Scourge (Season 2, Episode 21)
Premise: A man who believes he is doing God’s work kills four people in a day, and the push to execute him stalls when doctors find a disease his insurer knew about.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 21
- 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), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong)
- Guest stars
- Richard Thomas as Daniel Varney, Karen Allen as Paula Varney, David Chandler as Malcolm Hunt, Bernadette Quigley as Jean Weston, Frank Deal as Defense Attorney Don Newvine
- Director
- Alex Zakrzewski
- Writers
- Story: Neal Baer & Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen; Story & teleplay: Robert F. Campbell & Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Scourge” begins when a bearded man in a bloodstained coat stumbles into theatergoer Quentin Lindberg near Times Square, and a prostitute is found nearby under burning trash. The victim, Cassie Horner, 23, had her throat cut and her body slashed. A peanut vendor and a souvenir shop owner describe a man ranting about hellfire who left in a cab. Semen from the victim leads to parolee Norman Fredericks, who admits paying her for sex but denies killing her.
While he is held, publicist Theresa Folsom is found killed the same way in the East Village, and the blood there does not match Fredericks. Huang profiles a mentally ill man with religious delusions, and the press names the killer the “Night Ripper.” A cab driver’s cousin, Kabral Nkrumah, says he drove the bloodied passenger to Avenue D. Then, in an arcade restroom, the man cuts the throats of a nine-year-old tourist and his father and stabs a bystander who tries to stop him. Cragen runs a task force, a $100,000 reward draws hundreds of tips, and a crowd in Washington Square Park beats a man it wrongly takes for the killer.
A tip about a check marked with bloody fingerprints leads to Paula Varney, who gave it to her estranged husband, Daniel, now a janitor living in a church rectory. Found praying, he says an angel ordered him to cleanse the unclean, and after his arrest he begs Benson to kill him. His knife and the bloody clothes in his room link him to all four deaths. At his arraignment he lashes out at his lawyer, Don Newvine, and pleads not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Paula begs Cabot not to seek his execution, but under public pressure Cabot announces that the state will seek the death penalty.
Benson, who mentions losing her own mother that year, gets Paula to share Daniel’s medical history. Huang suspects a disease of the brain, and tests reveal advanced syphilis that has destroyed much of it. Seven years earlier, insurer All-Atlantic Life turned Varney down for a policy after finding the infection but told neither him nor the health department. The detectives arrest executive Malcolm Hunt for reckless endangerment, and Cabot uses the threat of prosecution to press the company to report such diseases and to settle lawsuits by the victims’ families and Paula.
Spoiler, the ending: Cabot does not contest the psychiatric report, and the judge finds Varney unfit to proceed, ordering him held in a secure psychiatric facility until he is fit. Since Huang has said the damage is permanent, there is no trial on screen.
Why it stands out
- Richard Thomas and Karen Allen guest-star as Daniel and Paula Varney.
- Benson tells Paula Varney she lost her mother earlier in the year, recalling her mother’s death in “Taken.”