Alta Kockers (Season 20, Episode 10)
Premise: The murder of a teenage memoirist exposes a literary hoax and leads SVU to two reclusive elderly brothers, their mother’s frozen body and a decades-old secret.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, Episode 10
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Peter Stone (Philip Winchester)
- Guest stars
- Judd Hirsch as Joseph Edelman, Wallace Shawn as Benjamin Edelman, Jayce Bartok as Walter Evans, David McElwee as Will Glover, Calhoun Koenig as Bobbi O’Rourke
- Director
- Alex Chapple
- Writers
- Michael Chernuchin
Summary
“Alta Kockers” opens at a bookstore reading by Bobbi O’Rourke, the reclusive young author of a praised memoir about selling sex at truck stops as a runaway. Afterward Bobbi is found dead behind the store, struck with a brick. He turns out to be a male teenager presenting as a girl, and the detectives consider a hate crime; his North Carolina learner’s permit gives a fake address. Video of the reading leads to Will Glover, a married father from Forest Hills, who confesses: over three weeks he had paid the youth, who called himself Tammy, for sex near 12th Avenue, then recognized him from a flyer on the subway and killed him, insisting he is not gay.
Publisher Walter Evans of Pitch Dark Press first says he watched over Bobbi, then admits he never met the author. The manuscript arrived anonymously, and when Hollywood producers demanded a face, he paid a street hustler $500 to play Bobbi with a forged license. The squad finds nothing to charge him with. Bobbi’s online banking leads to a house still listed to Fred and Rose Edelman, where officers find dried blood and two feuding elderly brothers, Joe and Ben Edelman. An officer is knocked down by a booby trap, and the search turns up Bobbi’s next manuscript and, in the basement, Rose’s body, kept frozen for decades.
Facing arrest, Ben admits that he is Bobbi O’Rourke: he wrote the book because their mother’s money is running out, borrowed the name of a bartender they knew who died long ago, and the blood is his own. The medical examiner finds that Rose, who had cancer in both lungs, was smothered. Benson and Rollins question the brothers separately, and each reveals that a counselor named Vincent at a childhood play center sexually abused him; neither will admit it to the other. Stone offers one year in jail and ten years’ probation, and the brothers turn it down. At trial, after defense attorney Evan Braun portrays them as devoted sons, Joe stands up, confesses that he alone killed their mother and collapses with a massive heart attack.
Spoiler, the ending: Joe dies at the hospital, and Stone drops the charges against Ben. Left with his brother’s body, Ben finally tells him about Vincent, describing the abuse in the same words that open the book. What becomes of Glover’s case is not shown.
Why it stands out
- Judd Hirsch and Wallace Shawn guest star as the feuding Edelman brothers.
- Written by showrunner Michael Chernuchin, who left the series after this season to work on FBI.