Criminal Pathology (Season 17, Episode 2)
Premise: After Greg Yates’s fiancée is found dismembered, the squad tracks the fugitive medical examiner Carl Rudnick and tries to convict him despite his claim of self-defense.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 17, Episode 2
- 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, Delaney Williams as John Buchanan, Dan Daily as Bob Hencamp, Denny Dillon as Landlady
- 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
- Alex Chapple
- Writers
- Story: Kevin Fox & Brianna Yellen; Teleplay: Julie Martin & Warren Leight
Summary
“Criminal Pathology” continues the hunt for Dr. Carl Rudnick, the deputy chief medical examiner charged with two murders, after the dismembered body of Susie Frain, fiancée of convicted killer Greg Yates, washes ashore hours after he made bail. Calhoun blocks a search of his house without a new warrant. Fin and TARU trace money from Rudnick’s family trust to four false names; one, Teresa Fish, leads Rollins and Carisi to an apartment with wigs, dresses, red hair and blade marks under a new floor. Warner learns the real Teresa Fish was a homeless woman Rudnick had autopsied as an unidentified Jane Doe.
Stopped for shoplifting in Syracuse while dressed as a woman, Rudnick is let go before his prints come back, but Rollins and Carisi catch him on a bus to Buffalo with $64,000 in cash. Warner finds that Susie bled to death from a wound she cannot locate, probably in the missing left thigh, and that Susie was pregnant. Yates tells Rollins that Susie meant to trade the photo for his freedom, then asks how far along Rollins is. Rudnick adds a second lawyer, John Buchanan, loses his bail and wins separate trials on the three murders. Rollins confides to a colleague that she is pregnant and the father is not Amaro, and later tells Benson, who warns that she will be put on restricted duty.
At trial on Susie’s murder, the defense suggests that Susie and Yates conspired against Rudnick, questions Rollins’s solo prison visits and notes that Warner wanted Rudnick’s job. Rudnick testifies that Susie came at him with a kitchen knife, that it went into her thigh as they struggled, and that he cut up her body in a panic and fled disguised as “Carla.” Barba produces a store receipt showing Rudnick bought a saw and bolt cutter that night, yet the jury seems to warm to Rudnick. Knowing he talks to himself, the detectives search his recordings and find that the interview-room camera kept running after he asked for a lawyer, catching him musing that he may have to kill Susie like the others. The judge admits it, since the defense had a copy from the start.
Spoiler, the ending: Rudnick asks for new lawyers, then pleads guilty to murdering Susie and Rachel Groves; Barba drops the charge over Lena Grunwald, and Rudnick faces 25 years to life. Yates tells Rollins that Rudnick strangled Lena, says he feels a bond with her because she is expecting, and predicts she will be back. In the closing scene, Rudnick, now a fellow inmate, sits down with Yates.
Why it stands out
- The second half of the two-hour season premiere, aired the same night as “Devil’s Dissections.”
- Elizabeth Marvel and Delaney Williams play Rudnick’s two defense lawyers, Rita Calhoun and John Buchanan.
- Yates and Rudnick return later in the season in “Nationwide Manhunt,” when they escape from prison together.