Two boy scouts traipse through the woods, apparently doing really lousy on a troop scavenger hunt. And unless "beaten dead woman" is one of their listed items, they're not going to do any better. Although one of the kids is kind of excited at getting a chance to work on getting his first-aid badge. Only she's dead, so unless the scouts now offer a forensic pathology badge, he's shit out of luck there too.
Chester and Fin show up to find out that medical examiner Warner's not sure which of the blows or strangulations actually killed the woman. There's semen inside her too. A smashed cellphone nearby is testament to the woman's rage. Also? She has no lips. HER LIPS WERE RIPPED OFF. They could have left that one to my imagination, instead of holding up a couple of red strips in a Zip-Loc, for crying out loud. There's also a red baseball cap with a stylized C on it, probably from the perp.
The victim is Julie Donovan. Her father's at the morgue to make the ID. Before seeing the body, though, he's in denial that it could possibly be her, since she didn't have any enemies. Everyone liked her, which was in fact her problem, admits her dad, which seems to be code for "please don't make me admit my daughter slept around." Her father -- who played Murmur on The Sopranos -- was also chagrined that her daughter, when she turned 13, got into hip-hop, and, uh, black guys. That must have been one hell of a birthday party, Mr. Donovan. Naturally, he's sheepish in front of Fin that he wasn't thrilled about it, but says he told his daughter if she kept her grades up, he didn't care whom she hung with. So: body uncovered, Murmur starts to wail. Warner picks an inopportune time to stroll in and say they got a hit on the DNA, because Murmur goes nuts and demands to know who killed his daughter. When you introduce a father blinded with rage in the first act, you know he's going to go off in the third act. Well, later in the first act, actually.
The DNA belongs to a guy named Mike Kona, who's got two burglaries and a rape charge to his name, although the rape charge was dropped. He's an Ultimate Fighter, or whatever the non-trademark-infringing name they have for it in the Manhattan of the SVU world. (Also, they fight in a hexagon, not an octagon. Have some fun with it! Have them fight in trapezoid! Or a rhombus!) Chester's a big fan of mixed-martial arts -- because he used to take on all comers in the parallelogram as...wait for it...Naptime! Fin understandably, if insufficiently, busts on Chester for such a ridiculous stage name, and Chester has to explain that it was because his left hook or right cross or whatever the hell would put you to sleep (Fin figured it was his "boring stories" put everyone to sleep). It's only due to a torn ACL that Chester joined the force instead of turning pro. Anyway, Chester says there's only one mixed-martial arts gym in Manhattan, and his grandfather built it.
But the detectives are going to Madison Square Garden instead of the gym, because in an amazing coincidence, Mike Kona is fighting in a championship bout that very night! Well, maybe it's not that coincidental. I believe UFC has thirty-seven championship bouts a year. Mike Kona's whaling on some guy in the dodecagon when Chester and Fin arrive, and there's a pneumatic blond yelling "Kill him!" in the crowd. This would be Coco, also known as Mrs. Ice-T, and Mike Kona is played by some real Ultimate Fighter guy who I could look up if I thought it mattered. Kona wins, climbs on top of the fence surrounding the convex pentagon, and yells at Mrs. Ice-T that he loves her, and she deploys her breasts like a train's cowcatcher to make her way through the crowd to stand by her man. Chester flashes his badge at Kona's bodyguard, but he's less than impressed. Maybe if you drop a little Naptime science on him, Chester! Kona wants the detectives to cut him some slack since he just won a championship bout, and Fin mentions Julie Donovan, deflating Kona, who agrees to come with the detectives. Mrs. Ice-T glares after them.
In an interrogation room, Kona claims to not know Julie, and Chester wants to know how it is that Kona's semen got into her then. Chester tries the whole man-to-man male bonding thing to get Kona to open up, and says the facts make it hard for Chester to believe Kona's story, especially since he was charged with raping Tracey Bell last year. Kona says he didn't rape either of them. Certainly not Tracey: "She's my fiancée." I'm convinced, because it's not possible to rape your girlfriend/fiancée/wife, right?
Naturally, Fin's interviewing Chester, so Mr. and Mrs. Ice-T face off on the small screen for the first time (that I know of)! Remember when Heat came out, and it was a big deal because De Niro and Pacino were acting opposite each other in the first time ever? Well, multiply that by a million, and that's how much of a big deal this is. She explains that the supposed rape was a misunderstanding, that someone misunderstood her drunken screams of passion. She explains (well, brags) that she dropped the rape charge because Kona bought her a big fat diamond ring, then somehow manages to take umbrage when she thinks Fin called her a gold digger. It doesn't matter to her if Kona messes around, as long as she's number one. She doesn't recognize the picture of Julie Donovan, but then she hasn't checked the tape in a while.
See, she installed a nanny-cam in a picture frame so she can amass evidence for the inevitable divorce proceedings. Fin grabs the USB flash drive from the fanny-cam, I mean nanny-cam.
At the station, the detectives watch with Kona a little scene with a post-coital Julie in bed, trying to take a picture of Kona with her cellphone. He says "no pictures" and then goes apeshit when she ignores him, and the clip is paused with Kona about to smack her. The detectives barrage him to try to get him to confess to the murder, but he maintains that all he did was give Tracey a little slap, and points out the detectives saw the video, in which the "little nympho" was all over him. And the questioning is broken up by a lawyer for Not UFC, who says he's got records of Kona's membership card being swiped at the gym at the time of the murder. When the detectives point out it's easy to get someone else to swipe a card for him, the lawyer provides club surveillance camera recordings of Kona's coming and going. Well, open with that, then. It drives me crazy the way defense attorneys on this show always lead with the easily fakeable evidence when providing an alibi instead of just opening with the incontrovertible proof. Chester wants to charge Kona with battery at least, but Cragen kiboshes that after the defense attorney points out that the only way to get that charge to stick would be to play the sex tape in court, in front of the father of the dead-either-way victim.
On the way out, Mr. Badass Defense Attorney says he'll have their badges for putting Kona through this, instead of just shutting up. Sets a good example for his client, for sure, since when Chester says Kona's lucky they didn't charge him with the battery, Kona says, "I see you on the street, pretty boy, you're dead." I'm no lawyer, but I think I could handle telling my client that it's not advisable to threaten a cop. Especially in a police station, with many other cop witnesses around. The lawyer just says, "Don't waste your time," and they leave.
Or at least they try to; while Fin says Kona would have kicked Chester's ass, we hear a gunshot, and the detectives race to the hallway, where Julie's father has shot Kona dead. He calmly puts the gun down, and Chester cuffs him. "Terry, what did you do?" he asks. Your powers of observation leave a little to be desired, Chester.
day, Stabler finally shows up in the squad room, having come from Terry Donovan's arraignment -- no bail, straight to Riker's. Chester expresses sympathy and wonders if maybe Donovan will get a sympathetic jury that'll go easy on him. Elliot, who probably would be completely calm and rational if one of his children were killed, says Donovan's a murderer and will be lucky if he only gets twenty years.
DNA on the baseball cap comes back with a match to a Jadon Odami, who has a sealed juvie record. But before they can do more than look at Odami's photo, and notice more than a passing resemblance to Brian "Smash" Williams on Friday Night Lights, the computer tech guy comes in with a file salvaged from Julie's cellphone's SIM card -- video of a keg party, time-stamped the night of the murder, with Julie grinding with one Jadon Odami, and some other guy. So: she did Kona, then turned up at the frat party, where she likely hooked up with her future killer. The detectives head over to Kappa Delta Alpha at good ol' Hudson University to ask a few questions.
Some helpful frat brother is cleaning the living room at the frat house. He leaves the bong on the mantel in full view of two police officers. He recognizes the picture of Jadon, who rushed the frat last semester. This despite, as Fin points out, the large Confederate flag hanging in the room. "We're very proud of our heritage," says this guy. I think it's safe to say Chester's grandfather didn't found this frat. Chester just wants to know why a black kid would want to pledge this fraternity anyway, and the frat guy says something about special-interest groups getting "the brothers" in. Fin bristles at "the brothers," but the frat guy means it literally -- Jadon and his brother Ezra. And the frat guy recognizes Julie from her picture, since the brothers were practically having sex with her on the dance floor -- he had told them to lay off, in fact. "Because she was white?" asks Fin. Frat guy says it was because she looked underage. Weak defense when her age didn't prevent you from having her at the kegger in the first place, guy. Speak of the devil -- here come Jadon and Ezra now, and the frat guy is all, "Dudes! That girl you hooked up with at the party turned up dead!" The brothers spot the cops and hightail it out the door. Well, Jadon goes out the door; Ezra heads out a window, climbs down a cable, and hops the fence. Both of them get away, with Chester's "running after them" technique and Fin's "standing there looking out the window" technique proving equally ineffective.
The crusty old Dean (let's call him Dean Wormer) is annoyed that cops are chasing students around campus, but he changes his tune when he finds out it was Jadon and Ezra, and even though those students represent "Hudson's commitment to diversity" he's going to expel them on the unproven allegations by these two cops. Nice. The detectives note, looking at the brothers' academic records, that they graduated high school at the top of their classes -- unfortunately, the address of said school is in prison.
A trip to "Island Academy" and a chat with Professor Steve Earle (seriously) is up . Professor Earle says the brothers were his best students in twenty years teaching prison school, and says the boys' only crimes were "survival crimes" stealing for food or a place to sleep. "Doesn't help the victim, does it?" snarls Fin. Earle says he doesn't know where the boys are. "But once you read their files, you won't be so quick to judge them."
No, but they'll be quick to go into one of their patented squad room debates; Chester learns that the boys were shuffled in and out of foster homes -- nineteen of them, in total -- their entire lives. "The system didn't make them commit murder," says Fin. Olivia's sympathetic, and Fin inscrutably seems to be, pointing out that the boys were beaten at various stops. Cragen calls them "ticking time bombs," and Chester contends they were just kids who didn't have chance. "What are you, a social worker now?" says Elliot, adding, "Wait until you have a family of your own." Chester weirdly flies off the handle at this, demanding to know what Elliot means by that. Elliot says when Chester has a daughter Julie's age, he'll stop feeling sympathy for the mopes that killed her. Or maybe he'll still be interested in looking at the causes of crime instead of endlessly dealing with the effects, hey, Elliot? Chester gets even more upset at Elliot's implication that he doesn't care about the victim, and Cragen orders him to go cool off. "We keep it civil around here or you're gone."
Fin and Chester head over to the boys' biological mother's apartment in the projects, where the find she's found gainful employment in the world's oldest profession. The detectives throw out a pimp and a john and endure some attitude from Janelle Odami before they tell her they're here about her sons, and show her their mug shots. "My babies," she says.
Her attitude is back while she's in the holding cell, though, calling Fin "Uncle Tom." "Damn: white, black, I'm getting it from all sides," complains Fin to Chester, who is still smarting over the pimp, who thought he was a Mexican. Janelle starts yelling, "Run, baby!" and the detectives turn to see Jadon, who says he's there to turn himself in. "I killed that girl," he says. Sweet! Special half-hour SVU this week!
The detectives futilely grill Jadon about why he killed Julie, but he says he doesn't want to talk about it. Annoyed, Fin stomps off, leaving Chester alone to play good cop, but Jadon won't talk about Ezra, and won't talk deal. Fin comes back, dragging Janelle with him, saying he thought Jadon might want to say goodbye before she gets taken down to central booking. The detectives leave mother and son alone for the most depressing family reunion ever. A concerned Jadon asks his clearly strung-out mom how she's doing. "You know how it is, son," she says, lighting a cigarette. "Crackers got nothing better to do than mess with my broke ass. This heroin's got your mom by the soul, baby. Took me to places Jesus won't go." Well, at least she probably doesn't have crushingly high expectations of Jadon, now, does she? They hug, and Cragen marvels that after all she's put him through, he still loves her. Fin mutters something about how when you have nothing, you take whatever you got. Chester just stares straight ahead.
The detectives come back in to take Janelle, who tells Jadon that he can help out his mother. He agrees to tell the detectives about the murder if they let his mom go. Deal.
Only at the arraignment, Jadon's lawyer ignores the deal and pleads "not guilty" on his behalf, because of the coercion going on involving Jadon's mother. Jadon protests, and when the judge orders him to listen to his lawyer, he has the presence of mind to fire his lawyer on the spot, and then pleads guilty, allocution and everything, waiving any right to appeal down the road. He says he had sex with Julie, and then when walking home he tried to rape her, and when she resisted he grabbed her face to squeeze her mouth. "Something snapped and everything went red." The judge asks if the allocution is sufficient, and a brooding Casey says it is, even though I thought allocution needed to be a little more specific than "everything went red" when one is confessing to murder.
At the squad the day, Fin and Chester stroll in, noting how early Elliot's there. "Someone's gotta close out the Julie Donovan murder," he says, telling Fin and Chester that he had a friend in family court sneak a peek at Jadon's juvie record. In all his crimes, Jadon had a partner: his brother Ezra. Seems like a possibility you'd think they'd have considered already. Regardless, now they have to find Ezra. Jadon's not likely to be any help, since if Ezra's involved, Jadon's already taking the rap for the two of them. So the detectives turn their attention the red baseball hats with the Gothic C on them. Fortunately, Chester's got a friend in the gang crimes unit (how many cases would SVU solve without their myriad friends in other departments?), so in a nice little irony, Ice-T needs to go get information on gangs from an older tubby white guy.
But the old tubby white guy is very helpful, saying the hats are part of the uniform of the Corner Hustlers, a very small, very well organized gang that's strictly "blood in, blood out." They control the Marcy Courts (which is where the brothers' mom lives) -- or at least they try to; they're in a turf war with the Latin Kings. "I bet the Kings wouldn't mind ratting out the competition," says Fin.
Nothing will ever prepare you for the sight of Fin and Chester lounging on a bench wearing the signature red baseball caps. They might as well be wearing their NYPD Softball Team uniforms, but of course a couple of Latin Kings show up to intimidate them. The detectives squeeze some info out of a King, who tells him the Corner Hustlers were formed by a guy named Jimmy Mack in prison, and Jimmy Mack is a psycho: he makes his crew rape young girls. "We don't need that kind of heat in Marcy, so Kings put a price on his head."
Back at the station, Cragen says "Jimmy Mack" is James McDonnell. Now, considering Chester's gangbanger expert friend had the exact same mugshot of McDonnell on his wall, this is all information they could have gotten from him instead of putting themselves in harm's way (not to mention looking ridiculous). Cragen rattles off all the violent crimes McDonnell has committed, adding that the guy will be going away for a long time on his conviction. Chester theorizes that McDonnell ordered an initiation murder for Jadon and Ezra. Meantime, Fin's located McDonnell at Riker's Island, for jumping a turnstile near the park where Julie's body was found. He posted bail so he'll be dropped off at the Queensboro Plaza any moment, so the detectives spring into action.
From a safe distance, they watch McDonnell, wearing a red cap, get off the bus. As they swoop in to pick him up, they see McDonnell exchange some money for a little package with someone waiting for him. What they don't see is Ezra Odami striding across the street, gun in hand, until Ezra opens fire. He's a lousy shot, and Jimmy Mack takes off. Ezra drops his gun in the street and runs off in a different direction. Chester chases down Ezra, while Fin winds up on a roof in hot pursuit of Jimmy Mack, who launches himself off the roof, and right into the top of a garbage truck. And he can't get out. Making matters worse for him, is that the truck is starting its compacting cycle. Fin yells in vain at the truck driver, who's got headphones on. Cragen shows up, and doesn't even yell. Neither of them thinks to do anything like throwing a rock or a shoe to get the guy's attention. Maybe neither of them figured it'd be any big loss for Jimmy Mack to get crushed into a little cube and dropped off at the nearest landfill? The garbage truck folds inward on itself, Jimmy Mack's screams doing little to delay his impending death.
In the interrogation room, Ezra says he wasn't shooting at the cops -- just at Jimmy Mack. The boys joined the Corner Hustlers when they were prison, figuring since Jimmy Mack was from their neighbourhood, he'd look for them. And he did, but when the boys started doing well at Island Academy and then went to Hudson, J-Mac wanted them to sell drugs on campus. Jadon told Jimmy Mack to get lost, he freaked and said the only way the brothers were leaving the gang was in body bags. Chester sounds kind of impressed, thinking Ezra was going to kill J-Mac to get out of the gang. But Ezra says he did because J-Mac set his brother up for murder. "Then why was Julie's blood on your brother's baseball cap?" asks Fin. Ezra says she must have worn it home from the party. Fin facetiously says that if J-Mac's the real killer, then he guesses they'll let Jadon go, and Ezra proves stunningly unfamiliar with sarcasm. Then Chester lowers the boom: "Jadon confessed." Ezra looks stunned by this.
In the squad room, Chester stares at the assembled info, while Cragen comes in to congratulate them on a job well done. Only now Chester thinks the boys didn't do it. "I swear I didn't see him smoking crack," Fin tells Cragen. Hee! Chester thinks the real killer was J-Mac. "One brother confessed and the other one tried to shoot you. What more do you want?" asks Cragen. But Chester figures the brothers had more to lose by killing the girl, and that J-Mac was a psychopath who had something to gain by setting up the brothers after they refused to sell drugs for him. Cragen's not hearing it though. "This case is closed."
Chester doesn't listen too well, does he? He's at his desk much later, with Elliot commenting on how late Chester's there (it's okay for Elliot, because it's some kind of court thing). He warns Chester not to get too obsessed with a case because he'll "lose more than sleep." I recognize Elliot's got a lot of expertise in this matter. Not as much expertise in the concept of practicing but he preaches, but still.
Anyway, they're over their little spat from before, and Chester reveals the not-exactly-a-surprise that Chester was raised in foster homes. Sufficiently guilted, Elliot offers to help Chester work on the case. "You want to risk the captain getting pissed at you?" asks Chester. "Wouldn't be the first time," says Elliot. Truer words.
What follows, instead of an awesome montage set to "Gonna Fly Now," is the usual late-episode detective work, involving them noticing some woman in the fraternity party video, notable mainly because she's about eleven months pregnant, and taking pictures of Julie. Jadon won't identify her. Ezra can't. Jadon wants to be left alone to do his time, since everybody his whole life has let him down. Or something like that. Chester launches into a long story about going from the foster system into the police academy, and then getting drunk with his cousin, and getting in a fight, and his cousin taking the rap for Chester so Chester wouldn't get kicked out of the academy. "He took the collar so I could have a shot," says Chester. Yeah, we got that. Thanks. "You did the same thing for your brother," he adds. Yeah, WE GOT THAT TOO. Jadon asks why, if that were true, he'd give his brother up now. "Because Ezra didn't do it. It was McDonnell, Jadon. He set you up," says Chester. Jadon demands to see Ezra.
The two brothers reunite, and then start yelling. Jadon says he's confessed to the murder, so he wants his brother out of there, with Ezra upset that Jadon thinks he murdered somebody. Defeated, Jadon admits he falsely confessed, and Ezra wants to know why. "Every time I passed that flag in the living room," begins Jadon. Oh, here we go. Anyway, he always wanted to punch the rich frat kids who bitched about their perfect lives, and figures maybe he should be in jail before he did something he regretted. Does the U.S. even have enough jails to imprison everyone who's ever wanted to punch a frat guy?
So the detectives now need to prove Jadon's innocent, because his sentencing's tomorrow. Great! An artificial deadline! Because if exonerating evidence is uncovered two days from now, or a week from now, or a year from now, it'll be tough luck, is that it? Unfortunately, Jadon wasn't just copping attitude when he says he didn't know the party's pregnant photographer. Ezra though, thinks he's seen her around the Marcy projects. Great! Now, if only they knew ONE OTHER PERSON in Marcy...
Fin and Chester show up at Janelle's apartment, and she tells them she's got a night job cleaning offices and is nine days clean and sober. She's clearly lying when the detectives show her the picture of the party girl and she says she doesn't know anything. Fin wants to know what kind of "piece of trash mother" puts her kids through hell and then refuses to help them when she has the chance. Uh, Fin? You guys DIDN'T TELL HER THIS COULD HELP HER SONS. Now she's got her back up, and angrily recounts how tough it was when social services took her boys away. Even Chester yells at her, telling her Jadon and Ezra will never see daylight again if she doesn't tell them who the girl is. "You stole the first half of their lives. Give 'em back the rest," adds Fin. "If I get ninety days clean and sober, I'm going to surprise Jay and Ezra and take 'em to Red Lobster," she says, and then identifies the girl as "Latrice Nunez," in the building behind this one.
Latrice identifies herself as Jimmy Mack's "bottom bitch," even though she's pregnant. "Still got it," she says. Oh, and Julie really enjoyed being a ho too. Thought it was "mad fun, like being one of them rap video hoes or something like that." They met at the fights, because Julie got off on watching guys pound each other. And Latrice here helped Jimmy turn Julie out!
The detectives view Latrice's pictures back at the station. She was taking pictures because Jimmy Mack wanted there to be proof of Julie having sex with the Odami brothers, and she was to claim afterwards that they raped her, so Jimmy could blackmail the boys for their tuition cheques. But Julie changed her mind about helping with the blackmail, and Jimmy Mack beat her to death. Latrice kept taking pictures of the beating and everything, for "insurance. So he never come at me like that. Never."
Casey says she'll get the guilty plea withdrawn, and drop Ezra's attempted murder charge, but she can't do anything about Ezra's gun possession charge. Fin's all, "See, the thing about that is the gun got lost during transport from the scene." Casey goes with it, and says if there's no gun, she'll have to drop the charges. Fin glances at Cragen, who's cool. "Stuff happens," he shrugs.
Chester meets the boys outside the courthouse to tell them he talked to Dean Wormer, and they're back in school. "So that's the big surprise?" says Jadon. "No, I got another one," grins Chester.
Cut to Fin knocking on Janelle's door. Oh, god. Will there never be a happy ending on SVU? Ever? No answer from Janelle's apartment, but there's music playing. Fin walks in and looks through the place, and then he sees Janelle, sitting in a chair, dead. Arm tied off. He takes out his cellphone and dials.
Chester answers his ringing cellphone. "Hey, Fin. Where the hell are you? We've been waiting." A moment later, his smile vanishes. "I'll tell 'em," he says, with his back to the boys. He hangs up, and the boys want to know what the big surprise is. Chester pastes a smile back on. "I'm taking you guys to Red Lobster." Mother's death, Red Lobster? You tell me which is the greater tragedy.