Two people are found in Riverside Park in a compromised position. When the investigation determines one of the victims was an animal rights officer, detectives suspect a sociopathic teenager.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Harry was born addicted to cocaine, and his mother took him to the strip club she worked at when he was a boy.
- Artistic License – Law Enforcement: The "MFPCA" does not exist; in Real Life, the NYPD handles animal abuse cases with outreach assistance from the ASPCA and other NGOs.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Harry Baker does this and is considered to be a potential future serial killer.
- Chain of Harm: Discussed. Dad beats mom, mom beats the kid, kid takes it out on the only one weaker than the him...the pet. This one of the reasons to look into animal abuse cases. The fact that Harry does not fit this pattern is taken as evidence of his sociopathy.
- Consulting a Convicted Killer: Rather improbably, Harry ends up filling this role in the story, cryptically helping the SVU team secure the evidence they need to convict the real killer. As he is a free man at the time (having already served his "sentence" - being a juvie who committed a misdemeanor) he has no obvious incentive or motivation to do this, but it's implied that he was (in his own skewed, sociopathic way) somewhat fond of the victim.
- Harmful to Minors: Harry's mother would frequently have men over to have sex with while Harry was in the house...with only a bead curtain separating his room from them. She genuinely doesn't see a problem with this.
- If I Can't Have You…: Harry says this nearly verbatim to another teenager he becomes obsessed with.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: Harry Baker isn't actually the killer, despite looking like he's guilty.
- Red Herring: Deliberately so. The perp positioned the victims to make it look like they were having sex to lead detectives to believe that they knew each other when they were complete strangers.
- The Sociopath: Harry Baker, who was convicted of animal abuse, one of the three factors of the infamous "triad of sociopathy". The detectives eventually learn he also started fires, often in the commission of his animal abuse, which is another of the factors. (It is never revealed whether he also exhibited the third, enuresis or bed-wetting. They ask his mother who does not answer, but her disturbed reaction suggests that he does.) Multiple clinical psychologists, including one who is treating Harry (as part of a condition of his sentence for animal abuse) explicitly describe him as a sociopath.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Harry Baker is obsessed with death, crime, and tortures animals.
