Tortured (Season 4, Episode 16)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 16
- 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), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Charlie Hofheimer as Jerry Dupree, Margaret Colin as Mrs. Krug, Frederick Weller as Preston Bennett, Illeana Douglas as Gina Bernardo, Steve Schirripa as Paulie Obregano
- Ripped from the headlines
- Loosely based on Oregon serial killer Jerry Brudos and his first victim, a young door-to-door encyclopedia saleswoman.
- Director
- Steve Shill
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen
Summary
“Tortured” opens with a young Asian woman found strangled and posed on a street in Manhattan’s red-light district, one foot sawed off after death. The medical examiner finds she was choked with braided copper wire, and old burn scars and wrist damage show she was once hung up and tortured. Dr. George Huang links the methods to Chinese forces in Tibet, and she is identified as Kunsong Tashi, a Tibetan who entered the country on a marriage visa and volunteered at a Bellevue program for torture survivors.
Her husband, importer Preston Bennett, has no alibi, once drew a 911 call over her screaming, which he blames on nightmares, and pulled her out of a protest a week earlier for fear an arrest would get her deported. A charge on his card at a Tibetan restaurant leads to his business partner, Ryan Chambers, who dined with her that night. The two men live together, and they admit the marriage was arranged to bring her into the country; she had recently moved into her own apartment.
A couch ad found there points to Paulie Obregano, a bitter divorcé who collects knives, but a search clears him. The size-nine prototype boots on the body were taken from a shoe rep, Laurie Schneider, at a bowling alley, and a map of shoe thefts clusters near Obregano’s block, along with an attack on NYU student Greta Thorsen, who was choked unconscious after leaving a nearby bakery and woke without her shoes. Indented writing lifted from Kunsong’s notepad shows she reversed the couch address and went to the apartment above that bakery. Mrs. Krug, the baker, lives there with her sons Brendan and Jerry Dupree, a bowling alley worker whose room holds a stash of stolen women’s shoes. Jerry confesses that he strangled Kunsong after she called him sick for asking her to try on shoes, and took her foot for his collection.
His lawyer, Gina Bernardo, argues brain injury: an expert ties damage to Jerry’s frontal lobe to violence, and Mrs. Krug testifies that he changed after a robber hit him in her bakery in January. The medical examiner finds signs of repeated older head injuries, paramedics say they found Jerry in his bedroom upstairs, and Brendan says their mother has hit Jerry over women’s shoes since he was five. Jerry then describes his mother beating him with a frying pan after he talked about a customer’s shoes.
Spoiler, the ending: Detectives arrest Mrs. Krug in her bakery for second-degree murder on a depraved-indifference theory, saying her beatings caused the injuries that turned Jerry into a killer. She insists she is a good mother. Jerry’s own case is not resolved on screen.
Why it stands out
- Margaret Colin plays the bakery owner, Mrs. Krug, and Charlie Hofheimer plays her son, Jerry Dupree.
- Steve Schirripa appears as Paulie Obregano, and Illeana Douglas plays defense attorney Gina Bernardo.