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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 4 Episodes
Season 4 Episode Guide
25 Episodes 2002 - 2003
Episode 1
Chameleon
Fri, Sep 27, 200242 mins
Benson and Stabler investigate the death of a prostitute but then find their main suspect has in turn been killed. Is the woman who shot him acting in self-defense or is she a murderer?
Episode 2
Deception
Fri, Oct 4, 200244 mins
A school reports to SVU about a 5-year-old girl drawing distressing pictures of her family. The girl tells Benson mommy reads her stepbrother stories with the doors closed "all the time", and that she once saw stepbrother and mommy "playing together" naked in bed. The girl also tells Benson that mommy, a widely known actress, loves her stepbrother more than her. Not long after a heated public exchange between mommy and daddy witnessed by Benson and Stabler, daddy is found dead on the floor in his home, and a bloody baseball bat is found under the stepbrother's bed. While out on bail, stepbrother marries stepmother during a quick trip to Virginia, where marriage at age 17 is legal with no waiting period for a license and no blood tests are required. After the detectives discover the marriage and get bail revoked, they find first that stepmother is three months pregnant, and then that she's in a hospital due to having been raped.
Episode 3
Vulnerable
Fri, Oct 11, 200242 mins
A senile elderly lady is found wandering inside in a home that she was familiar with as a child. Detectives realize that she has been suffering abuse, when cigarette burns are discovered all over her frail body. Following the trail from her greedy, neglectful son, to the expensive nursing home he pulled her out of, they discover the man they believe was abusing her. During the course of their investigation, however, Benson and Stabler stumble across an even more sinister criminal committing even more heinous, previously undetected crimes against the elderly.
Episode 4
Lust
Fri, Oct 18, 200243 mins
A dog finds an unrecognizable older lady's body in a park, with a bloody knife and bloody rain poncho nearby, plus doggy treats and an empty leash. Detectives locate the dog at a nearby vet, cleaned by the vet of trace evidence, but with the victim's bloody shoe. A lift in the shoe leads to identification of the victim, a health care worker whose duties included identification of the sources of patients' HIV infections. Eventually detectives suspect the victim's lawyer husband, who refuses to give a DNA sample, but donated at the blood bank, which informs that he was an Ecstasy and Viagra user.
Episode 5
Disappearing Acts
Fri, Oct 25, 200242 mins
Two executives find signs of a struggle in their conference room, and on the floor of an adjacent room, a naked, bound and gagged co-worker who had been raped. While in the hospital for treatment, feds arrest the victim for assorted financial crimes before Benson and Stabler can get her statement. Trace evidence shows the perp suffers from probably untreated diabetes, and raped at least two other women. The detectives identify a suspect, but find it hard to locate him because he's in the fed's witness protection program. The suspect's bookie produces a lead, which ends when the detectives encounter the business ends of the guns of two feds where a U. S. Marshall and the federal witness had just been killed.
Episode 6
Angels
Fri, Nov 1, 200243 mins
The team is investigating the brutalized corpse of a nine year-old boy found in the luggage compartment of a city bus and are surprised to find another boy who is hiding out there. It seems that the two boys are linked. The boys are from Guatemala, the corpse is named Jose and the boy that was hiding is named Ernesto. They are part of an adoption program put together by a string of pedophiles who brings boys in from other countries, adopt them, and sell them as prostitutes. When one of the apparently ring leaders turns up dead, there are all kind of questions of who did it and why. Did Ernesto do it to protect Jose? This exposes the wider problem of this company, it's members, and how freely it is able to falsify and manipulate the system in order to make money from these boys.
Episode 7
Dolls
Fri, Nov 8, 200242 mins
When the decomposing body of a sexually molested five-year-old girl is discovered, Detectives Benson and Stabler's investigation leads them to the painful reality that they are searching for a serial pedophile as they race to save the life of his latest victim. As the mother of the missing girl frantically awaits news of her daughter's whereabouts, she must reconcile with the fact that her own recent bout with addiction may have played a part in her daughter's fate.
Episode 8
Waste
Fri, Nov 15, 200243 mins
The SVU team is put on the case of a woman who has been in a coma for 14 months and is found to be 7 weeks pregnant. After going though many suspects, they focus on the patient's doctor. They discover that he is impregnating comatose female patients with a rich donor's sperm in order to get embryonic stem cells that are biologically compatible. The problem for the ADA is that laws are not on her side in prosecuting such crimes.
Episode 9
Juvenile
Fri, Nov 22, 200242 mins
A drug raid on an apartment building turns into a murder investigation, when the intended suspect is found brutally stabbed; there is evidence she had been raped. The detectives' investigation eventually leads to two junior high-aged boys, 12-year-old Zachary Connors and 14-year-old Jeremy Brice. Zachary is tried in juvenile court, but a dilemma arises when the district attorney wants Jeremy tried as an adult, even though it is apparent Jeremy is mentally "slow" and despite evidence showing he may not have known the seriousness of his actions. In court, Jeremy is severely grilled and betrayed by Zachary (he insists that Jeremy was fully responsible and fully carried out the crimes).
Episode 10
Resilience
Fri, Dec 6, 200243 mins
The attempted suicide of a 15-year-old girl leads to her family, promiscuity, and her regression to a child.
Episode 11
Damaged
Fri, Jan 10, 200342 mins
A 6-year-old girl critically injured (and subsequently dies) in an apparent robbery gone bad tests positive for a sexually transmitted disease, putting the detectives on the trail of the family and then the store clerk, who is also the son of a prominent attorney and had appeared to foil the crime. When evidence turns up that the little girl's older sister was dating the alleged sexual predator, Cabot has to work some legal magic to eradicate the deal made with the older sister for testimony.
Episode 12
Risk
Fri, Jan 17, 200341 mins
When cans of baby formula are found to be filled with cocaine, Detective Elliot Stabler, with the help of Detective Olivia Benson and the rest of SVU, goes undercover to bust open the world of corporate drug trafficking.
Episode 13
Rotten
Fri, Jan 24, 200341 mins
After a prison inmate is found dead shortly after his arrival in his cell, an SVU investigation begins because his death was caused by sodomy... but it occurred before he arrived in prison. Benson and Tutuola uncover more than merely a single case of brutality. They discover a further conspiracy.
Episode 14
Mercy
Fri, Jan 31, 200342 mins
When the body of a baby girl is found inside a cooler, the detectives need to investigate just who she is and how she got there. They soon learn that the little girl had a genetic disorder known as Tay-Sachs disease, and that her name is Sarah Brown, and she is the only daughter of Andrea and Daniel Brown. When Andrea admits to having killed her daughter, Alex has to put aside her own feelings of sympathy to prosecute Andrea Brown for the murder of her daughter.
Episode 15
Pandora
Fri, Feb 7, 200342 mins
The brutal rape and subsequent death of a female motorist turns out to be an informant for the FBI acting as a cyber vigilante for catching on-line pedophiles to capture the predators. Stabler, along with the homicide detective who found the victim's husband murdered, follow the trail of evidence for the latest victim she had been tracking, leading them to the US Attorney's Office and a trip to Prague for Stabler to assist the Czech authorities when they find the kidnapped girl.
Episode 16
Tortured
Fri, Feb 14, 200342 mins
A Tibetan woman who was tortured in her home country is found murdered, with her foot missing, and after an exhaustive search of potential suspects, the killer is a victim of torture himself.
Episode 17
Privilege
Fri, Feb 21, 200343 mins
Detectives Benson and Stabler are called to a crime scene--a young woman dressed in a maid's uniform has apparently committed suicide. But there's lots of sexually-related bruising so they question whether she was pushed and if she was raped.
Episode 18
Desperate
Fri, Mar 14, 200343 mins
A boy is found with a dead woman who is assumed to be his mother. Later it is learned that the woman is not his mother, but she is married to the boy's father. They learn that the man is rumored to be abusive towards his wife and was also the same with his first wife, the boy's mother, who vanished a few years ago. But it seems like the man is friends with the police where he lives so they didn't really pursue the allegations. Stabler later learns that the boy's mother was taken away by an underground who helps abused women escape their abusers. Stabler finds the woman and tells her about her son, so she decides to return and face her husband.
Episode 19
Appearances
Fri, Mar 28, 200342 mins
A nine-year-old child's asphyxiated body is found in a suitcase on a bus, with evidence of having been in the Everglades. The coroner found she had had a quality nose job, and been raped. Benson and Stabler find she was a regular beauty pageant contestant. A suspect's computer is found with a juvenile kidnap, rape, and murder how-to, apparently perfectly legal, because it was created using legal-age models whose images were manipulated by software to make them look much younger.
Episode 20
Dominance
Fri, Apr 4, 200342 mins
A quadruple homicide with sexual overtones is just the start of an intense rampage of killings that brings a homicide detective into the mix. As the entire squad races against time to prevent further victims, the evidence leads Tutuola and Deuthorn to a building superintendent, his two sons, and a cross to bear.
Episode 21
Fallacy
Fri, Apr 18, 200342 mins
At a party, a young woman is assaulted in the bathroom, and her assailant ends up dead. The girl leaves the ambulance before SVU can talk to her. Is this a case of self-defence, or something far more complex?
Episode 22
Futility
Fri, Apr 25, 200341 mins
After arresting a man accused of raping several neighborhood women, Detectives Benson and Stabler attempt to obtain an indictment for their suspect with the help of a key eyewitness--his last victim. However, the suspect's decision to handle his own defense casts some doubt over the trial's outcome as he proves to be a formidable opponent for ADA Cabot.
Episode 23
Grief
Fri, May 2, 200342 mins
The death of a waitress is ruled as a suicide. However, the girl's disturbed father takes justice into his own hands when the investigation reveals that his daughter suffered from depression, due to her boss sexually abusing her.
Episode 24
Perfect
Fri, May 9, 200343 mins
After exchanging shots with armed-robbery suspects fleeing down a dark alley, the police discover a dead fourteen year old black female with a bullet in her skull. Autopsy reveals that she was dead hours before being accidentally shot. This case, which started out weird, becomes weirder at every turn. The dead girl, Samantha, who died from dehydration-starvation, was covered in filth and cockroach bites, but had nice ribbons in her hair, covered with a nice blanket, wearing a necklace sporting an infinity symbol worth almost a grand, and pregnant using a fertilization process that caused her to release many eggs at one time. Using the custom-made jewelry, SVU Detectives back-trace it to a Doctor Lang, and his non-profit organization Lang-Foy (Fountain of Youth). Several other teen-age runaways are discovered along with a chilling secret about Dr. Lang, his employees, and his organization.
Episode 25
Soulless
Fri, May 16, 200342 mins
A young woman is taken to hospital unconscious, and apparently the victim of rape. However, by the time that Benson gets to speak to her, she says that she wasn't raped. Shortly after, the victim is abducted from the hospital. SVU's search for her leads them through New York's club-land and the children of wealthy families.
