Stalker (Season 8, Episode 18)
Premise: A nurse tormented by an anonymous e-mail stalker is dismissed as a fake after a fall down her stairs, and when she is murdered, the case divides Briscoe and Curtis on the witness stand.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 18
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Stephen Gevedon as Russell Lowery, Susan Floyd as Andrea Blake, Joe Lisi as defense attorney Chris Minetti, Robert Joy as Louis Dutton, Daniel Oreskes as Mr. Wilson
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Kathy McCormick
Summary
The Investigation
“Stalker” opens with nurse Andrea Blake found unconscious at the foot of her building’s stairs after a neighbor hears her screaming, a broken gold chain nearby. Her apartment holds printed e-mails from a stalker signing himself Giovanni, who knows the brands she buys and has tracked her through several moves. A letter from another precinct’s detective shows that a Rikers inmate obtained her address from the Board of Elections; the inmate says he signed the request for Russell Lowery, a recently freed man who sold his computer and claims he met Blake in a bar.
Once she wakes, Blake says the attacker called himself Giovanni, denies going to bars, and names Louis Dutton, a former neighbor across an airshaft. Dutton turns out to shoot photos of women through their windows and post altered pictures online, and he is jailed on indecency charges. But her landlord’s account of uncollected garbage undercuts her story, and the detectives conclude she staged the fall, though they do not charge her. Days later she is beaten and stabbed to death, and on her 911 call she identifies Giovanni as the man in the picture, meaning Lowery’s mug shot. Lowery owns dozens of recordings of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. In Pennsylvania, the detectives learn that during an earlier prison term Lowery took phone orders for Homebody, a catalog company Blake had ordered from, and his supervisor, after first denying it, later admits to Ross that Lowery, who was blackmailing him, used his online computer.
The Trial
Lowery is charged with murder and held without bail, but the judge rules the 911 tape inadmissible because Blake had apparently invented the first attack. Briscoe then tells the prosecutors he now believes the stairway assault was real, pointing to the costly mangled necklace. McCoy adds an attempted murder count, Briscoe testifies at a hearing that Curtis agrees with him, and the tape is allowed back in.
Curtis is furious and refuses to back his partner, and the defense subpoenas him. Ross learns that Curtis had told Blake’s hospital she was truly in danger to protect her job. With a plea refused, McCoy lets defense lawyer Chris Minetti establish that Curtis stands by his report, then gets Curtis to admit he lied to the hospital and that the detectives had judged her in no serious danger.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Lowery of attempted murder and second-degree murder, and McCoy tells Blake’s mother the prosecution will seek life without parole. Outside the courthouse, Briscoe says he holds no grudge, and Curtis replies that he is at peace with his own choice and hopes Briscoe is too.
Why it stands out
- To win, McCoy sets the two detectives against one another on the witness stand.
- The stalker learns his victim’s habits through a prison job taking phone orders for a catalog company, using her card details to dig through consumer databases.
- A judge first excludes the victim’s 911 call because she was believed to have faked an earlier attack, then readmits it after Briscoe changes his account.