Tonight on NBC Law & Order returns with an all-new Thursday, February 20, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 13 “In God We Trust,” as per the NBC synopsis,
“A young lawyer with a secret past is found dead. Price and Baxter debate the pros and cons of prison as a punishment vs. alternative justice options.”
Tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 13 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 body of Eli Freeman was found in his apartment. He wasn’t found right away. He didn’t have a family and mostly threw himself into work. It was actually a work colleague that asked for a wellness check. They hadn’t seen Eli in a while. Nor was he answering the calls.
They knew that was unlike him and his colleagues helped the police uncover a crime. Eli had been murdered. The cops naturally asked why he had been murdered? Eli didn’t have enemies. He didn’t really have friends. He was on his own or so he said.
Eli claimed he was orphaned as a kid. He went to Queens Community College before working his way up to Fordham University. He became a lawyer. He was the MVP at his office.
He worked all the time. He barely had enough for a relationship and that’s why he ended things with his ex-girlfriend a few months before his death. She was a sustainable lingerie designer. Her name was Angie. They ended things amicable at first. Things turned south when he kept refusing to send her items back to her.
Then to make matters worse, one of Angie’s friends saw him having a lunch with a new woman. She texted him and she never heard back. It wasn’t until the cops found her that she learned he was dead.
The cops got around to questioning her about whereabouts. She told them that she wasn’t the one that hurt Eli and she led them down the path of the mystery woman that Eli was seeing. Eli was pretty secretive. The cops learned his lied about community college. They also looked into his time at Fordham.
Eli changed his name. He wasn’t born Eli Freeman. His real name was Elijah Penner. He came from a religious community upstate that was known as the Baylor Church Community.
The people there have cut themselves off from technology. They don’t use the internet. They don’t use phones. Eli’s parents were alive and well still living there. Detectives Shaw and Riley spoke with them.
They informed them about their son’s death. Eli left home at seventeen and he never looked back. His parents said he hated how strict the community was.
Eli wasn’t the only one that felt confined there. The woman he was seen with. Her name is Martha. She was from that community as well. The cops spoke to her and she said they ran into each through work. Martha worked in the city at Pathway Forward. It was a nonprofit built to help convicts after they leave prison.
Martha was at the courthouse at one point and she said that’s where she saw Eli. The two of them reconnected. She often turned to him for legal advice to help her clients. Martha said that’s the only reason they went out for lunch together. They were working a case.
Martha maintained this story with everyone back home. She was engaged. They didn’t want her staying in the city for long and so they didn’t know that she has a secret cell phone.
One of Martha’s clients got her a burner because she didn’t know how to buy a phone for herself. The cops found out about the secret cell phone. They connected it to the many calls made to Eli’s cell phones. They also checked the local hospital upstate. They found out Martha’s blood type. She was AB Negative. It matches the blood they found on the victim.
The detectives went back to the community. They questioned Martha. She refused to answer them. She passed out while they were talking and they brought her to the hospital. They also secretly got her fingerprints. There was a match to the ones they found all over Eli’s apartment. She went home with him.
They weren’t just old friends. The two of them were having an affair. Martha’s fiancé found out about it. Jake (short for Jacob) Albrecht usually met Martha at the bus stop after work and gives her rides back to her house. And that didn’t happen on the night Eli was murdered.
Both Jake and Martha were pretty naïve of the outside world. The cops used that against them. They left the two alone in an interrogation room after they told them that they were going to arrest one of the convicts that Martha helps. Martha couldn’t allow an innocent man to go to prison. She confronted Jake.
He admitted he killed Eli. He said he went to Eli’s apartment. He tried to get Eli to stay away from Martha. Jake told his fiancé that Eli claimed they were in love. That Eli was going to help her escape from the church. And that he knew Martha didn’t really want that.
Jake was arrested after he confessed to Martha. He got a lawyer. The lawyer managed to squash the confession. It didn’t matter that it was in an interrogation room. Jake was considered a pastor at his church and he claimed he was praying with a parishioner. The confession got thrown out.
Martha refused to testify against him. Jake’s father was the head Pastor at the church. To go against the father or Jake would result in someone being shunned. Martha couldn’t live with that. She didn’t have money or know how to use the internet. She didn’t think she’d survive in the real world.
Eli’s mother also saw Jake burning clothes on the night he murdered her son. Yet, she later swore she didn’t see anything when she was put on the stand. She already lost her son.
She couldn’t lose her church too. Jake was well protected by a community that claimed to be above such things. His father also reached out to a restorative justice advocate. Her name is Suzanne Forrester. She knew District Attorney Baxter personally. She agreed to act as an in-between with him and Jake’s father. They thought Jake shouldn’t go to prison.
Jake would dedicate his life to helping people. He forgoes jail time. He does good deeds. He basically gives back to his community and the case against him goes away.
Baxter couldn’t accept that deal. He couldn’t let a murderer walk. His office also learned that Martha is pregnant. Eli was the father. He was buying her prenatal vitamins for Martha. It would also explain why she passed out in front of the detectives. The District Attorney can use that information to force Martha into working for them. And they tried to do just that.
Martha and Jake had gotten married during the trial. Jake agreed to let everyone believe that the baby was his. They were going to live a lie until the ADAs forced them to make a choice.
Martha’s pregnancy would have been brought up and Jakes loves Martha too much to let her get ostracized. He agreed to a plea. He was going to serve jail time. And the truth about the baby’s father goes away.
THE END!
