Gimmick (Season 27, Episode 18)
Premise: The murder of a former teenage fight fan leads SVU to the aging champion he said abused him, and to the agent who paid for his silence.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 27, Episode 18
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Jake Griffin (Corey Cott), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Mark Rolston as Clint “The Red Hand” O’Neill, Julie Ann Emery as Sharon Huntsinger, Jesse La Flair as Roddy “Razor” Ray, Matthew Wilkas as Sean Larkin, Renata Friedman as M.E. Horowitz
- Director
- Norberto Barba
- Writers
- Story: Nicholas Evangelista; Written by: Kevin Deiboldt
Summary
“Gimmick” begins when hotel housekeepers find a man tied with zip ties in a bathtub at a cheap hourly-rate hotel. He is revived but dies without waking. He is Ian Larkin, 37, with old arrests for prostitution and drugs, and Benson keeps the case rather than hand it to Homicide. ME Horowitz finds he was struck with a lamp, bound and strangled under water, and lay in the tub for hours after the killer left him for dead. A bag at the scene held zip ties, a revolver and a box cutter, and Ian’s room suggests he bought those himself. His brother, Sean Larkin (called Shawn in the episode), who cares for their father, says Ian’s addiction drained the family.
Ian spent his last day at a professional fighting expo. There, a fighter, Jasmyn Jewell, flirts shamelessly with Benson before saying Ian went to see the headliner, aging champion Clint “The Red Hand” O’Neill, who says he does not remember him. A 2002 newspaper story shows Ian as a teenage superfan of the Bruiser Fighting Championship with another boy, Roddy “Razor” Ray, now a small-time fighter who recently emailed Ian threatening to kill him if he talked. Arrested after resisting, Razor admits that fighters plied the boys with drinks and drugs and that O’Neill molested him, but he will not go public. Ian’s journal describes abuse without naming his abuser; records show that O’Neill’s agent, Sharon Huntsinger, paid Ian $1,200 for his silence years ago and that Ian had lately spoken to a lawyer about suing. Huntsinger admits O’Neill did not go back to his hotel that night and left his phone behind at dinner, and video puts him a block from the murder. Questioned, O’Neill describes killing Ian in boastful detail, then calls it fight talk and asks for a lawyer.
Shown a journal entry in which Ian says Razor kept him going, Razor agrees to testify. At trial the defense notes that none of 34 DNA profiles from the room is O’Neill’s, and Razor, now signed by Huntsinger for fights in Japan, tells the jury he was never abused and lied to the police. Carisi goads O’Neill on the stand about his 1992 ban from boxing for taking a dive until he loses his temper, but the jury finds him not guilty of second-degree murder.
Spoiler, the ending: Benson tells the squad to start building a sexual abuse case by finding other victims. She then gets word that a man was stabbed to death as he left a diner. The attacker, waiting in a squad car, is Sean Larkin, who tells her he had to do something.
Why it stands out
- Melissa McCarthy makes a surprise guest appearance as Jasmyn Jewell, a brash fighter who comes on to Benson at the expo.
- Mark Rolston guest stars as Clint “The Red Hand” O’Neill, a veteran champion accused of abusing teenage fans.