Venom (Season 7, Episode 18)
Premise: Fin’s son is caught digging for a body on what he says was a stranger’s boast, and the DNA that clears him exposes a family secret and a killer close to home.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 18
- 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), CSU Capt. Judith Siper (Caren Browning)
- Guest stars
- Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as Darius Parker, Ernest Waddell as Ken Randall, LisaGay Hamilton as Teresa Randall, Joe Grifasi as Hashi Horowitz, Darnell Williams as Steven Stansfield
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Judith McCreary
Summary
“Venom” begins when two patrol officers catch Ken Randall, Fin’s son, digging in a vacant lot at night; he is arrested after a scuffle and calls Benson rather than his father. Ken says he overheard a stranger in a Harlem bar boast of raping a woman with a knife and burying her in the lot. Fin is angry at being left out, Stabler doubts Ken’s story, and the two detectives nearly come to blows after Fin mocks Stabler’s daughter. Ken’s cousin Darius Parker, a sculptor with a long record who says he is clean now, claims he heard no such talk.
Files point to Nina Stansfield, who vanished with her toddler son three years earlier, leaving seven pints of blood and a knife; her husband, Steven, has long been the prime suspect. A sealed juvenile file shows Ken was once charged with sexually assaulting a girl, a case dropped when she recanted, and Ken once lived across the street from the Stansfields. Cragen treats Ken as a suspect and has the lot dug up, which yields several male bodies but not Nina. Ken, advised by lawyer Kathleen Summers, refuses to give DNA until Fin persuades him. The result shows the killer shares Ken’s mother: Darius is his half brother, not his cousin. Fin’s ex-wife, Teresa Randall, admits she had Darius at 16 and that her mother raised him.
Darius learned the truth from his dying grandmother. After police find the Stansfield baby’s rattle hidden in one of his sculptures, Fin confronts him in front of Ken, but will not take a confession from family. At the precinct Darius admits stabbing Nina, killing her 14-month-old son and burying both, and leads detectives to the grave. Warner finds the boy was buried alive. Defense attorney Hashi Horowitz, however, argues that police questioned Darius without calling him as counsel on an open burglary case, and Judge Lois Preston suppresses the confession and the bodies. Novak believes Darius planned it that way.
Spoiler, the ending: Ken reluctantly names Darius’s old girlfriend, Angela Bowden, who babysat for the Stansfields and says Nina fired her after finding the knife Angela had given Darius. With that and his DNA, Novak can charge Nina’s murder but not the baby’s. She offers 30 years if Darius admits everything; he refuses and vows to make Fin, Ken and Teresa testify and expose the family. The episode ends as Teresa comes to see him, with the case unresolved.
Why it stands out
- Rapper Ludacris (credited as Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) guest stars as Darius, opposite fellow rapper Ice-T.
- Ernest Waddell returns as Ken Randall, whose story began earlier in the season in “Strain.”