Tonight on NBC Law & Order returns with an all-new Thursday, April 3, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 17 “A Perfect Family,” as per the NBC synopsis,
“Riley investigates the family of a student who was thrown to hear death to piece together her last moments; Price and Maroun speak to a young eyewitness to try and determine if an unlikely suspect should be charged with murder.”
Tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 17 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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Detective Riley has a teenage daughter. She struggled with finding what to wear. She was late every morning. She focused more on the group chat rather than her actual homework. She was a typical teenage girl and even then she was still a struggle for her parents. Riley had no idea what to do with her. It took a murder case for him to realize that he has it easy with his daughter. The victim of the murder case was a young girl. She looked about twelve or thirteen. She didn’t have an ID on her. She did however have a lunch box that said “Emily”.
Emily took the same route to school. The cops used that to identify her from a credit card purchase. Her name was Emily Chapman. Her father ran his own hedge fund. She has two younger sisters. She’s been with the same private school since she was six. The one person she had beef with was Gabby Feliciano. The two of them used to be close before Emily began pulling away. She didn’t want Gabby coming over anymore. She ignored her at school. This along with the fact that she was personally chosen for the volleyball team by the hot teacher made Gabby lash out.
Gabby trashed Emily’s locker a few weeks before her death. She apologized for it. She was also in therapy to deal with her anger issues and was in fact in a session with Dr. Kay when Emily was killed. Emily was pushed off the highline. Some witnesses overheard an argument before she was pushed. It wasn’t Gabby only the cops thought it might be the hot teacher. He goes by Coach Redmond. He literally picked Emily out of nowhere. She wasn’t on the team and suddenly he was making her the star.
The coach also showed favoritism towards Emily. They had personal training sessions. He sometimes pulled her from class. It seemed suspicious to the cops and so they checked it out. Emily was privately quick chatting with the coach outside of school hours. They used an app that destroys messages after a few hours. Coach Redmond explained that he was worried about Emily’s home life. He thought something was happening at home and that by giving her extra attention that she’d become confident enough to talk.
Riley didn’t buy the coach’s story. He thought the coach was a predator trying to blame the family for Emily’s death. It was Riley’s lieutenant that suggested they speak to Emily’s mother again. Melinda didn’t speak much when they notified about her daughter’s death. It was her husband that did most of the talking at the time. The cops went back to see if the mother had anything to add and she did. She claimed Redmond was a predator. She said she saw him outside of their home. She didn’t report it because she didn’t have evidence or so she claimed.
The cops started digging into Melinda. They found out she lied about the day her daughter died. She wasn’t at home with her seven month old baby. She got dressed and she followed Emily that day. There was footage showing her going up on the highline right before her daughter pushed off of it. When asked what kind of woman kills her own daughter, she replied a “saint”. Melinda was arrested. She would go on to claim she was mentally ill. She was no guilty by reason of insanity. She said she was struggling since her youngest was born and that she killed Emily because she was protecting her youngest child.
Melinda wasn’t just putting it on. She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis months ago. She thought demons were trying to kill her baby and she told her therapist that Emily was one of those demons. The therapist recommended treatment. Which Melinda’s husband out right denied for his wife. Derek Chapman didn’t believe in mental illness. He told the therapist that she’d shake it off and go back to being a mother. The therapist frankly held him more responsible for Emily’s death than Melinda was. Melinda had no idea what she was doing. The same couldn’t be said about Derek.
Derek knew that his wife was a threat to his children. He refused to let her get help. Or even bring in a nanny. He let her unravel and kill Emily. He’s to blame. The world will hold Melinda responsible in spite of her illness only the District Attorney’s Office knew she was mentally unwell. She’ll probably now get the treatment she deserved months ago. ADAs Price and Maroun were willing to make a deal with Melinda. She would get medical treatment in return for testifying against her husband. Her husband caused all of this.
The ADAs took Derek to trial. He had a reason for why he was against therapy. His mother killed herself when he was sixteen. He stopped believing in therapy after that and he pushed his anger on the subject onto his wife. He wouldn’t let her get help. He claimed in court that he didn’t know Melinda was dangerous. He said she told him about feeling jealous about all the attention the new baby was getting. Derek said he thought she was struggling with jealous and not mental illness. In order to make a case against him, the prosecution had to find witnesses.
Ones that knew Derek saw Melinda’s psychosis for himself. The only person that did was the middle daughter in all of this. Her name is Amanda. She’s been struggling since her sister was killed and parents went on trial. Amanda’s grandmother warned Price that Amanda was struggling with suicide ideation. He didn’t want to put the ten year old in the witness box. He offered Derek a plea deal. It was Derek that refused to take it. He forced Price’s hand and so Amanda was put in the box. And before he could test her, Price changed his mind.
He couldn’t break Amanda just to get a conviction against Derek. He let her go and Derek was ultimately found not guilty. The worst part in all of this was that he will probably get custody of his two surviving children.
THE END