| “ | Who sent you? The property mongers? | „ |
| ~ O'Dell while being arrested |
Matthew O'Dell is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Disappeared". He is a mentally ill terrorist and spree killer who kidnaps people and bombs businesses he believes are oppressing the poor.
He is portrayed by Michael Medeiros.
Early life[]
O'Dell and his brother Ben were born and raised in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan by their widowed father. O'Dell was academically brilliant, graduating from Princeton in only three years, but he began deteriorating psychologically in his late teens, developing severe paranoia and obsessive fantasies of persecution; he came to believe that wealthy people and corporations were out to destroy him and his neighborhood. He spent much of his twenties in and out of psychiatric institutions.
Despite his mental health problems, O'Dell was a prolific neighborhood activist, getting involved in neighborhood groups and rent strikes. He also helped Ben file a lawsuit against real estate developers who were trying to gentrify their neighborhood. While his brother hoped the lawsuit would make them closer, O'Dell became even more reclusive, holing up alone in his apartment and writing pamphlets threatening to destroy the "property mongers", which he distributed around the city.
In "Disappeared"[]
O'Dell kidnaps Paul and Donna Ericson, a wealthy couple who were investing in urban development in the neighborhood; O'Dell blames them for working class people being evicted from their homes. He then kidnaps Nathan Faber, the Ericsons' landlord and a real estate speculator.
When he sends one of his manifestos to the New York Ledger for publication, a reporter takes it to the NYPD. Lieutenant Anita Van Buren has the wording altered in hopes of making the kidnapper angry enough to make a mistake. Sure enough, O'Dell sends the newspaper another manifesto and threatens to kidnap someone else unless they print it verbatim. Ben reads the manifesto and recognizes his brother's ideas and phrasing, and helps Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis arrest him. O'Dell refuses to talk, so Ben reluctantly gets him to confess by making him believe that a trial would be a soapbox for his political views. When the police go to rescue O'Dell's victims, however, they find that he killed all three of them.
O'Dell refuses to admit he is mentally ill, fires his lawyer, and hires defense attorney Danielle Melnick. District Attorney Adam Schiff seeks the death penalty against O'Dell, even though his Assistant District Attorneys Jack McCoy and Jamie Ross are uncomfortable with executing a clearly sick man. Desperate to save his brother, Ben tells Melnick that the police violated his rights by getting him to confess without a lawyer, which results in the evidence against O'Dell being suppressed. Ben leaks his brother's psychiatric records to the press in an effort to influence the jury to have him institutionalized, but McCoy persuades the judge to have the jury sequestered, and O'Dell is ultimately found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder.
During the sentencing phase of the trial, O'Dell forbids Melnick from introducing his psychiatric history to avoid the death penalty, saying he would rather die than be labelled insane. McCoy tells Ross to handle the sentencing hearing by herself, claiming to have another case to attend to. Ross cross-examines Ben, and asks him why he thought his brother was a danger to himself and others. As intended, this questions allows Ben to describe his brother's history of mental illness. O'Dell has a violent outburst, having to be restrained and led out of the courtroom as he furiously condemns his brother and rants about his perceived enemies conspiring against him. O'Dell is then institutionalized for life.
Trivia[]
- O'Dell is loosely based upon Theodore Kaczynski, a terrorist and murderer popularly known as "The Unabomber"
External links[]
- Matthew O'Dell at the Law & Order Wiki