Murdered at a Bad Address (Season 21, Episode 6)
Premise: DNA from the rape of a teenage girl in a housing project matches a 16-year-old double murder, suggesting the man imprisoned for killing his mother and sister is innocent.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 6
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Katriona “Kat” Tamin (Jamie Gray Hyder), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Chief ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Guillermo Diaz as Carlos Hernandez, Happy Anderson as Tim Stanton, Wentworth Miller as ADA Isaiah Holmes, Larry Bryggman as DA Patrick Keane, Michael Weston as Simon Marsden
- Director
- Michael Smith
- Writers
- Story: Julie Martin & Warren Leight; Story & teleplay: Denis Hamill
Summary
“Murdered at a Bad Address” opens with Benson and Noah running into her half-brother, Simon Marsden, who says he has been clean for five years and wants to know his nephew; she agrees to lunch. That night 14-year-old Lupe Perez is raped in a stairwell of her housing project, and Kat, the first officer on the scene, is given the lead. Lupe never saw the man’s face, but remembers his rough hands, a smell of wood shavings and his threat to go after her little sister. Touch DNA from her headphones matches a 2003 rape and double murder in Far Rockaway, where Nydia Hernandez and her daughter, Jacinta, were strangled. Two teenagers confessed: Ricardo “Ricky” Torres, 15, who testified against Nydia’s son, Carlos Hernandez, 18. The DNA matches neither.
At Green Haven prison, Carlos, serving 25 to life, tells Carisi that both confessions were forced out of them by Detective Monte and the prosecutor, but he will not say where he was that night. A neighbor, Savannah “Moms” Baker, says Ricky died of AIDS a week earlier, regretting his lie about Carlos. Monte, retiring to Florida, speaks of the victims with contempt but mentions other unsolved rapes in the projects. The squad finds two that fit and checks maintenance workers. One, Tim Stanton, refuses a DNA swab, the squad obtains his DNA anyway, and it matches Lupe’s headphones and the skin under both Hernandez victims’ fingernails. Lupe picks out his voice. Simon never shows up for lunch, and Benson leaves a message telling him not to call her again.
Carlos remembers Stanton as the maintenance man who fixed a cabinet in their apartment. Carisi takes the case to his former law professor Isaiah Holmes, now a Queens ADA, and learns that DA Patrick Keane, who built his career on the conviction, has hidden dementia. After Stanton rejects a plea and makes a slur about Carlos, Carisi understands the missing alibi: Carlos was with Ricky at Plumb Beach in Brooklyn and kept it secret, fearing for his safety in prison. Lupe agrees to testify to protect her sister. Then Benson identifies Simon’s body; he died of heroin laced with fentanyl, and Warner believes he had been sober a long time.
Spoiler, the ending: Keane signs an order vacating the conviction, possibly mistaking it for a reference letter, and a judge frees Carlos with an apology. Stanton pleads guilty to the two murders, so Lupe does not have to testify. Benson tells a colleague about Simon, wondering whether her message was the last thing he heard. Carlos visits his mother’s and sister’s grave, where a new headstone was paid for by strangers who read about his case.
Why it stands out
- Benson’s half-brother Simon Marsden (Michael Weston), first seen in the Season 8 episode “Philadelphia,” dies of an overdose in this episode.
- Wentworth Miller, who played Det. Nate Kendall in the Season 11 premiere “Unstable,” appears as Queens ADA Isaiah Holmes, a role he reprises in Season 22’s “The Long Arm of the Witness.”