Scheherazade (Season 8, Episode 10)
Premise: A priest sends Stabler to a dying man who has waited decades to confess, and his slowly told stories uncover old bank robberies, a buried partner and the truth about his daughter’s birth.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 10
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Judge Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle)
- Guest stars
- Brian Dennehy as Judson Tierney, Paget Brewster as Sheila Tierney, John Doman as Mike Mollinax, Victoria Wyndham as Rita Colino, Karl Kenzler as Father Denis
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Scheherazade” opens at the confirmation of Stabler’s son Dickie, after which Father Denis asks Stabler to visit Jud Tierney, a man dying of lung cancer in a hospice. Tierney says he has waited 30 years for a detective but will talk only if Stabler brings his daughter, Sheila, who hung up when his doctors called her. Benson finds no record under his name; he has run a locksmith shop since 1971. Sheila, a teacher with two daughters, refuses to see him and gives the detectives a box of weekly cards he sent her, unopened, each begging forgiveness and holding $100. Benson suspects he abused her, while Stabler is not convinced.
Tierney warms to Benson, who he says looks like his daughter. Prints from the cards show he was arrested as Jake Tierney for burglaries in the 1950s, and the old bills inside, none newer than 1970, link him to the Fedora Bandits, two men wanted by the FBI for 21 bank robberies. Tierney admits the robberies but denies ever hurting Sheila. She reveals that her birth certificate names a Suzanne Mollinax as her mother, which Tierney explained as the result of an affair. On Huang’s advice, Benson turns on Tierney in anger, and he then takes her to his wife’s grave, where keys hidden under the flowers open a bomb shelter holding the stolen money and the mummified body of his partner, Jack Colino, shot in the chest around 1971.
Jack’s widow, Rita, says Suzanne once came to her door with Jack’s baby. Tierney explains that Jack killed Suzanne when she threatened to expose the robberies, then doused her house with gasoline and moved toward the infant’s crib, so Tierney shot him and took the baby home to his wife. He asks to be arrested and is charged with Jack’s murder and with kidnapping. Fin then finds that Suzanne’s ex-husband, Mike Mollinax, was convicted of killing her and the baby and has been in prison ever since. Novak needs Tierney’s sworn statement, but his morphine makes it inadmissible; Sheila, as next of kin, authorizes a drug to wake him, glimpses him and leaves. Then a prison official reveals that Mollinax killed an inmate in a 1985 riot, in what witnesses back as self-defense, and upstate prosecutors intend to charge him.
Spoiler, the ending: Novak turns to Judge Elizabeth Donnelly, an old friend of the governor, who proposes a pardon on condition that Mollinax plead guilty to the prison killing for time served. The governor agrees. Benson tells Tierney that Mollinax is free, and at his request she stays at his bedside.
Why it stands out
- Filmed while Mariska Hargitay was in the final stages of pregnancy, the episode uses desks and folders to hide Benson’s figure and was not worked into the season until January 2007.
- Brian Dennehy plays the dying Jud Tierney, and Paget Brewster, then a star of Criminal Minds, plays his daughter, Sheila.
- Stabler’s wife, Kathy, and son Dickie appear at the opening confirmation.