Haystack (Season 8, Episode 15)
Premise: A baby taken from his crib, a mother driven to suicide by a TV reporter, and a family DNA search that leads detectives to the boy’s real father.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 15
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente), Judge Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light)
- Guest stars
- Ashley Williams as Laura Kozlowski, Pablo Schreiber as Dan Kozlowski, Dana Ashbrook as Paddy Kendall, Marian Seldes as Peggy Kendall, Kali Rocha as Cindy Marino
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Haystack” begins during a game of charades at Laura Kozlowski’s apartment, when she finds her 13-month-old son, Kendall, gone from his crib and the window to the fire escape open. Cragen keeps Benson at her desk reviewing an appeal and sends Stabler to talk to Laura. She blames her ex-husband, Dan, a compulsive gambler, who flees police and jumps into the river with a bag that holds about eight kilos of cocaine. Dan says he is running drugs for a dealer named Bernardo to clear a gambling debt, and Bernardo confirms Dan was with him in the Bronx past 10 p.m.
No one but Laura has seen Kendall since Friday afternoon, and the detectives find his clothes, toys, blanket and a sonogram in her trash. Stabler tips off TV reporter Cindy Marino about the sonogram, and Marino ambushes Laura on air, accusing her of killing her son. Laura then takes her own life. Blond hairs on the fire escape turn out to be Kendall’s, and DNA shows Dan is not his father. Dan and Laura’s friend Garrett describe a violent former boyfriend called Paddy whom Laura feared. Warner proposes searching the DNA databank for partial matches to find relatives of Kendall’s father, which Novak finds New York law allows. The search points to imprisoned robber George Kendall, whose sister-in-law, Peggy, has eleven sons and orders Stabler off her property.
Kendall is then left unharmed in a box at a firehouse. Peggy’s son James, known as Paddy, comes to claim him, DNA confirms he is the father, and Dan and Paddy come to blows. Stabler and Novak persuade Children’s Services to take Kendall because of Paddy’s history of violence, and Paddy sues them both for $10 million each for violating his civil rights. In court, with Elizabeth Donnelly representing Stabler and Novak, Paddy produces a sonogram to show he was part of his son’s life.
Spoiler, the ending: Paddy is arrested for kidnapping, and Novak tells him his thumbprint is on a second sonogram found in a dropped bag in the alley below Laura’s fire escape. He drops his lawsuit and gives up his parental rights in exchange for a plea to custodial interference, admitting that his mother wanted a grandson and promised to pay. The thumbprint was a bluff. Dan, now sober and off gambling, takes Kendall home. Warner then hands Stabler the result of a kinship test Benson ran on her own DNA, and Benson tells him she has a brother.
Why it stands out
- The final scene reveals that Benson has a brother, setting up a storyline in which Michael Weston plays her half brother, Simon Marsden, in three later episodes this season.
- Judith Light’s Elizabeth Donnelly defends Stabler and Novak in Paddy Kendall’s civil rights lawsuit.