Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 4 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the fourth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which aired on NBC from September 2002 to May 2003, featuring Det. Elliot Stabler, Det. Olivia Benson, Det. John Munch, Det. Fin Tutuola, Capt. Donald Cragen, ADA Alexandra Cabot and Dr. George Huang.
- 1
Chameleon
A sex worker who kills a paroled rapist in apparent self-defense is linked through his gun to a series of men robbed and murdered across New York and New Jersey.
- 2
Deception
A kindergartner’s drawing leads the squad to suspect her actress mother of abusing her teenage stepson, and the case turns into a murder investigation when the boy’s father is killed.
- 3
Vulnerable
An elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease turns up with cigarette burns, and the search for her abuser leads from her debt-ridden son to the staff of her assisted-living home.
- 4
Lust
The murder of a public health doctor in Central Park points first to the HIV patients she tracked and then, after a second killing, to a serial killer, until her husband’s secret life surfaces.
- 5
Disappearing Acts
A rape victim is whisked into federal custody, and the hunt for her attacker runs into a federal prosecutor protecting a key witness against the Russian mob and his family.
- 6
Angels
A boy found dead on an airport shuttle bus leads detectives to a ring that smuggles children to pedophiles, and to the brutal murder of the man who held him captive.
- 7
Dolls
The body of a little girl found at a garbage plant sends detectives after a doll-collecting predator who has taken a second child, whose mother has just returned from drug rehab.
- 8
Waste
A woman in a long-term coma is found to be pregnant, and the search for her rapist uncovers a doctor’s secret stem cell experiment paid for by a dying billionaire.
- 9
Juvenile
A cancer patient who grew marijuana is raped and murdered, and two middle-school boys each blame the other, leaving prosecutors to decide whether to try the older one as an adult.
- 10
Resilience
A 15-year-old girl’s suicide attempt after a rape leads detectives into her family’s home, where her father’s obsession with having more children hides a murder.
- 11
Damaged
A little girl wounded in an apparent robbery turns out to have been raped, and the hero clerk and her troubled adoptive sister become the focus of the case.
- 12
Risk
A baby’s fatal overdose exposes cocaine smuggled in infant-formula cans, and Stabler goes undercover against a decorated detective who protects the ring.
- 13
Rotten
An inmate’s death from a brutal sexual assault leads Benson and Fin back to the precinct where he was booked, and to two officers killing drug dealers.
- 14
Mercy
A murdered infant pulled from the Hudson leads to a privacy fight over student health records and then to a mother who ended her terminally ill baby’s life.
- 15
Pandora
The murder of a woman who posed online as a child to catch predators sends Stabler after a kidnapped teenager in Prague and a child-pornography network in New York.
- 16
Tortured
A Tibetan woman who survived torture in her homeland is found strangled with one foot cut off, and the hunt for her killer leads to a shoe fetishist and the mother who beat him.
- 17
Privilege
A young woman dressed as a maid falls to her death from a Manhattan penthouse, and the investigation exposes a wealthy family’s long habit of covering for its heir.
- 18
Desperate
A six-year-old boy is the only witness to his stepmother’s rape and murder, and the detectives must reach him while his father, the prime suspect, keeps him from them.
- 19
Appearances
A nine-year-old pageant contestant is found raped and murdered in a suitcase, and after her killer is caught, Cabot tries to hold the publisher of the material that inspired him responsible.
- 20
Dominance
A spree killer forces Manhattan couples into sexual assaults before shooting them, and the trail leads to a building superintendent’s two sons.
- 21
Fallacy
A young woman kills a man she says tried to rape her at a party, and the case changes when detectives learn she is a transgender woman hiding her past from her boyfriend.
- 22
Futility
An accused serial rapist acts as his own lawyer, using the trial to confront his victim and to challenge the confidentiality of her rape counseling.
- 23
Grief
A waitress’s apparent murder turns out to be a suicide driven by her boss’s sexual abuse, and her grieving father takes revenge.
- 24
Perfect
A teenage girl found dead in an alley leads the squad to a fertility doctor whose shelter for runaways is a cult using girls in a fake human-cloning scheme.
- 25
Soulless
A 15-year-old rape victim is taken from the hospital and killed, and the hunt for her attackers leads to wealthy teenagers and a valet hiding a violent childhood crime.