TRUE
STORIES OF LAW & ORDER
Introduction
Chapter
1
Law & Order : "Hands Free."
An eccentric cross-dresser is accused of murdering three people,
one of whom was his wife.
True Story: Acquitted of murdering a neighbor,
transvestite Robert Durst remains a suspect in his wife's disappearance.
Chapter
2
Law & Order : "Purple Heart."
The wife of a war veteran hires a hit man to kill her husband.
True Story: Weeks after returning from combat duty
in the Gulf War, Anthony Riggs was killed in a life-insurance scheme
hatched by his wife and brother in law.
Chapter
3
Law & Order : "Forgiveness."
A well-meaning but misguided priest comes to the aid of a poor college
student accused of murdering his wealthy girlfriend.
True Story: Bonnie Garland, a student
at Yale University, was murdered in her Scarsdale home by fellow
student and ex-boyfriend Richard Herrin; the Catholic church spoke
out in Herrin's defense.
Chapter
4
Law & Order : "Thin Ice."
Sports Rage is offered up as a defense in the murder of a hockey
coach.
True Story: Hockey dad Thomas Junta beats Michael
Costin to death after their kids' practice game in Massachusetts.
Chapter
5
Law & Order : "Genius." The murder
of a taxi driver is linked to a famous author and the brilliant
ex-con he has taken under his wing.
True Story: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman
Mailer helped get Jack Abbott, a convict with literary promise,
paroled. Six weeks later, Abbott killed a man and was sent back
to prison.
Chapter
6
Law & Order : "Remand." Neighbors
look on as a woman is viciously attacked on the street. Years later,
the woman must relive her ordeal when new questions surface about
the guilt of her rapist.
True Story: Kitty Genovese was repeatedly stabbed
on a street in a Queens, NY, neighborhood. No one called the police
until after she had been killed.
Chapter
7
Law & Order: "Killerz." A sweet-faced
preteen and her slow-witted friend kill a little boy.
True Story: Two British ten-year-olds were charged
with the abduction and murder of two-year-old James Bulger in Liverpool.
Chapter
8
Law & Order : "Privilege." The prime
suspect in a brutal murder argues his innocence based on the fact
that he was in an alcoholic blackout while committing the crime.
True Story: The murder of a married couple went
unsolved for four years until Paul Cox confessed to the crime during
an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
Chapter
9
Law & Order: "Star Struck." A soap
opera star is attacked and left for dead by an obsessed fan.
True Story: Hollywood starlet Rebecca Schaeffer
is murdered outside her home by a fan who had been stalking her
for several years.
Chapter
10
Law & Order : "Subterranean Homeboy Blues."
A white former ballerina is charged with shooting three black teenagers
on the subway.
True Story: On a winter day in 1984, Bernie Goetz,
a white man, shot four black teenagers when they approached him
on the subway demanding money. Was it self defense or vigilantism?
Chapter
11
Law & Order: "Bad Girl." A police
officer is stabbed to death in the park by a killer who finds religion
after she's apprehended.
True Story: Death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker
underwent a religious transformation and lobbied to have her death
sentence commuted. Despite the support of Newt Gingrich and Pat
Roberston, she was executed in 1998.
Chapter
12
Law & Order : "Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die."
A woman dies at the hands of a privileged preppie with a penchant
for rough sex.
True Story: Robert Chambers strangled Jennifer
Levin in New York City's Central Park in what the press quickly
dubbed “The Preppie Murder.”
Chapter
13
Law & Order: "Hate." The leader of a Neo-Nazi
organization is charged for a murder his members committed.
True Story: Skinhead leader Thomas Metzger was
tried for the slaying of Ethiopian immigrant Mulageta Sera, even
though he wasn't present during the murder.
Chapter
14
Law & Order: "Born Again." A young girl is
killed during an unconventional psychological treatment session.
True Story: Candace Newmaker, a ten-year-old Colorado
girl, was smothered to death during a rebirthing session with her
therapists.
Chapter
15
Law & Order: "Everybody Loves Raimondos."
Two men are executed in a trendy Italian restaurant after someone
insults a patron as she's singing.
True Story: Mafia wise guy Louis “Louie Lump”
Barone, a regular at the exclusive Harlem eatery Rao's, shot and
killed a fellow patron for insulting him.
Chapter
16
Law & Order: "Disciple." An exorcism
performed on a troubled teen causes the young girl's death.
True Story: In Milwaukee, eight-year-old Terrance
Cottrell was smothered during a church exorcism intended to cure
his autism.
Chapter
17
Law & Order: "In Memory." The repressed memory
of an emotionally fragile woman holds the key to a thirty-one-year-old
murder.
True Story: Californian George Franklin was tried
and convicted of the murder of an eight-year-old girl based on his
daughter's recovered memory of the crime.
Chapter
18
Law & Order: "Brother's Keeper."
A gangster is the number one suspect in the murder of a businessman,
but the FBI stymies the cops' investigation.
True Story: Whitey Bulger, head of Boston's Winter
Hill Gang, spent decades murdering, robbing and extorting his neighbors
at will, thanks an old neighbor in the FBI.
Chapter
19
Law & Order: "Thrill." Two punks
commit a random murder, leaving ADA Jack McCoy searching for a motive.
True Story: New Jersey teens Thomas Kosovich and
Jason Vreeland ambushed and killed a pizza delivery man for the
“thrill” of it.
Chapter
20
Law & Order: "Return." A young Jewish man
flees to Israel to avoid a murder prosecution.
True Story: The Israeli government refused to extradite
Samuel Sheinbein, an American teenager charged with murder in Maryland.
Chapter
21
Law & Order: "Who Let the Dogs Out."
A pit bull bred to be aggressive kills a woman and her dog in the
park.
True Story: Diane Whipple, a popular lacrosse coach,
was mauled to death by her neighbor's dogs in San Francisco.
Chapter
22
Law & Order: "Heaven." A fire in a Dominican
night club leaves dozens of patrons dead.
True Story: Cuban boatlift refugee Julio Gonzalez
committed the worst mass murder in American history when he set
fire to the Happy Land night club in the Bronx, killing 87 people.
Chapter
23
Law & Order: "The Myth of Fingerprints."
Shoddy forensic science leads a homicide to be wrongly classified
as a suicide.
True Story: Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce
Gilchrist's faulty forensic work sent innocent men and women to
prison—and cost one man his life.
Chapter
24
Law & Order: "Gunshow." An unbalanced
young man with a grudge against women goes on a shooting spree in
Central Park.
True Story: Misogynist Marc Lépine killed
fourteen women in an anti-feminist tear through a Canadian engineering
school armed with a semi-automatic rifle.
Chapter
25
Law & Order: "Absentia." A witness
to a robbery turns out to be a fugitive running from a twenty-year-old
murder conviction.
True Story: Sixties radical Ira “Unicorn”
Einhorn fled the country after police discovered his girlfriend's
badly decomposed body inside a trunk in his closet.
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