Missing on Law & Order: SVU

The SVU detectives were back on the job, after a 2-week hiatus, in “Missing”, Season 20, Episode 17 (3-14-2019). The story was a bit reminiscent of an earlier episode (“Plastic”) in this season in that a cold case involving a missing child was solved due to the investigation of another crime. The crimes were different. The “shocking twist” wasn’t.

Bailey (Violet McGraw) and her father, Griffin (Sean McDermott)

The episode opened with one guy stealing another’s parking spot. A physical fight brought the police and the spot stealer took off like a rabbit with a fox after it. When the police searched his vehicle, they found 6-year-old Bailey Shaw in the trunk and SVU got called in. At the hospital, Bailey told Olivia Benson and Amanda Rollins that she was supposed to be waiting for her daddy but she walked away with a man who gave her a candy apple. They went to his house and took a nap together. He gave her a yellow scarf and told her to call him Big Bird, but she thought that was silly. There is no evidence that Bailey was molested. Bailey’s parents are two men. Griffin Shaw is her biological father through a surrogate. Jamie Johnston adopted Bailey after she was born. Naturally, the first person they want to look at is the surrogate, Paige.

Paige claims that she was cool with giving up Bailey are shot down when the detectives see a photo of the child pop up on her phone. Her story changes to she just likes to take pictures of Bailey. She is arrested for stalking.

Meantime, an off-duty cop recognized Soren West, the guy who fled the parking lot at a bodega buying Marlboros. Rather than cooperate, West pulled out a switchblade and was holding the bodega owner hostage. Benson showed up and single-handedly took West down by distracting him over some Oreos and aspirin. At the station, West insisted that he is “way too stupid to kidnap someone,” was just a lowlife car thief who had the bad luck to steal a car with a kid in the trunk. Bailey cannot identify Soren as the man who kidnapped her, but he had two warrants for possession to answer for and they tacked on auto theft and assaulting a police officer. Paige had nothing to do with the kidnapping either but they spotted a man in the background with a yellow scarf in one of Paige’s photos.

Fin and Carisi find out the man is Emerson Mauer at a puppet theater where he applied for a job and filled out an application. At his home, Emerson’s mom Rowan invites the detectives in to wait till he gets home. When he does, he is arrested. Emerson tries to pin the kidnapping on the car thief but he never reported that the car was stolen so it doesn’t look good. (That also means that Soren West will skate on the auto theft charge). Stone thinks he can get an indictment but there’s not enough for a conviction. He can’t even get Benson a search warrant– she needs to get him “one thing that’s not circumstantial” to get that. That was rather comical, because they didn’t have anything that wasn’t circumstantial in that “Plastic” case and got a search warrant anyhow.

Benson, Bailey and Pablo the Giraffe

Bailey identifies a photo of Emerson but her daddies refuse to let her testify regardless of whatever future threat Emerson may pose to other innocent children. Benson, however, provides Stone with an affidavit that Bailey identified Emerson and voila! They get a search warrant.

At the Mauer home, they turn up a child’s tee shirt and Carisi also notices that there are two different types of grass out in the backyard. One is fescue but a 3 x 5 area is Kentucky bluegrass. They get a crew in to dig up the spot and find a child’s skull. Later, they learn that the tee shirt belonged to Kevin Brown, a 6-year-old boy who went missing from Forest Park in 2002. They assume the skull will be Kevin’s too once the lab is done running tests.

While they are waiting for that, they offer Rowan Mauer immunity from being charged as an accomplice in Bailey’s kidnapping if she will testify against Emerson and she does. After that, while Amanda Rollins is studying the photos of the Mauer family, she notices that Rowan and her husband both have brown eyes but Emerson’s eyes are blue. The lab results come back. The skull is a 99% match to Rowan as the mother. They realize that the skull belonged to Emerson Mauer and the man they have locked up is really Kevin Brown. (And we realize that the Kentucky bluegrass never spread outside that 3 x 5 spot in some 17 years!)

Chloe Webb as Rowan Mauer

Now Rowan Mauer’s deal is off and she has to tell them the truth about how her son died. In a drunken fight, her husband pushed her as they argued on the second floor landing. Emerson was behind her and was knocked down the stairs. His neck was broken. She took Kevin Brown to replace him because she thought he was a neglected child. In reality, his mother was dying of Hodgkin’s Disease and all this time, his sister, Diane, who was 10 at the time thought her brother was dead and blamed herself.

Jim Schubin as Emerson Mauer

In Benson’s eyes, Emerson/Kevin is now a victim and she goes to the jail to fill him in on his true identity and says they will help him. He becomes highly distraught and refuses to believe it and kicks her out. Diane got to watch the whole thing. Benson told her that he will come around but Diane does not believe it. She squarely faced the fact that she does not know this man at all and there’s not going to be a happy ending. “We’re people,” she told Benson, “We’re not a broken vase you can put together with a little Krazy Glue,” and left the building crying. And that was the end of the show.

What would happen after that? Rowan is the only one that will get locked up for kidnapping since Stone can’t win the case against Emerson/Kevin without Bailey’s testimony. So they will probably have to offer Rowan another deal for a lighter sentence to testify against Emerson/Kevin. We can’t have him running around loose, now can we?

Selected Cast of Facing Demons:
Mariska Hargitay – Olivia Benson
Kelli Giddish – Amanda Rollins
Ice-T – Odafin Tutuola
Peter Scanavino – Dominick “Sonny” Carisi
Philip Winchester – Peter Stone
Violet McGraw – Bailey Shaw
Sean McDermott – Griffin Shaw
Ryan Castro – Jamie Johnston
Amanda Leigh Cobb – Paige Black
Brian Sheppard – Soren West
Anton Obeid – Bodega Owner
Jim Schubin – Emerson Mauer
Chloe Webb – Rowan Mauer
Alison McCartan – Diane Brown