Manhunt (Season 2, Episode 18)
Premise: A diner waitress’s abduction revives Munch’s unsolved serial-killer case and sends him and Fin upstate and on to the Canadian border after the killer and his accomplice.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 18
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March)
- Guest stars
- R.E. Rodgers as Darryl Kern, Paul Sparks as Marty Potter / Marvin Posey, Anna Belknap as Sarah Kimmel, Charlotte Maier as Cheryl Baxter, Mike Dooly as Gus Stone
- Ripped from the headlines
- The two kidnappers are based on Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, who tortured and killed numerous victims in 1980s California and took over their identities, money and cars.
- Director
- Stephen Wertimer
- Writers
- Story: Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen & Robert F. Campbell & Jonathan Greene; Written by: Jeff Eckerle
Summary
“Manhunt” opens with waitress Annie Tassler forced into a green four-by-four outside the Canal Street diner where she works. Cook Butch and a passerby, Marty Potter, are hurt trying to stop the abductor, who drops chloroform. Munch recognizes the method of the Bowery Stalker, who a year earlier held women in a warehouse where police found four mutilated bodies after one captive, Sarah Kimmel, escaped. With the District Attorney pressing, Cragen adds Benson and Stabler to the case but keeps Munch as lead detective.
A cat tattoo described by Potter leads to parolee Frank Taggart, but Potter picks a police officer out of the lineup and a still-traumatized Kimmel identifies no one. The sketch the tattoo parlor copied the design from carries the prints of Darryl Kern, a former soldier the Army discharged dishonorably in 1999. Kern’s toll and credit card records show repeated trips to Walden Falls, an upstate town, that line up with the disappearances of seven women.
Munch and Fin drive north and trade stories about why they left Narcotics and Homicide. With local officer Cheryl Baxter, they learn Kern has been using the identity of Arnold Cokely, a Tribeca man missing along with his wife, and ATF agent Gus Stone joins in because of the guns Kern has bought. A contractor’s blueprints lead to a concrete bunker beside a cabin that belonged to a Brooklyn plumber, Ernest Dillman. Kern has fled, Annie is dead, and searchers dig up at least 15 bodies, three of them children. A journal left behind mentions a partner Kern calls the Worm.
An officer from Kern’s Army unit says his only friend was a man who delivered supplies to the mess hall, Marvin Posey. At Posey’s home, his Aunt Mary shows photos of him with Kern, and the detectives realize Posey is the “Marty Potter” from the abduction, who has been feeding Kern news of the investigation. Cell phone records track both men toward the border. At a farmhouse near Fisher’s Landing, police find the elderly owners and Posey killed, while Kern has driven off with a mother and young daughter he carjacked.
Spoiler, the ending: Canadian police arrest Kern for shoplifting in Mallorytown, and the hostages are found alive in the farmer’s truck. Kern tells Munch how he killed Dillman and the Cokelys, then taunts him that Canada will not extradite on capital charges. Cabot instead asks a Canadian court to return Kern only for possession of a stolen car worth more than $5,000, and the judge agrees over the defense’s objection. Back in New York, Kern is arrested for the murders of Dillman, the Cokelys and Annie Tassler, and Sarah Kimmel is told she can sleep with the lights off.
Why it stands out
- Munch and Fin, partnered since early in the season, take the lead, and on the road Fin explains he left Narcotics after a partner was shot by a bullet meant for him, while Munch says he joined SVU after coming back from Baltimore when his last marriage ended.
- R.E. Rodgers plays the killer, Darryl Kern, and Paul Sparks plays his accomplice, who poses as a Good Samaritan at the abduction.
- Cabot gets around Canada’s refusal to extradite on capital charges by seeking Kern’s return on a stolen-property charge alone.