Fault (Season 7, Episode 19)
Premise: A released sex offender slaughters a family and flees with two children, and the manhunt forces Benson and Stabler to face what they would risk for each other.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 19
- 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), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente)
- Guest stars
- Lou Diamond Phillips as Victor Paul Gitano, Rebecca Wisocky as Dr. Paula Greenfield, Matt Landers as Glen Portney, Craig McEldowney as Calvin Portney, Tristen Douglass as Rebecca Clifford
- Director
- Paul McCrane
- Writers
- Michele Fazekas & Tara Butters
Summary
“Fault” opens when a neighbor finds Simon and Lyla Clifford with their throats cut and Lyla’s 16-year-old daughter, Amy, sexually assaulted and strangled, while the younger children, Ryan, 9, and Rebecca, 7, are missing. Boot prints outside show someone spent a long time watching the children’s window. Lyla’s ex-husband, Glen Portney, had threatened her during a custody fight but denies the killings, and their son Calvin, in Sing Sing, says Rebecca was sent home from school upset. The art teacher explains that a man exposed himself to girls at the schoolyard fence and supplies a sketch. ATM video shows Ryan withdrawing his mother’s money, and a store clerk identifies the man as Victor Paul Gitano, who bought a spotting scope, children’s sleeping bags, rope and a hunting knife. Gitano served 18 years for torturing and raping a 12-year-old boy and skipped bail in Pennsylvania after a new arrest.
Huang reads Gitano’s prison evaluation and calls him a sadist rather than a classic pedophile. Dr. Paula Greenfield, who ran his treatment program, says therapy only taught him to imitate normal behavior. A clerk at the George Washington Bridge bus terminal stalls Gitano, but he spots the detectives. In the chase he cuts Benson’s neck; Stabler goes to her, and Gitano kills Ryan and escapes with Rebecca in a carjacked car. Stabler blames himself for letting the boy go, the partners trade accusations, and Cragen threatens to suspend them both.
Warner finds a glowing residue on the adult jacket Ryan was wearing, and Morales tracks Gitano’s work phone through its GPS service. The residue is zinc cadmium sulfide, once sprayed in military tests, and Gitano served in the Air Force. Putting the phone trail together with the military link, Stabler and Benson reach a deserted metal-plating site in Bayonne, New Jersey, that was once a military installation.
Spoiler, the ending: Gitano takes Stabler at gunpoint and taunts Benson about Rebecca, daring her to shoot, while Stabler shouts at her to fire even at the risk of his life. She keeps talking instead, and a police sniper kills Gitano. Rebecca is found alive, hiding in the building. Benson tells Stabler she would not have taken the shot, that they both chose each other over the job and that it cannot happen again. She then asks for a new partner.
Why it stands out
- Lou Diamond Phillips guest stars as Victor Paul Gitano, and Hargitay has more than once named “Fault” among her favorite episodes.
- In the following episode, “Fat,” Stabler works with a temporary partner, Det. Lucius Blaine (Anthony Anderson).
- Novak does not appear; Diane Neal is credited only.