the only other resident of both shelters, and his parole log puts him at the Hempstead shelter, meeting his lawyer, on the day of the third rape there. Carisi drops his cover to confront him. Mary Colten, the Hempstead victim, cannot identify any recorded voice, but in the squad room she hears Zimmerman speak and recognizes him.
Spoiler, the ending: The squad tells Zimmerman that a camera caught Robin’s killer, then arranges a search of the Caskeys’ apartment, where Zimmerman goes ahead to sit with Sharon. With Sharon’s help, the squad records him planting the stolen jewelry, including Sofie’s chain and Robin’s necklace, in the toilet tank. Zimmerman, who raped near shelters so his clients would be blamed, is arrested; the camera never existed. He is arraigned for three rapes and first-degree murder and held without bail, and Loomis for four rapes. Rollins invites Carisi to dinner with her daughter, and Fin goes to meet someone his son wants him to meet.
Why it stands out
- Kevin Tighe returns as Gregory Searle, the kidnapper he played in the Season 9 episode “Avatar.”
- Mariska Hargitay directed the episode, which features Michael Rapaport as parolee Richie Caskey.