Lust (Season 4, Episode 4)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 4
- 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), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Michael Gross as Arthur Esterman, Kate Levering as Miss Kitty, Chris Tardio as Mario Molinari, Maeve McGuire as Bonnie Vernon, Jim Doerr as Vartan Dadian
- Director
- Michael Fields
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Lust” begins when dog walkers find a woman in her 60s beaten and stabbed to death in Central Park. The killer wore a disposable rain poncho and assaulted her with a tree branch; the medical examiner counts 37 stab wounds and notes one leg is shorter, likely from polio. A numbered shoe insert from the sneaker her dog carried off identifies her as Dr. Greta Esterman, a city health doctor who tracked the partners of people with HIV. Her husband, retired lawyer Arthur Esterman, says she had been threatened, and her call log points to parolee Roger Pomerantz, whose wife she planned to warn about his gonorrhea, but his alibi holds.
Arthur brings in notes from Greta’s study that turn out to map an HIV cluster in Little Italy. Her trail leads to the man at its center, bartender Mario Molinari, who knew he was infected and is tied to dozens of cases. Hospitalized with AIDS-related pneumonia for days, he is ruled out, but Cabot charges him with attempted murder, reckless endangerment and statutory rape. Then bird-watcher Mona Sidley is found stabbed in the park, and the press talks of a Central Park Stalker. The same boot tread and rain poncho appear at both scenes, although the second attack is less frenzied.
Greta’s college roommate, Bonnie Vernon, says the couple lived on Greta’s inheritance and that Greta asked her to look into a man named Vartan Dadian. An account in Dadian’s name has received about $20,000 a month from Greta’s funds and paid for luxury hotels and an escort agency, whose call girl, Miss Kitty, calls him a regular. The real Dadian, a 1961 Harvard graduate like Arthur, knows nothing of it, and Kitty picks Arthur out of a photo array. Greta had asked the bank about the transfers days before her death. Arthur’s size 10 boots carry soil and pollen matching both scenes, but he says he went there to leave flowers, and he refuses a DNA sample.
A judge lets Cabot test blood Arthur gave at a blood drive, but only for drugs and disease, not DNA; it shows high levels of Viagra and ecstasy. Fin works a dealer who supplies Arthur and learns of his hideaway on 92nd Street, where the detectives find him with Kitty and a one-way ticket to Brazil. Kitty, who did not use a condom, provides a sample of his DNA.
Spoiler, the ending: Arthur admits killing Greta after she discovered his secret life and sought a divorce that would have cut him off from her money, and concedes his DNA will match Mona Sidley, a stranger killed to make Greta’s death look like a serial killer’s work. No trial is shown.
Why it stands out
- Michael Gross plays Arthur Esterman, with Kate Levering as Miss Kitty and Chris Tardio as Mario Molinari.
- The dialogue cites earlier real prosecutions in St. Louis and Jamestown of men who knowingly exposed partners to HIV.
- The episode first aired on NBC on October 18, 2002.