Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, May 8, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below.
In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 26 episode 21 “Aperture,” as per the NBC synopsis, “When an assault at gunpoint is witnessed through a neighboring window, the squad scrambles to locate the victim to confirm she’s safe. A threat to extort the victim’s family leads to a shocking suspect.”
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In tonight’s Law & Order SVU episode, there was a married couple checking out apartments. The husband hated the place from the start. He thought it wasn’t anything spectacular. He said as much to the realtor. His wife still wanted to look around and so the husband chose to use the telescope in the living room.
He looked into the windows of the building across the street. He spotted what he thought was a sexual assault. He also noticed that the man led the young woman away by gunpoint and so the eyewitness called 911. Some didn’t believe his version of events.
Finn for instance, thought it was too much of a coincidence. He spoke with the eyewitness. The man was no criminal or peeping tom. He told Finn that they weren’t actually looking for a new place.
They just like to look at the apartments and dream about being able to afford a place like it. His whole shtick earlier with the realtor was a ruse. It was their way of getting out of having to buy the place. Captain Benson also said that rapes were up. It was happening more frequently and at every location nowadays.
Their witness wasn’t connected to the case. They were looking for someone with experience. The guy came with a bag of restraints and a camera. Both of which he set up before the assault.
The assault was recorded. He might sell it or he might keep it for personal use. There were plenty of sick people in the world. Only the cops got a video from the elevator of their gunman taking two kids hostage. He forced them into the apartment upstairs. The same apartment that was being sublet and so the actual owner had no idea who was staying there. He said the website handled everything.
The cops were able to use facial recognition on the video from the elevator. The woman that was assaulted was barely an adult. Josephine DeWinn was about to graduate from high school.
She had a bright future ahead of her and she didn’t report her rape. Nor did she mention that her stepbrother was also there. Josie said she wanted to just move on. She didn’t want to be known for what happened, but the cops couldn’t let it go. Her stepbrother was also seventeen. They had to talk to him. They knew that Atlas could have been assaulted as well.
The two haven’t said anything or reported it because the assailant also threatened their family. Josie’s dad was CEO of his own company. Atlas’s mother was a lawyer at a top firm.
The parents met when the kids were toddlers. They grew up together. They go to the same school. They considered each other siblings. Gordon DeWinn got along well with his ex. Natalie DeWinn was about to stop alimony payments to hers. She thought her ex might be an issue. The parents had to be informed about the incident because Atlas was underage.
The couple had no clue anything was wrong. They were freaking out when they were informed that their children were held at gunpoint. They freely went down to the station.
They brought Atlas with them. Atlas mentioned that he tried to protect his sister. He was kept in the bathroom. He could hear Josie’s cries through the door and that wasn’t true. Someone later sent a video to Natalie. The video showed that the stepsiblings were forced at gunpoint to rape each other. It’s why they didn’t want to report it.
They were so ashamed. They both thought they should have been able to protect each other. Josie even offered to sleep with the gunmen if he just let Atlas go and the guy wouldn’t take the offer. This was personal. The perp also sent a video to Natalie. She was the target of their anger. Not Gordon.
The perp wanted them to know that he has a video of what he forced their children to do. It was a threat. The cops stayed at the DeWinn home. They waited for further contact and there was contact. The person behind all of this wanted five million dollars or they said they were going to post the video online. The cops initially believed that Natalie’s ex was involved.
His name is Derek Rhodes. He lived in the Bahamas. He was questioned about inappropriate photos of a minor and those photos were in fact of Josie. She was in the bikini in all of them.
Derek flew back into New York when he heard that his son had been harmed. The cops informed him of what happened. They questioned him like a suspect and so he told them the truth. He said the phone that had the photos wasn’t his. It was Atlas’s. Atlas usually visited his father every summer. He asked if Josie could join one year and he broke his phone on the trip.
It didn’t matter to Atlas. He instantly bought a new one with his mom’s credit card. His dad tried to do the right thing and he brought Atlas’s phone to a store where they could fix it.
The store owner found the photos. Derek got arrested. He was released because the photos weren’t illegal. It was just bikini shots. It was icky not illegal. The cops tried talking to Josie. They asked her if she got a bad vibe from Derek on the trip or if he took photos of her. She said nothing like that happened. She thought Derek was cool.
Josie also told her brother what the cops told her. Atlas went to his father’s hotel with a bat. He was beating him when the cops came and stopped him from killing his father. Josie blamed herself.
She said that Atlas was always so protective of her. He sits at her side every lunch to keep boys in line. Or so he claimed. His room was also checked. He has plenty of other photos of Josie. They weren’t nude photos. It was mostly of her doing everyday things. Like painting her toenails. The photos just showed that Atlas doesn’t see her as a sister.
Atlas was obsessed with Josie. He only attacked his father because he thought his father had also been obsessed with Josie. Then it turned into something else. Atlas tried to blame the assault on his dad.
He was willing to send his own father to prison. Only they found the man that held the kids at gunpoint. He was hired by Atlas to do so. They met through Rainbow Six. His buddy was paid two grand to do what he did and he didn’t think was enough and so he tried to get five million. And that ruined Atlas’s plan.
Atlas blamed his mother. His mother was so proud of Josie. Josie was beautiful and intelligent. She was graduating at the top of her class. She was attending Stanford in the fall.
Atlas didn’t want her to leave him. He said they were meant to be together. He said that she’d change if she left. She’d meet someone else and so he tried to stop it. He tried to traumatized her to the point that he ruined her bright future. And in doing so he ruined his family.
Natalie was siding with Atlas. She was going to use everything in her bank account to defend him. Gordon refused to pay for Atlas’s defense attorney and Josie was left heartbroken. Not only did she lose a mom, but she lost a brother too because of this.
THE END!
