Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, January 15, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below.
In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 26 episode 9 “First Light,” as per the NBC synopsis, “An abhorrent web of lies and betrayal is uncovered when a woman is confronted with video of a night she can’t remember.
Carisi struggles to move on from his ordeal when the suspect changes his plea.”
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In tonight’s Law & Order SVU episode, ADA Carisi was back at work. He took some time off. He was a victim of a traumatic event. He got caught up in a robbery/homicide. His friend died He almost died. He needed time to make peace with the world and he’s done just that. He didn’t just return to work. He even went back to the bodega and he tried to act like nothing happened.
Only the bodega has experienced some changes. They have a self-serve on the coffee. They also have a bullet proof glass surrounding the cashier. It wasn’t the old place that Carisi loved. He was considering finding a new place and the hits kept coming.
The young man that took part in the rape and robbery was now pleading not guilty. He wanted a plea deal that gives him a future out of prison. Carisi didn’t think that was fair.
He tried to advocate against it and his own boss ignored him. District Attorney Baxter wants to make a deal. Carisi simply has to accept that. He was already in a bad mood when SVU caught a weird case. There was a woman that came in with her husband. They were both sent a video of her having sex with a stranger.
Katharine Vernon was claiming she doesn’t remember that event at all. She said she was happily married to her husband. They slept in different rooms because he was a light sleeper, but this video created a lot of questions.
She was clearly awake in the video. She was responding to the man she slept with. He also let himself into her home without a key. Someone left that door open for him. If it wasn’t Katharine, then who? Katharine was claiming to have no knowledge of the whole thing. Her husband said he might have been out that night. He wasn’t sure.
The video only focused on the man. It was apparently taken by a private investigator. The man in the video was married. His name is Tommy Gallagher. His wife suspected he was cheating and so she hired the PI to follow him around.
The guy got a video of the husband cheating with Katharine. He sent it to the wife. She then sent the video to both Katharine and her husband. She also spray-painted the word “Whore” on their garage door. Tommy’s missus thought Katharine was actively cheating with her husband.
Tommy claimed the same. He admitted to meeting Katharine on an online platform called “Roommate syndrome”. It was about bored married couples looking for fun. Tommy thought he’s been messaging Katharine this whole time.
He thought she left the door open for him. It turns out it wasn’t her behind the screen name. The messages were all sent on the home computer when Katharine was at work. The only other person that could send the messages was Katharine’s husband, Harris Vernon.
Harris seemed like a supportive husband. He went with his wife to file a police report. He painted over the word “whore” on his garage door. It seemed like he was doing everything to put his wife at ease.
She was so sure of him that she didn’t even want to listen to the cops or their theories about him. She told them that they were wrong. Her husband loves her. She didn’t think he would share her with other people. She was so sure that she kicked the cops out of her house. She told them to come back with a warrant and she wouldn’t talk to them again without her lawyer.
The cops could tell she was being gaslit. They looked into who else her husband was talking to. He spoke to several guys before he could get Tommy to come to the house. Before he used the website, he used the school where he worked.
He was a professor. He used his college students to get off. He drugged his wife. He invited his students to have sex with her while he watches. It was the watching that got him off. Which means he must have known about Tommy. Where was he watching when Tommy was at the house?
It was the student’s confession that they slept with her that got Katherine to see her husband as he was. She filed a complaint. Her husband was arrested. Tommy was arrested. Katharine’s sleeping pills were tested.
They were double the correct dosage. She was drugged by her husband because that was the only way he could get her to do what he wanted. He was a sick man. Truly sick! He didn’t have the decency to plead guilty. He instead dragged up their whole story in court. He made his wife look crazy.
Carisi was also suffering flashbacks at that time. He had an anxiety attack in court. He didn’t defend Katharine like he should have and Baxter found out about it. He asked Carisi if he wanted to get taken off the case.
Carisi was seriously considering walking away when Captain Benson talked him out of it. She reminded him that he came too far to become a lawyer to give up now. Carisi needed to hear that. It reminded him of his priorities. He reached out to Annette Gallagher and Tommy. Tommy knew Katharine was drugged. He said Harris Vernon was in the bedroom watching them have sex.
Tommy agreed to a plea deal. Carisi then used Tommy to force Harris to take fifteen years. Katharine was now free of both men. And she said a rarity in this world, she got justice.
THE END!
