‘Law & Order: SVU’ Takes a Page From ‘Criminal Minds’ With Twisted Revelation in Latest Episode

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit took a surprisingly gross turn in its 501st episode Thursday night. The show took a page from the old Criminal Minds playbook when the team made a shocking discovery. SVU has done episodes centered on the deaths of sex workers before, but “They’d Already Disappeared” featured something we don’t often see on the show: mummified corpses.

The episode had the feel of a standard SVU episode, beginning with Rollins (Kelli Giddish) and the new Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano) investigated the disappearance of a sex worker. The team soon discovered that several other sex workers who looked eerily similar to the first victim had also been reported missing. While investigating, Rollins and Velasco talked to Jamal (Alfred Richard Lewis), a kid who warned them about “vampires” at a warehouse where he had seen the missing girls go.

Velasco and Rollins broke into the warehouse and were immediately met with an awful stench. As they continued going through, they made a shocking discovery. There were the mummified bodies of missing girls, all wearing clothes and sitting at a dinner table. In another room, they found the body of the girl whose disappearance started this week’s episode. The medical examiner also noted that organs were missing from the bodies.

At first, Fin (Ice-T) and Benson (Mariska Hargitay) thought they had their suspect in Country, a man who moved to New York from South Carolina and befriended the missing sex workers. However, Benson soon discovered that Country couldn’t have been the killer. Fin and Velasco spoke with Jamal outside the warehouse, and he said the “vampire” was a white man. Benson and Fin also interviewed the mother of a Connecticut woman whose body was found among the mummies. The woman’s son happened to have an incredible memory, even remembering the man’s license plate.

Rollins and Velasco found the man, Trace Lambert, who agreed to come in for questioning. His mother followed, and Benson asked Velasco to get some information from her while Fin and Rollins interviewed Lambert. Benson used the information from Trace’s mother to bring out his true feelings about women. Trace had a problem with an ex-girlfriend, and his mother thought he was terrible with women. Benson then praised the serial killer, suggesting that Trace couldn’t be the killer. This led to Trace slowly revealing his own thoughts about the killer. Trace began sharing details about the killer that hadn’t been released publicly. He even knew how the warehouse owner died. Suddenly, Trace began admitting that he killed all those girls found dead. 

“I killed them. All of them,” Trace said as he threw a picture of one of the women across the table at Benson. “You tell my mother that. You tell my mother what I did.” Benson nodded.

Later, Carisi told Benson on the phone that Trace cut a deal. He pleaded guilty to 12 homicides to avoid federal prosecutors. Fin said the FBI was still going to investigate other missing persons so Trace could face the death penalty. Meanwhile, the medical examiner continued identifying even more bodies found in the warehouse. SVU airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.