Tangled Strands of Justice (Season 23, Episode 19)
Premise: A girl’s remains surface in Central Park 20 years after the search for her was abandoned on 9/11, as a rape victim is arrested through her own rape-kit DNA.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 19
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Deputy Chief Christian Garland (Demore Barnes), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Trial Division Chief Lorraine Maxwell (Betty Buckley), ME Dr. Abel Truman (Frank Wood)
- Guest stars
- Nicki Micheaux as Cora Green, Ron Canada as Coleman Green, Orfeh as Det. Nadia Szabo, Gabi Carrubba as Libby Blandon, Renee Harrison as Nina Green
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Brendan Feeney & Denis Hamill & Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Kathy Dobie & Micharne Cloughley; Teleplay: Warren Leight & Julie Martin
Summary
“Tangled Strands of Justice” opens on September 11, 2001, as rookie officer Christian Garland joins a search near the Harlem Meer for 13-year-old Aretha Green, missing since the night before, until the officers are called downtown to the World Trade Center. Twenty years later a boy fishing for coins with a magnet pulls up a finger bone, and divers recover a girl’s skeleton. Garland, who has left the NYPD, asks Benson to reopen the case. Rollins and Velasco find the case’s retired captain, Carl Mannox, on Long Island, but he never had a lead. Dr. Truman finds the girl was killed and about five months pregnant. Baby teeth kept by her mother, Cora, confirm it is Aretha, and the fetus’s father is not in CODIS and not related to her.
Meanwhile defense lawyer Dara Miglani tells Carisi that Major Case has arrested her client, Libby Blandon, one of Henry Mesner’s victims, for stealing $850,000 in watches from Bijan Mazdani, a man who knew her only by a false name. Libby says the only DNA she ever gave was her rape kit. Det. Nadia Szabo stonewalls Benson, but Benson learns that OCME forensic biologist Harry Kent searched rape victims’ profiles at Szabo’s request; six were searched in two years, and two led to convictions. Benson accuses Szabo of trading sexual favors for shortcuts. Libby is indicted in Queens, and DA Cassandra Drakos refuses Benson and Maxwell’s demand to drop the case.
Cora’s father, Coleman, lets slip that her married lover, X-ray technician Red Washington, was sometimes alone with Aretha. Red gives DNA and mentions Aretha’s younger sister, Nina, whom Cora never told police about. Nina, an addict just paroled to a halfway house, disappears after a visit from her grandfather. Found on the street, she says Aretha told her about the pregnancy and that their grandfather warned it would kill their mother. The fetal DNA matches Coleman, who turns out not to be Cora’s biological father. He admits sexually abusing Aretha and says that when she planned to tell Cora about the pregnancy he shook her and she hit her head on the tub, calling it an accident.
Spoiler, the ending: Coleman pleads guilty and is expected to die in prison. Maxwell learns over dinner that Judge Larry Cohen will acquit Libby in a bench trial and that Drakos once forged his signature on wiretap orders to check on her husband. Drakos then drops the case, credits Szabo and OCME with finding the flaw, promises to review convictions built on victims’ DNA and calls for a law against the practice. Cora reconciles with Nina, and Garland tells Benson that cases like this are why he does not miss being a cop.
Why it stands out
- Demore Barnes returns as Christian Garland, his only appearance after leaving the show in the season’s second episode.
- Gabi Carrubba returns as Libby Blandon, who was attacked by Henry Mesner in Season 22’s “Post-Graduate Psychopath,” the episode in which Henry stabbed Carisi in the ear.
- The cold case begins on September 11, 2001, when the search for Aretha is abandoned as the attacks unfold.