Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2003)

A black girl is found dead during a shooting. As this belongs to their area of competence, the police call the Special Victims Unit.

In fact, the girl has been bashed and has burns on her arms. According to the police officer who was the first to be on the scene of the crime she has been abused and eventually murdered.

After consulting the coroner, police officers Stabler and Benson come to the conclusion that the victim was left in the street after being held in captivity somewhere. The fact that she has been wrapped in a blanket is a clear evidence . She has been abandoned by someone who loved her.

She had already been reportered missing in Philadelphia eight months before and she hadn't been found ever since.

Stabler and Benson meet the parents and show them Samantha's personal belongings, which are not identified, particularly a one-million-dollar platinum pendant with the symbol of infinity.

Looking at some engravings on the piece of jewellery the policemen manage to trace the goldsmith who made it; the man denies knowing Samantha, and claims that Garrett Lang has designed the object personally and commissioned 100 pieces which are worth about 80000 dollars.

Later the two police officers meet Lang at Lang-Foy Clinic, and he says that he usually gives the pendant – symbolizing eternal life - as a present to all his female patients. He's showed Samantha's photograph but he denies that he has ever seen her before.

Stabler and Benson explain that the girl has been found dead with that pendant around her neck and ask Doctor Lang for the patients' list. The man gets annoyed and replies that it would be illegal as well as in breach with the professional ethics.

Later at the police headquarters the policemen investigate Doctor Lang, who was previously conducting research before working as a private doctor. In one of his articles the doctor affirms that hormones can halt the ageing process.

Except for the pendant, no other connection with the girl is found.

Meanwhile, the coroner informs Stabler and Benson that the girl died as a result of a blood clot in her lungs due to dehydration. She had not taken any liquid at all for a long time.

Most bewildering is that the doctor has found twelve ova in the girl's reproductive organs, which is extremely rare for any woman. Her ovaries had been over stimulated with hormones just like in those cases where you want to cure infertility. In fact, Samantha was 8 months pregnant when she died.

The police officers ask attorney Alex to issue a warrant for Dr Lang's arrest, but the woman explains she cannot do that without evidence to support their hypotheses as they cannot prove that he knew the girl. However, the two officers point out that she was wearing Lang's necklace and that he was an expert in treating infertility.

Alex provides them with phone calls printouts and tax documents to prove that there is a connection between the doctor and his patient.

All the documents seem to be under the clinic name. There is no track of Lang's name whatsoever.

Eventually they manage to find something, i.e. a non-profit foundation in his name to support and provide information to young women at risk.

While secretly observing the girls who attend the foundation, Stable and Benson recognize Jessica, who disappeared when Samantha did, and they break into the building despite a woman's attempt to stop them.

The woman claims to be a graduated teacher and that the girls are there for study. The organization – she says – gives shelter to those girls who don't have a place to stay, offering them food, education and accommodation as well.

While putting the handcuffs on the woman, Benson sees the infinity symbol tattooed on her wrist.

Stabler has a word with the girl who had disappeared a few months ago. However, she claims that her name is not Jessica and that the house where she lives at the moment is the only one that she’s ever known.

At the police station the lawyer has come to help Ms Haggerty. The officers say that she is actually holding under-age girls who have run away from home (because they have been mistreated, she says).

However, a disagreement between children and parents cannot be considered as “abuse”.

Agent Benson asks the woman who she receives the payments from and the lawyer's answer is “from the management committee of the foundation”. The funds come from donations.

Doctor Lang is the owner of the block of flats. In fact, he has created the foundation but only contributed a small amount of money. That was all.

Miss Haggerty is showed the picture of Samantha, but she denies ever having seen her.

Meanwhile, Agent Stabler speaks to Jessica and tells her that her parents will come to collect her. The girl thinks that she should go back to Haggerty's place as she has not been kidnapped at all. On the contrary, she ran away from her parents because they did not understand her. Also Jessica denies ever having seen Samantha.

The girls who ran away from home also deny that they were kidnapped and they deny their names as well. They all want to go back to Haggerty. Brainwashing and the existence of a sect are now hypothesized: the girls all repeat exactly the same story. Perhaps only Samantha rebelled against that.

The police officers go back to the foundation villa to look for other possible young women, but there is nobody there. Someone called a remover a few hours earlier.

The girls are in a safe place waiting for their parents to take them home.

Stabler, Benson and Huang turn up at lawyer Quentin's office where they find Miss Haggerty and Doctor Lang who deny that they have ever emptied the building. Having no evidence to prove anything the two police officers have to leave.

Elliot and Olivia talk to Samantha's parents and find out that, before vanishing, she had started to spend her time with some bad people. When they noticed that her marks at school were getting low they made her take some catch up classes. Here she was supposed to “achieve her full potential”, a phrase that the two partners have already heard.

The police officers rush to the school mentioned by Samantha's parents to interrogate Miss Kindersk, who is devoted to Doctor Lang and with the infinity symbol tattooed on her wrist. The woman denies ever having seen the girls.

Stabler and Benson have found a link eventually: all of the six girls who were “kidnapped” attended the school financed by Lang. Besides, Kindersk happened to be in their respective towns of origin a few days before they disappeared.

Jessica talks to Stabler about Miss Haggerty and defines Lang as “the one who will save the world by cloning the living cells”.

The girl is pregnant with a cloned baby who will be given to parents who have lost their child.

The two agents break into the clinic where Lang is operating and they force him to stop.

The man is arrested and taken to the police station. Upon interrogation, supported by his lawyer, he says that the girls accepted to do it all spontaneously. He is accused of taking advantage of the parents' grief by promising that they will have a clone of their children if they donate money.

Cloning is not legal yet but it will be soon, says the doctor. There will not be survival but immortality.

The police officers' accusations against him are still not valid, as they need to identify a relationship with Samantha's death.

The coroner confirms that she has been killed. On her body they found miss Haggerty's saliva whereas in her womb there was a man's DNA.

The officers want to obtain a warrant to take a sample of Doctor Lang's DNA.

Stabler confides to Jessica that she has been cheated by Dr Lang. Apparently the man is the biological father of her baby. There is no cloning. The girl is shocked and confesses to feeling responsible for Samantha's death as she told Miss Haggerty that her friend wanted to report Doctor Lang to the authorities.

During the trial Jessica is interrogated and given a hard time by Lang's lawyer. The man never forced her to do anything that she did not want to do.

During his testimony Lang claims to be very close to human cloning but he still needs to perfect it. That is why he donated his sperm to the parents who waited for their clone, for them to have a child to love. He actually needed the money to carry on with his now illegal research.

He also says that other girls donated their ova spontaneously.

The court adjourns.

Lawyer Cabot asks Haggerty why she wants to help Lang after being accused by him of being responsible for what happened to the foundation.

The woman is the mother of a girl who ran away from home and never came back. By working at the foundation she could look after other girls and feel like a mother again. This was made possible by the doctor.

Stabler tells Haggerty that Lang took advantage of her grief to use the girls who loved her for his experiments.

During the trial the woman begins to tell about how Samantha was held in captivity by Lang in a basement, with no food or water. When she went to see how she was, the girl could barely move and when she tried to give her a glass of water the doctor wrenched it from her grasp.

In that very moment Lang stands up to interrupt the woman and asks her why she is betraying him that way, that insane man with his crazy ideas about the human race.

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