Chameleon (Season 4, Episode 1)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 1
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), Interim DA Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Sharon Lawrence as Maggie Peterson, Sara Ramirez as Lisa Perez, Charlayne Woodard as Sister Peg, Lonette McKee as Attorney Greer
- Ripped from the headlines
- Maggie Peterson is reportedly modeled on Florida serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Tara Butters & Michele Fazekas
Summary
“Chameleon” opens with a vice raid on a men’s club called Onyx, where sex worker Lisa Perez says a customer tried to rape and choke her, and a dancer, Randy Colligan, 23, is found raped and strangled on the premises. The medical examiner says the killer strangled her with his forearm. Sister Peg, a nun who keeps a list of dangerous clients, steers the detectives to a hotel on West 37th Street. A thumbprint near a second victim identifies Shawn Becker, a parolee with an attempted-rape conviction, released three weeks earlier.
At the hotel, Becker lies shot dead beside a battered woman calling herself Debra Weldon, who says he raped her and drew a gun that she seized and fired. Her injuries fit, but the pistol also killed Leonard Graves the previous December, while Becker was in prison, and the woman has fled the hospital. Graves’s credit card was used by a blonde, whom a babysitter identifies as Maggie Peterson, mother of a toddler, Joey. Similar unsolved killings turn up in New York and New Jersey. When Vincent Bertram is stabbed in his car and his American Express card goes missing, a hotel charge leads police to Maggie, who is arrested holding Joey.
Maggie tells Dr. George Huang about blackouts and an abusive father, but he concludes she is lying, and after she flirts with Stabler he calls her a sociopath who reshapes herself for each audience. Benson exposes her story about her parents as false. DNA ties her to two of the killings, and hairs from Graves’s exhumed body match her. Cabot seeks the death penalty and the capital committee agrees, but District Attorney Nora Lewin refuses to sign off because one killing may have been self-defense. At trial, defense lawyer Greer shows that Maggie was treated for a beating on the day one victim was found, Bertram’s widow says he beat her, and Maggie testifies that she killed only to survive for her son.
The prosecution then notices that a March 2000 hospital chart records no pregnancies, though Maggie claims Joey was born the following month. DNA shows the boy is not hers: he is the son of Erin Byers, 26, who was strangled in a supermarket parking lot 18 months earlier while her baby vanished. Joey is returned to his father. Facing new charges, Maggie is offered 15 to 20 years on second-degree murder counts; she denies killing Byers and asks for time.
Spoiler, the ending: The next morning Maggie is found dead in a holding cell, having hanged herself with her stockings. Her will leaves everything to her “son” and points to $10,000 in a safe deposit box, and the detectives see it as one last act.
Why it stands out
- The episode opened the fourth season on NBC on September 27, 2002, the season in which BD Wong’s Dr. George Huang joined the opening credits after two seasons as a recurring character.
- It marks Dianne Wiest’s final appearance as District Attorney Nora Lewin anywhere in the Law & Order franchise.
- Sharon Lawrence plays Maggie Peterson and has said her husband, who trained as a psychiatrist, helped her research the character’s pathology; Sara Ramirez appears as Lisa Perez.