Annihilated (Season 8, Episode 20)
Premise: A murdered bride-to-be’s fiancé turns out to be a married father posing as a spy, and the case ends in a family massacre.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 20
- 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 Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle)
- Guest stars
- Dylan Walsh as Malcolm Royce, Kelly Deadmon as Lindsay Royce, Rachel Stern as Millie Lefkowitz, Paolo Montalban as Wahid, Lucas Delvasto as Tyler Royce
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Amanda Green
Summary
“Annihilated” opens with the body of Cynthia Yellin, 33, raped and killed in her apartment, her neck snapped with a hand-to-hand combat move. With no prints and a condom wrapper left behind, it looks like a professional hit. Her parents say her fiancé, Steven Dashiell, is a CIA officer in Jakarta under threat from an Indonesian militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah. The CIA will neither confirm nor deny anything. Pentagon records list Dashiell as missing in Afghanistan since 2003, and a Queens restaurant owner named Wahid doubts the group would strike in America.
Dashiell’s prepaid phone is reloaded every Monday at a Staten Island deli, where a clerk who knows his golden retriever directs the detectives to the home of Malcolm Royce, a convention planner with a wife, Lindsay, and three young children. Malcolm admits he invented the spy to court Cynthia and says he loved both women. He claims he spent the night of the murder at a pizza place with his children, but toll records put the family’s Honda in Manhattan late that night. Malcolm says Lindsay had the car; she says she went into the city alone for a drink after her book club. Her best friend, Millie Lefkowitz, says Lindsay survived breast cancer and a breakdown, recently found a Hawaii honeymoon booking under the Dashiell name and vowed to make Malcolm pay.
That night the detectives find Lindsay and all three children shot dead and Malcolm with a head wound. He survives and says Lindsay shot him in his sleep, but a reconstruction of the bullet’s path shows the wound was self-inflicted, and Malcolm is talked down from the hospital roof and arrested. Huang calls such killers narcissists who invent grander lives. Questioned by Stabler, Malcolm first says he tried to kill himself after Lindsay shot the children, then admits shooting her in a rage, but denies killing Cynthia. His prints are found in an assassin’s manual on the pages about breaking necks and on the key to the gun’s lockbox, which bears none of Lindsay’s, and he is charged with all four murders. On the night of the killings, Stabler had spent a few late hours with Kathy, and a daughter told him to come home for good or stay away.
Spoiler, the ending: When Cragen comes to stop the interview, Stabler locks the door, dares Malcolm to kill him, then grips his neck and threatens to leave him paralyzed. Malcolm confesses that he drugged the children’s juice with sleeping pills before shooting them, admits killing Cynthia, and insists he had no choice because his life was falling apart. The next morning Stabler, who looks as if he never went home, is asked whether he is all right.
Why it stands out
- Dylan Walsh guest stars as Malcolm Royce, a family man leading a double life.
- The Los Angeles Times’ Envelope section named the episode a possible Emmy contender for Christopher Meloni.