| “ | You say you see something in me? Well, I see something in you, too. You think you control? You can't. You're controlled. By your boss, by your job, by your wife, your kids. What would you be if all those controls went away? | „ |
| ~ Rickett taunting Elliot Stabler |
Gordon Rickett is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Rage". He is a serial killer and rapist of prepubescent girls who has a vendetta against Special Victims Unit detective Elliot Stabler.
He is portrayed by Matthew Modine.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Rickett was abandoned by his father as a child, leaving him in the care of his abusive, neglectful mother, who favored his half-sister. He grew up feeling cheated by life, and believing that others are conspiring against him to deprive him of the success and happiness he feels he is owed. As an adult, he is a chronic underachiever, failing even to finish high school, and is filled with rage about what he believes to be the world conspiring against him.
When his rage reaches a boiling point, he takes it out on prepubescent girls, raping and murdering them because he resents them for having the hope and potential that he never will. He also has a tendency to degrade his adult sexual partners by making them wearing pigtails during sex so they would resemble little girls, and beats them whether or not they comply.
In 1991, he murders 11-year-old Dana MacNamara after his fiancée Vanessa Sarafino breaks up with him. He is arrested by Detective Elliot Stabler, who throws him through a plate glass window while interrogating him. Rickett is tried for Dana's murder, but the jury acquits him because Stabler had found only circumstantial evidence tying him to the crime. Nevertheless, Rickett's family disowns him and he is forced to sell the bar his mother had left him in order to pay his legal fees; he blames Stabler for his misfortune, and holds a grudge against him for years afterward.
Rickett drifts arounds the country after the trial, living in Arizona, Nevada, and California. Over he years, he is suspected of two other murders and the sexual assault of a girlfriend's 12-year-old daughter, but every time he is released for lack of evidence. Finally, in 2005, he moves back to New York City, where he works as a garbage collector. After he gets fired, he rapes and murders 11-year-old Kerry Lynn Palmer, mutilating her body post-mortem. Stabler, now working with the NYPD's Special Victims Unit, arrests Rickett as he is preparing to leave town, and brings him in to the SVU precinct with 24 hours to interrogate him.
In "Rage"[]
Stabler's partner, Detective Olivia Benson, starts interrogating Rickett, throwing him off balance by confronting him about killing Dana and insinuating that he has no self-control - for Rickett, the worst insult one can receive. She, Stabler, and Detective Fin Tutuola spend the next 24 hours interrogating Rickett, during which he claims to have returned to New York to care for a sick aunt who eventually died. The detectives catch Rickett in several lies, but he has an answer for everything, and refuses to break.
Shortly before Rickett is released, Stabler tries one last time to break through his defenses by admitting his failure in the previous murder case, and telling him that his rage controls him, not the other way around. Rickett retaliates that they both harbor the same kind of rage, and that if it were not for Stabler's job and family holding him in check, they would be exactly alike.
The next day, Benson and Stabler question Rickett's girlfriend, Linda, and her boss, who accuses Rickett of stealing his car. The detectives find what remains of the car in a junkyard in Staten Island, right across the street from a nursing home where Rickett's elderly family friend, Emily Landers, lives; they realize that she is the "aunt" he referred to. They learn that he has conned her into believing he is a licensed doctor, giving him control of her finances, and control of her house. Upon searching the house, they find a pair of blood-stained children's shoes, and another bloodstain that is likely years old.
At that moment, Rickett bursts into the house with a young girl in tow, preparing to rape and murder her. Benson and Stabler try to arrest him, but he holds the girl hostage while daring Stabler to kill him. Fearing that Stabler is ready to do it, she shoots Rickett in the shoulder to save the girl and prevent her partner from committing murder. Stabler stands over Rickett with his weapon drawn, seeming unsure of what to do, until Benson tells him to back down. Coming to his senses, Stabler arrests Rickett, and he is presumably imprisoned for life for murdering Kerry Lynn Palmer.
External links[]
- Gordon Rickett at the Villains Wiki
- Gordon Rickett at the Law & Order Wiki