Tonight on NBC Law & Order returns with an all-new Thursday, February 13, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 12 “Duty To Protect,” as per the NBC synopsis,
“When a teenage girl is found dead, the squad struggles to find a motive without knowing her identity; Price and Maroun must pick up the broken pieces of their case after a shocking courtroom revelation.”
Tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 12 looks like it is going to be great and you won’t want to miss it. So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back from 8 PM – 9 PM ET for our Law & Order recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our Law & Order SVU recaps, spoilers, news & more!
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In tonight’s Law & Order episode, the NYPD detectives were on the case when a body of a teenager was found. There was no ID on her or credit cards. She didn’t appear to have been sexually assaulted. Her clothing was intact. It was also very clear that she had been beaten and strangled. Her attacker killed her with a necktie.
It wasn’t a planned murder, but her killer really wanted her dead. There even seemed to be a witness. The man that reported their Jane Doe’s death had seen a short kid with blond hair and a blue puffer jacket leave the scene.
The cops easily found the kid. He was fifteen. He found the body first. He chose to rob a corpse rather than report it. The kid got lucky that there was security cameras that showed he didn’t hurt that girl. She was walking away from someone else. They grabbed her. They dragged her into the alley and that’s when she was last seen alive.
The cops still didn’t have any idea who this girl was or who she was fighting with. Her fingerprints weren’t in the system. They checked missing persons. There was no one that reported her missing or seemed worried.
The girl looked about sixteen/seventeen. She should have been at home with parents or relatives. Yet, none of them came forward. It was weird and it remained weird even as they identified her.
Her name was Kaitlyn Lawson. She was a model. She was big on social media. She was seventeen and her mom and stepdad thought that was old enough for her to be independent. Kaitlyn didn’t live at home with them. She lived with a group of models. She also had an older boyfriend. She left her stuff at the boyfriend’s place. The cops found her laptop and the boyfriend opened it up for them.
The boyfriend thought Kaitlyn was cheating on him. She never seemed to want to be intimate. Only the problem wasn’t her cheating. Kaitlyn was being groomed. She had looked up Daisy Donuts the night she died.
It was a few blocks away from where she was found. The cops went through everyone’s receipt from the place and they found one from Kaitlyn’s stepfather. Kaitlyn’s mother did mention that she was busy lately with a new movie. She was a director. She often worked late and unfortunately her husband took advantage of that.
Lawson seemed to have groomed his stepdaughter. The same one he adopted when she was seven. It’s the only thing that can explain why he never mentioned meeting up with his stepdaughter on the day she died. His alibi was a movie premiere. He took a photo with his wife at the premiere. It was fifteen minutes away from the crime scene. He said he met up briefly with his daughter before joining his wife. His wife was corroborating that story. She claimed he was at her side the whole time. The mother even posted Lawson’s bail after he was arrested.
Nothing made sense until they found Kaitlyn’s video. She wanted to tell the truth and so she made a video about how her “father” has been assaulting her since she was fourteen.
Lawson wanted to continue the grooming. He thought he still had power over her, but she was brave enough to make the video. She was also brave enough to tell her mom about what was happening. Michelle didn’t want to hear it. She deliberately left her daughter in danger and that’s the real reason Kaitlyn couldn’t wait to move away.
Kaitlyn’s video was shown in court. It made a compelling case. Lawson must have seen the writing on the wall. He grabbed a court officer’s gun and he killed himself. The case would have ended there if ADA Price hadn’t remembered what Kaitlyn said about her mother.
Her mother knew about the abuse. She endangered the welfare of a child. Price talked District Attorney Baxter into filing charges against Michelle. She was questioned. She seems to have thought that her daughter could make her own sexual choices and that her husband did nothing wrong.
Michelle was arrested. She got herself a lawyer. The lawyer tried to claim Michelle couldn’t be held accountable. Michelle was physically and sexually abused by her husband.
She was too afraid to stand up to him. Which would count if she hadn’t tried to hold onto him. She posted his bail. She went to court each day to stand by him. There were plenty of chances she could have run and she didn’t take any of it. Price was of that opinion. He made sure that Michelle’s psychologist won’t be questioned in trial.
Michelle sacrificed her daughter to keep herself safe. She knew about the video that Kaitlyn made. She told her husband about it and that’s why he killed her daughter. Michelle helped her daughter’s abuser.
She helped him create an alibi. She helped him get out of prison with that bail money. The worst part about this woman was that she directed all of these feminist movies. She made one movie about a teenage being sexually assaulted by a family member. In that movie, the man responsible is condemned. Michelle couldn’t even do that in real life.
Price held everything she did against her. His partner felt differently about it. Maroun lost her sister to domestic violence. She firmly believed that Michelle did what she could.
She helped her daughter move and that alone was a lot coming from a deeply abused woman. Maroun helped Price see that. And so Price agreed to a plea agreement with Michelle.
Michelle will serve a year and be on probation for several years.
THE END!
