Serendipity (Season 5, Episode 5)
Premise: The deaths of a young mother and her newborn lead to a dermatologist with a hidden past and a child predator still at large.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 5
- 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 Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Martin Donovan as Dr. Archibald Newlands, Caralyn Kozlowski as Mrs. Newlands, Jack Gilpin as Ron Wolcott, Barbara Garrick as Kelly Wolcott, Alexander Tufel as Peter Nestler
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired in part by the case of John Schneeberger, a Saskatchewan doctor who hid a drain filled with another man’s blood in his arm to defeat DNA tests after drugging and sexually assaulting a patient.
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen
Summary
“Serendipity” opens when an entomologist testing for West Nile virus finds a newborn girl in a sewer, her cord tied off with dental floss. Her mother, Brianna Morris, 22, lies dead in a nearby apartment. Warner finds the baby bled to death through the cord before it was tied, and that Brianna was paralyzed with the sedative Versed, induced with a Pitocin suppository and suffocated by someone sitting on her chest, a method called burking.
Brianna’s prenatal bills were paid by Ron and Kelly Wolcott, who were adopting the baby through hotline volunteer Marcy Cochran. Brianna had decided to keep the child, and Ron, a flavor chemist, knew and cut off his credit card, but workplace cameras clear him. Casey Novak, the squad’s new ADA, insists on joining the search, and library staff say Brianna had traced a dermatologist, Dr. Archibald Newlands, from a magazine article and asked how to file a paternity suit. Newlands offers a DNA sample; he is not the father, but the sample matches the 1998 rape of six-year-old Molly Stratton at a Paramus mall, now three months beyond the statute of limitations.
Molly recalls the rapist luring her with honey, and the same detail turns up in the recent attack on eight-year-old Alicia Hahn at the Bronx Zoo. Novak pushes for a lineup over the detectives’ objections, and Alicia picks a different man. Judge Lois Preston keeps out the old DNA but lets Novak argue the pattern. Newlands then misses the start of his trial and is found shot in the back of the head, and six-year-old Courtney Jones disappears the same morning, a honey stirrer left by a park bench.
Spoiler, the ending: At the autopsy, a blood-filled tube is found implanted in Newlands’s arm: he beat the paternity test with a patient’s blood, making him the father of Brianna’s baby and the likely killer, while the patient is the honey rapist. Newlands’s wife admits he lied about his whereabouts and identifies Peter Nestler, the only patient whose blood was drawn that week. Stabler subdues Nestler in the water at City Island, and Novak finds Courtney alive in a cooler on his boat. Novak asks Branch to reassign her; he tells her she has passed the test.
Why it stands out
- The episode introduces Diane Neal as ADA Casey Novak, who became the unit’s longest-serving ADA; Neal had earlier guest-starred in Season 3’s “Ridicule” as a different character.
- Martin Donovan plays Dr. Archibald Newlands, and Peter Hermann appears as recurring defense attorney Trevor Langan.