Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, October 3, 2024 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below.
In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 26 episode 1 “Fractured,” as per the NBC synopsis, “The SVU investigates a brutal attack on a group of law students. Benson hopes the discovery of a hidden camera will crack the case open. Carisi’s best chance at conviction is catching the defendant in a lie.”
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In tonight’s Law & Order SVU episode, Captain Benson has a new detective in her squad. Detective Kate Silva was the daughter of the Deputy Commissioner. She used to work Homicide in Brooklyn. She transferred over to SVU and Benson was still getting a feel of her. Some felt that that Silva wanted to climb the political ladder.
There were others that thought she wanted to get out of her father’s shadow. Benson still kept a close eye on her. She invited Silva to the shooting range with everyone. They had never done that before, but Benson’s squad has gone through a lot of upheaval over the past few years. She wanted people she knew she could trust with the job.
SVU wasn’t for everyone. Silva caught her first case with them when they got a call about a few roommates. The roommates were college kids. They were law students and they were staying in off-campus housing to save money. There was four of them in all. Only three of them had a menage-a-trois earlier that night.
The fourth roommate wasn’t invited to that particular party. He was also locked out and so he claimed he took a walk around the block. He said he returned to find the latch gone and his roommates as victims of a crime.
Damon might not survive being bludgeoned. Shelli was outright killed. Elodie survived only she was a victim of a sexual assault and she never saw the perp’s face.
It was the fourth roommate that everyone was interested in. Teddy. He wasn’t sure what time he returned to the house. He didn’t call 911 right away. He called his dad first. He covered Elodie with a blanket. He also failed to check on his other friends to see if they were still alive. The case got a lot weirder after that. The cops found a hidden camera in Shelli’s room.
The camera was in a fake fire alarm. The cops checked the video from it. They saw that three of the kids slept together that night. Something Elodie failed to mention during her rape kit.
The camera was also turned off right before Shelli’s murder. The police came to believe she might not be the one behind the camera. She might have been stalked by someone else and that person got angry when they saw Shelli sleeping with other people. It wouldn’t be the first time that SVU came across a psycho who had an imaginary relationship with someone they desired.
That’s when SVU went back to Teddy. Teddy claimed he had a date that night. He told his roommates about it. He didn’t tell the cops about it because he said his date stood him up.
It was Elodie who told the cops. She had to explain why she left out the threesome in her original statement and she told them she didn’t want her parents to find out. She didn’t want anyone else to find out. She didn’t want to be labeled. When the cops asked her about Teddy, she didn’t automatically suspect him. She knew Teddy had a thing for Shelli and she thought it was over now that he was dating someone else.
It turns out Teddy got stood up. that night He returned to the house early. He saw they were having a threesome and he felt left out, but he channeled that into playing chess in the park.
He has an alibi. He was playing against older man for hours that night. He couldn’t possible have hurt roommates. The cops also checked that hidden camera in Shelli’s room and it wasn’t just Shelli that was accessing it. There was a second IP address looking at the footage. The second IP address belonged to Sam Ellis. He was in several classes with Shelli. He later claimed he helped her to set up the camera.
There was a problem with questioning Ellis. He was arrested near the campus. There were college kids all around and they thought it would be fun to mess with cops. They jumped on the squad car. They threw things at the cops. Bruno and Finn had to call in for backup to stop a potential riot from breaking out.
Ten college kids were arrested in all that day. They managed to get free law council and were now suing the city. Ellis also got a lawyer. He was later questioned. He said he was friends with Shelli. He claimed he watched the threesome that night because he was worried she was being taken advantage of.
Ellis didn’t bother calling Shelli that night. He simply watched the threesome several times over. He then claimed he went to sleep and that he was by himself.
The cops later found footage of him being in Shelli’s neighborhood that night. It was hours after he was allegedly asleep. He was heading to the park in the footage and so Silva searched that park. She found a homeless man that goes through the trash everyday. She searched his items. She found the bloody hammer that was used to kill Shelli. And there was DNA all over it.
Ellis’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon. He later claimed in court that he saw a weapon lying around. He threw it away because he was civic minded.
Ellis’s lawyer also tried to paint Teddy as the culprit. It didn’t help that Teddy was once a suspect. Neither Ellis nor his lawyer went after Elodie on the stand. They knew that could backfire on them. Elodie was a little disappointed by that. She wanted to defend her friends. She said that Shelli had been taking her to this female empowerment group on campus. Elodie wanted to be brave like Shelli taught her to be.
Benson checked out that group. The kids that attend do private testimonials on camera. They were the only ones that see it and so the cops found Shelli’s testimonial.
In it, she said she wanted the confidence to tell Ellis no. She called him by name. She said she refused to be afraid of him and that video was made a day before her murder. The cops wanted to use this video in court. It was going to be an uphill battle because the defense was claiming it was Teddy that did it. And that video will sink their whole case.
Only Carisi got the judge to admit it. He later showed it in court. Benson testified about finding the footage and when it was taped. Ellis’s lawyer asked for time, but Ellis demanded to testify while the footage was still fresh in the jury’s mind. The self-righteous prick actually thought he could talk his way out of murder.
Carisi walked him into a trap. He fell for it. He said that Shelli wasn’t all that pretty. She should have been happy with whatever attention she got. He felt Shelli should have been grateful for him. He watched over her. He even planted the video camera without her knowing.
Ellis ultimately said he was sorry and he was found guilty of Shelli’s murder.
Elodie was going to take semester off and come back to finish her law degree once she was ready.
THE END!