Taken (Season 2, Episode 8)
Premise: A teenage tourist reports a brutal rape at a new hotel’s grand opening, and a registered sex offender is jailed for it before the detectives find a family con aimed at the hotel’s owner.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 8
- 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
- Jenna Lamia as Siobhan Miller, Derek Cecil as Russell Ramsay, Tim Hopper as Terry Wilde, Bill Winkler as Beau Miller, Nealy Glenn as Patricia Ann Miller
- Director
- Michael Fields
- Writers
- Story: Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen; Written by: Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen
Summary
“Taken” opens at the grand opening of the Thorpe Palace, which owner Allen Thorpe bills as Manhattan’s first family-friendly five-star hotel, when 17-year-old Siobhan Miller, visiting from North Carolina, stumbles in saying she has been raped. A hotel lawyer is on hand before any police or medics. Siobhan says a stranger was waiting in her room, slammed her against the door and beat her with the phone, and doctors find hairline fractures to a wrist and a rib along with signs of rape. The cameras on her floor are not yet working, and the desk clerk who first heard her, Terry Wilde, is reluctant to testify.
A print in the room belongs to Russell Ramsay, released 18 months earlier after a statutory rape conviction, and hotel video shows him at the party just after the attack. In the middle of the case, Cragen tells Benson that her mother, drunk, has died in a fall down subway steps. Ramsay insists Siobhan picked him up at a bar and handed him her key, but she identifies him in a lineup. His earlier victim, Shelly Leevak, comes in to defend him. The tapes also catch Wilde and Ramsay trading a look, and Wilde stops coming to work.
The real Terry Wilde works at another hotel. The impostor, picked up by Munch and Tutuola at a Delancey Street hotel under yet another name, is Kyle Kivlahan, a petty thief who grew up alongside Siobhan’s brother, Beau Miller. Beau threatens a $10 million lawsuit as the hotel’s insurer prepares to settle. Ramsay, beaten repeatedly at Rikers, will not name a partner and says he has none. A bloody print on the door between the Millers’ rooms belongs to Beau’s wife, Patricia Ann; Beau is a con artist with an alias, and Kyle is his cousin. The family is arrested while collecting a check from the insurer.
Siobhan, who is really 23 and whose parents are in prison rather than dead, takes a deal. She picked Ramsay from an online sex offender registry, had consensual sex with him and then had Patricia Ann beat her, betting that Thorpe would pay fast for silence. Her co-defendants all name her as the organizer, and she gets five years’ probation.
Spoiler, the ending: Cabot then tells Siobhan that Ramsay was beaten, raped and killed at Rikers, and that his death exposes her to a manslaughter charge her deal does not cover; a grand jury indictment is expected. Munch, who doubted Ramsay’s guilt, asks what the win cost. In the final scene, Shelly is told at work that Ramsay has been cleared and is asked to step out for a talk; the episode ends before she hears of his death.
Why it stands out
- Benson’s mother, Serena, dies offscreen in this episode after falling down a flight of subway stairs outside a bar.
- Benson turns down time off, telling Cragen it took her years to accept that her mother was an alcoholic and that she needs to keep working.