A Better Person (Season 24, Episode 8)
Premise: A detective’s child is murdered, and the case turns on what her father did to the crime scene to hide that she was living as a woman.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 8
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Grace Muncy (Molly Burnett), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ME Dr. Abel Truman (Frank Wood)
- Guest stars
- Greg Grunberg as Det. Mark McDaniels, Rain Valdez as Cora Jones, Tyler French as Lukas Peeters, Christine M. Campbell as Laura McDaniels, Dani Foster as Aidan McDaniels
- Director
- Michael Pressman
- Writers
- Story: Kathy Dobie & David Graziano & Nolan Dunbar; Teleplay: Brianna Yellen & Margaret Rose Lester
Summary
“A Better Person” begins with Det. Mark McDaniels of Grand Larceny celebrating his child Aidan’s 21st birthday on a night out with his old friends, who try to fix Aidan up with a girl; Aidan storms off. Carisi tells Rollins that Fordham is about to offer her a forensic psychology teaching job after her guest lecture there impressed his old college roommate. The next morning Mack, arriving with a suit for a family wedding, breaks down the apartment door and finds Aidan dead. ME Dr. Abel Truman reports bite marks, sodomy with what was probably a wine bottle and fatal head trauma, but no DNA: the nails were clipped to the quick and the body washed with dish soap. Half the closet is empty, and Mack admits he laid a towel over the body.
Bar footage from Howard Beach shows Aidan, dressed as a woman, meeting childhood friend Brian Donnelly, who admits he shouted at her to stay away when she asked him to accept her as Aida. His bite impressions do not match, and his phone puts him at home. Aida’s mother, Laura, who flew in from Sedona, says she supported her child’s transition, which Mack refuses to hear. A second victim, Cora Jones, a trans woman attacked the same way in Chelsea, fights off her attacker with mace, and he escapes down a fire escape. Ignoring Fin’s order to wait, Muncy drags Belgian national Lukas Peeters out of a bodega cellar. Cora picks him out of a lineup and forensics tie him to her attack, but nothing links him to Aida.
At Peeters’s trial for the attack on Cora, Rollins testifies that trans women are frequent targets and describes the attack as rage at his own desires; the defense cites her Fordham lecture and argues for consensual rough sex. Cora explains that she played along only to reach her mace, and the defense questions her about her college wrestling. Afterward Mack admits that he removed Aida’s fake nails, wiped off her makeup and hid her clothes so his fellow officers would not see her that way.
Spoiler, the ending: Mack hands over the clothes and tells the grand jury what he did, confessing to tampering with evidence, a felony that could cost him his badge. With his testimony and Peeters’s DNA on Aida’s clothing, Peeters is indicted for murder and pleads guilty: 15 years for first-degree manslaughter and 10 for the attack on Cora. Interpol links him to eight rapes in Germany, to be pursued after he serves his sentence. Fin warns Muncy not to defy him again, and Mack and Laura raise a toast to Aida.
Why it stands out
- Greg Grunberg guest-stars as Det. Mark McDaniels, and Rain Valdez plays Cora, the second victim.
- Rollins’s Fordham teaching offer, raised by Carisi here, leads to her decision to leave the squad in the next episode, “And a Trauma in a Pear Tree,” her last as a series regular.