Manipulated (Season 7, Episode 15)
Premise: The murder of a lawyer who secretly danced at a strip club points to her lover, until the detectives find his paralyzed wife pulling the strings.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 15
- 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), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente), Judge Lena Petrovsky (Joanna Merlin)
- Guest stars
- Rebecca De Mornay as Tessa McKellen, Chris Potter as Linus McKellen, Holt McCallany as Walter Inman, Brian Slaten as Alan Anthony Winchell, Kevin Carrigan as Jeffrey Sobchak
- Director
- Matt Earl Beesley
- Writers
- Jose Molina
Summary
“Manipulated” opens when police respond to screams from a student horror film shoot and find a real victim upstairs: lawyer Vicky Riggs, raped and strangled in her bed, her engagement ring gone. An anonymous 911 call came from her phone. TARU’s Ruben Morales rules out her fiancé, architect Alan Winchell, as the caller. Vicky did pro bono work and was organizing the dancers at the 4-Play, a Times Square strip club, where owner Wally Rimaldi reveals she also danced. Tim, a hot dog vendor who followed her home, has her ring but says she threw it away after Alan, who saw her dancing, broke off the engagement.
Film footage shows Vicky entering her building with a man who has a key. Facial recognition software run against driver’s license photos identifies Linus McKellen, husband of Vicky’s boss, Tessa McKellen, who was paralyzed in a crash while he was driving. Linus admits the affair and the 911 call, saying he found Vicky dead after returning for his watch. Judge Lena Petrovsky throws out the identification and everything it led to, because the software has not been shown to be reliable. Then Vicky’s friend Josie Post, a dancer Linus phoned often, is found dead behind a chained door with his semen on her, though he says he never met her. Boot prints and rope marks show the killer came over the rooftops. Tessa’s cases lead to Silverhammer Protection, a private military firm whose government lawsuit she lost, and its fired infiltration specialist, Walter Inman, who is arrested after a chase.
Warner finds Tessa’s saliva mixed with Linus’s semen in the sample from Josie. To keep his daughter’s tuition money, Inman says Tessa hired him to follow Linus, leading to both killings, and had him steal bacteria from a lab, which she injected into herself. At her competency hearing, a psychiatric exam finds Munchausen syndrome but no incompetence, and Tessa then has a seizure from an insulin overdose she caused. Petrovsky rules her unfit for trial for now and sends her to a private psychiatric hospital.
Spoiler, the ending: The detectives urge Linus to check his wife’s condition with her doctors, and they find Tessa swimming and walking at home. Linus leaves her. When Tessa asks who will take care of her now, she is told the prison warden will.
Why it stands out
- Rebecca De Mornay guest stars as Tessa McKellen, with Chris Potter as her husband and Holt McCallany as the hired killer.
- The case turns on a court ruling that throws out a facial recognition match from driver’s license photos as not yet proven reliable.