Blood Out (Season 24, Episode 12)
Premise: As the BX9 leader’s trial loses its witnesses one by one, the gang turns its violence on the captain who hunted it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 12
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Judge D. Serani (Michael Mastro), Det. Tonie Churlish (Jasmine Batchelor)
- Guest stars
- Maurice Compte as Mike Duarte, Goya Robles as Oscar Papa, Julian Elijah Martinez as Counselor Jericho Swope, Chloe Castro-Santos as Maria Garcia, Ciara Monique as Wallen Sipes
- Director
- Patricia Riggen
- Writers
- Story: Kathy Dobie & Nolan Dunbar; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“Blood Out” opens with one of Benny Barros’s car recordings: told that Benny’s cousin Ricky and Sabo were stabbed after police housed them near 19th Street, Oscar Papa orders new recruits to attack Benson’s son in front of her, invoking a rule of blood for blood. When Papa brings up Noah in an interview, Benson warns him not to say another word. Carisi charges him with 19 counts of first-degree rape and two of attempted murder, and a judge remands him over defense attorney Jericho Swope’s objections. Benson learns that the hit followed Capt. Mike Duarte’s move to put Ricky and Sabo near their rivals to flip them.
Leaving a bar, Fin and Bruno, who says taxes and his ex-wife took most of his settlement, hear a sound from a garbage truck in Hunts Point and pull out a barely breathing woman, Wallen Sipes. A nurse finds signs of rape, and the dart in her body carried Wildnil, an opioid tranquilizer. Sipes, a sex worker afraid of her pimp, remembers being hosed down in a tiled room. At trial, Maria Garcia testifies that BX9 recruiters Bug Bear and Sacrilege raped her and took her underwear to pressure her brother, and Swope gets her to admit she lured the two captains to her family’s restaurant. Swope then accuses Duarte of a vendetta, citing his burned Mustang, the death of a young gang member called Sleep and the prison killings. Velasco, questioning the drug-sick Sacrilege with Churlish, dangles drugs from a gang car, and Churlish objects.
Benny dies after eating food said to come from his mother that was laced with rat poison, making his recordings inadmissible. Albert “Fugazi” Diaz’s mother refuses to let him testify, and an infection nearly costs him his leg. Benson warns Papa that the tapes, in which he insults rival gangs, could find their way around Rikers. A complaint against a vet leads Fin and Bruno to Dr. Tim Birch, whom Sipes identifies. After drinks with Benson, Duarte stops at a bodega alone and is hacked with machetes.
Spoiler, the ending: Duarte dies. Bodega video and three of his five attackers, who say Papa gave the order in a recorded prison call, lead Papa to confess. He pleads guilty to killing Duarte and trying to kill Benson, though not to the rapes, and gets 25 years plus 25 to life. Fin reports that Birch’s DNA matches the rape kit and recommends Bruno for Manhattan SVU. Churlish gives Benson a recording of Velasco she made on her phone during the Sacrilege interview. Stabler brings Noah home, and when he tells Benson he cares for her, she says she is not ready.
Why it stands out
- Maurice Compte’s last episode as Capt. Mike Duarte, killed by BX9; the character appeared in four episodes this season.
- Christopher Meloni appears as Elliot Stabler, who drives Noah home from upstate.
- Concludes the BX9 story that began with the attack on Benson in “Jumped In” and traces back to the season’s second episode, “The One You Feed.”