Vulnerable (Season 4, Episode 3)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 3
- 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
- Mary Kay Place as Hope Garrett, Jane Powell as Bess Sherman, Jay Thomas as Joe Sherman, Andy Powers as Hal Shipley, Georgine Hall as Millie
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen
Summary
“Vulnerable” opens when an elderly woman in a nightgown climbs through the window of a stranger’s apartment asking for someone named Itsy. She has a dozen fresh cigarette burns on her breasts and genitals, and doctors believe she has Alzheimer’s disease. She speaks of a whiskey-drinking man who lost his money investing, but the clues belong to the past: the 1930 census shows the apartment once housed the Stayton family, and the surviving daughter, Millie, recalls that Itsy was her sister Isabel and that a neighbor girl, Bess, used to sneak in through their window at night to escape an uncle who abused her.
Social Security records lead to Jubilee Towers, an expensive assisted-living home, where assistant administrator Hope Garrett says Bess Sherman left two weeks earlier in the care of her son, Joe. Joe, whose business ventures keep failing, has filled his mother’s rent-controlled apartment with new furniture, and the bed in her room has restraints. Cabot gets an order returning Bess to Jubilee Towers and freezing her accounts. A fingerprint on a cigarette butt from a party Joe held for investors leads to a salesman, then to Joe’s son, Andy, who came with a friend from Jubilee Towers: nurse’s aide Hal Shipley. Residents say Hal pinches patients and plays with their oxygen.
A settled lawsuit over a former resident’s death leads to an exhumation, and Dr. Melinda Warner finds an unexplained needle mark. Then Bess goes into cardiac arrest, and Hope, who started CPR, says she saw Hal leaving the room. Confronted with his print, Hal admits the burns: Andy owed him money, and when Bess screamed as he tried to make her sign another check, he burned her repeatedly. He denies the second attack, and the drug cabinet’s computer, which he had been using to steal drugs, puts him in the stockroom. Staff recall several residents Hope has revived; Bess’s blood holds epinephrine that was never charted; Hope lost her nursing license years earlier over potassium chloride doses; and her prints are on a syringe.
Spoiler, the ending: Hope is arrested for the attempted murder of Bess and suspected killings at Oak Glade, a nursing home where she once worked. At trial, Warner testifies that seven of 22 deaths there in the 1980s show signs of potassium poisoning and that Hope was the nurse each time. Hope erupts in court and is removed from the courtroom, and no verdict is shown. Joe, his protective order lifted, plans to take his mother home but faces an inquiry into her money.
Why it stands out
- Mary Kay Place plays Hope Garrett, with Jay Thomas as Joe Sherman and Jane Powell as his mother, Bess.
- The detectives trace Bess through the 1930 census, which the dialogue notes had just been opened to the public after its 72-year seal.
- The episode first aired on NBC on October 11, 2002.