Annihilated

[uh-nahy-uh-leyt]

"Annihilated" is an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. It originally aired on May 8, 2007.

Episode recap

An insurance secretary named Cynthia Yellin is found dead in her home as a victim of a rape-homicide, and Dr. Warner confirms that she was killed via subluxation. Benson and Stabler learn that she was engaged yet she has no photos of her fiancé; her parents state that this is because her fiancé, Steven Dashal, is in the CIA, but her mother did manage to snap a picture of him. After a CIA office employee declines to reveal information about Dashal, the detectives go to Stabler's friend Mel Cantor for help. After Cantor's direction to an informant doesn't provide any answers, Munch discovers that Dashal's cell phone has been reloaded from airtime from the same convenience store every Monday.

A convenience store clerk recognizes Dashal from the photo and directs Benson and Stabler to his house, where he is living as Malcolm Royce along with his family. During an interview, Benson tells Malcolm that Cynthia is dead; Malcolm later says that he loves Cynthia and his wife, Lindsay. He is initially alibied from Cynthia's murder because he was at a restaurant the night she was killed, but then Fin reports that Malcolm’s car made a round-trip to Manhattan that night. Malcolm states that Lindsay was driving the car that night but that she didn’t know about the affair.

Lindsay says that she drove into Manhattan to take a break from Staten Island and her home life; later, her neighbor says that Lindsay told her that she was going to "make Malcolm pay" for having the affair. Benson and Stabler return to the house later that night and find Lindsay and all the children dead and Malcolm near death; a gun is by Lindsay's hand. Stabler then checks on his own children to make sure they are all right. Then Kathy asks him to stay the night. And they have sexual intercourse. Afterwards, O'Halloran reveals that Malcolm shot everyone himself, and Stabler goes back to the hospital and stops Malcolm from jumping off the roof before arresting him.

After Stabler tells Malcolm about the forensic proof that Malcolm's gunshot wound was self-inflicted, Malcolm says that he shot himself only after Lindsay shot the kids, and that he put the gun near Lindsay because suicide is a sin under his religion. After a further interrogation, he says that he keeps his gun in a lockbox and later admits that he killed Lindsay after she killed the kids, but he insists that he didn't kill Cynthia. O'Halloran then shows Cragen and Novak that Malcolm's fingerprints were found on the pages in a book about subluxation as well as on the lockbox, but Lindsay's were not. Stabler nearly subluxes Malcolm himself until Malcolm confesses to killing everyone; then Stabler walks out of the interrogation room in a daze.