They'd Already Disappeared (Season 23, Episode 7)
Premise: When a young sex worker vanishes after calling her sister for help, SVU uncovers a decade of killings that police ignored because the victims lived on the street.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 7
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Chief Tommy McGrath (Terry Serpico), ME Dr. Abel Truman (Frank Wood)
- Guest stars
- Blake DeLong as Trace Lambert, Laura Gardner as Maggie Lambert, Melvin Abston as Country Jones, Camila Canó-Flaviá as Daria Cruz, Dela Meskienyar as Tania Cruz
- Ripped from the headlines
- Partly inspired by Kendall Francois, the “Poughkeepsie Killer,” who murdered eight women in the 1990s and hid their bodies in his family home.
- Director
- Bethany Rooney
- Writers
- Story: Denis Hamill & Monet Hurst-Mendoza & Kathy Dobie & Micharne Cloughley; Written by: Kathy Dobie & Micharne Cloughley
Summary
“They’d Already Disappeared” opens with Tania Cruz, a homeless young woman who trades sex to survive, leaving her sister Daria a voicemail saying a date raped and choked her before he drags her off. Daria, a college student, flags down Officer Eric Tran, who brings her to SVU. At a shelter and on the street, Rollins and Velasco learn Tania was last headed to get her coat from Country Jones, a barbecue-restaurant owner who stores belongings for the women. Then two of Tania’s friends report that another young woman, Beauty Handley, has vanished too.
At the East Harlem precinct, an officer slips the detectives a file of missing street women that the squad there had written off with the slur “NHI,” for “no humans involved,” and three of them share Tania and Beauty’s slight, dark-haired look. Country, on parole after an assault conviction in South Carolina, admits he drove Tania to meet a regular client uptown and gives up the address. A boy there, Jamal, says a “vampire” lives in an empty building. Inside, Rollins and Velasco find twelve mummified women along with Tania and Beauty. Dr. Truman says the killer removed the organs and dried the bodies with space heaters, and a shaken McGrath tells Benson to make the case.
Country recognizes another victim, Shanise, whom he also drove to a date on that street, but Truman identifies two women, one from New Jersey and Meredith Hart of Connecticut, who disappeared while Country was in prison. Benson and McGrath appeal to the public for tips. Meredith’s mother, Lois, says her daughter ran off with a carnival worker, and Meredith’s autistic son, Jack, recites the date in 2016 and the truck’s New Jersey plate.
The plate belongs to carnival worker Trace Lambert, who lives with his mother, Maggie, and she insists on coming to the squad room with him. While Velasco keeps her company, she calls her son a quiet loser, and Benson takes her words into the interrogation, telling Trace the killer they want is far too smart to be him. Stung, Trace describes how the killer poisoned the building’s owner over tea to fake a heart attack, claims the plan as his own and confesses to all the murders, recounting his victims’ last moments.
Spoiler, the ending: Trace’s lawyer arranges a guilty plea to a dozen homicides, though the FBI is checking missing-person cases along his carnival routes and he could still face the death penalty. Truman identifies two more women whom no one ever reported missing, Dawn Doyers and Katie Evers, bringing the named victims to eight, and promises to keep working on the rest as Beauty’s grandmother arrives at the morgue.
Why it stands out
- Octavio Pisano joins the main cast as Det. Joe Velasco with this episode, after appearing as a guest earlier in the season.
- The 501st episode of the series overall, airing two weeks after the 500th.
- Peter Scanavino is credited as Carisi but does not appear; Carisi is only addressed in a phone call.