Tonight on NBC Law & Order returns with an all-new Thursday, April 17, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 19 “Play with Fire Pt. 1,” as per the NBC synopsis,
“A mysterious phone call to Capt. Benson of the SVU leads detectives to the scene of a brutal murder.”
Tonight’s Law & Order season 24 episode 19 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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ICE raided a homeless shelter. They arrested a bunch of people. There were plenty of others that ran off and two young women were among them. They outran the ICE Agents. They split up. They made a plan to reunite at a youth hostel within an hour, but the women known as Sofia never showed. Her friend went looking for her. She knew where Sofia was heading. She had told Sofia earlier that day that she had been sexually assaulted at a warehouse and Sofia went to that location hoping to find her friend’s attacker.
Sofia never left the warehouse. Her friend searched the area. She found a body burned in an oil drum. She knew right away it was Sofia and so she called the cop from the card that Sofia gave her. Sofia had told her friend that this cop wasn’t like the others. She would help them get justice. The cop she was talking about was Captain Olivia Benson from the SVU. Benson received a call about a body being burned. She tried asking questions and that’s when the phone went dead. She didn’t know who called her. She also couldn’t keep this case.
Sofia’s body was burned so badly that they didn’t know if she was assaulted. They just knew she was murdered. Murders are handled by the Homicide Unit. Detective Riley got assigned to the case and Benson made sure he worked with one of her detectives who acted as the captain’s liaison. What they didn’t count on was that Lieutenant Brady knew of a similar case. There was another young woman that was burned in an oil drum just like Sofia. Brady was working that case. She got a suspect and that suspect fled to Mexico before he could be prosecuted.
The man’s name was Carlos. Carlos was never arrested by Mexican authorities. Brady suspected he might be back in town because of this similar case. She contacted the first victim’s mother. Her daughter’s name had been Rosa. Rosa was living with her cousin at the time. Brady needed the cousin’s information. Her cousin was friends with Carlos. The cousin didn’t assist with the case because he was too afraid of Carlos. Only Brady went back to him. She forced him to finally get justice for Rosa. He gave up Carlos’s location and Carlos was arrested.
The sad part was that Carlos wasn’t the guy. He didn’t kill Sofia. He didn’t even kill Rosa. Brady got it wrong two years ago. Carlos was in Mexico at the rime of Rosa’s death. He was in video. He was also in New Jersey when Sofia was killed. Brady got it wrong and the killer went on killing. She was beating herself up. She was going through her second divorce at the time. She was angry. She asked herself if she pursued Carlos to get payback or if she was truly seeking justice? The detectives now were quicker on their feet than she had been.
They found out that Sofia was seen at a shelter run by Father Alberto. The priest first needed to be reassured they weren’t with ICE before he told them anything. He said Sofia has been around the past couple of months. She was friends with another girl named Ana. Ana was the one that called Benson only the cops didn’t know it right then. Ana stormed off when the cops tried to talk to her. Father Alberto said none of the migrants trusted people with a badge. Its why one of them calling Benson for help was a rarity.
Benson had no clue how the mystery woman got her number. It wasn’t until Sofia was revealed to be Detective Maria Recinos that Benson put it together. Maria became a cop because of Benson. Benson saved her life when she was a child. Maria’s cousin had sold her to a pedophile when he snuck her into the country. She was living in a basement. She was being hurt and she managed to get a call out to 911. Benson took the call. Benson searched the city for her. She found out Maria had been buried alive and it was Benson that dug her out with her own hands to get her to safety. The two of them reconnected many years later when Benson learned Maria became a cop.
It was because of their relationship that Maria knew that Benson could be trusted. Benson saved her. She thought she could save women like Ana too. Maria was investigating a man that claimed he could help undocumented migrant women gets visas and it was a ruse to lure them into a trap. The guy sexually assaulted the women. He knew they couldn’t report it. They couldn’t trust cops. They didn’t want to get deported and so this man has continued hurting women for a while now. He hurt Ana. Maria was getting Ana’s story when Ana gave her the first credible lead.
Ana told Maria about a warehouse where the crime took place. Maria didn’t call it in. She didn’t get backup. She knew that her boss was trying to pull her from the case and she wanted to stay on. She was a rookie. She wanted to prove herself. She wasn’t prepared for the monster she met. The trafficker she was looking for and the man that hurt Ana were two different people. The trafficker abducted the migrant women to force them to act as prostitutes. The cops followed Maria’s leads. And her case file.
They found her trafficker. They saved the twelve women he was holding prisoner. They also found out that he had been in Amsterdam when Rosa was murdered. He wasn’t their killer. The cops eventually figured out that Ana was the one that called Benson. The cops brought her in to be interviewed. Brady was going hard on her and so Benson asked to be left alone with Ana. She was doing her best to make Ana feel comfortable enough to talk. Ana was starting to open up when Benson left the room to get tea for Ana and returned to find Ana gone.
Ana literally disappeared from an interrogation room. Benson and Brady had an argument about it. Brady felt Benson blamed her for not catching the guy two years ago and that’s why Maria was dead. She thought Benson kicked her out of the room because she blamed her. So, when Brady assumed Benson made a mistake, she couldn’t wait to rub it in Benson’s face. They believed that Ana ran the second she could. They just didn’t understand how her attacker found her so fast because Ana was later found strangled to death.
There were signs that Maria had been sexually assaulted again. The DNA on her was a match for Miguel Pinto. He matched the description of the man fleeing the scene. He also went away for two years for rape. It would explain the gap between Rosa and Maria’s murders. The cops soon learned that Miguel couldn’t be their guy because he was in Staten Island when Ana was killed. He was being framed. And it was up the cops to find the right man this time.
THE END
