Since Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiered in 1999, it has gained a reputation for having “ripped from the headlines” stories. While for most of those SVU episodes are based on real life, the headlines are for current cases that have had pop culture ripples, some of them are a bit older.
Law & Order: SVU does not often address cold cases or use cold cases for its inspiration, but when it does, those cases are not adapted straight for the TV screen. Instead, SVU takes aspects of them that the audience may be familiar with and offers a twist.
The New York Ripper Murders
Season 2, Episode 21 “Scourge”
The season 2 episode “Scourge” sees a spree killer who exhibits symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. The twist is that those symptoms are actually caused by an illness he does not realize he has until it’s too late.
The case itself is not a direct comparison to the New York Ripper Murders of 1915, but the murders did provide inspiration for the way the episode handles the crimes. Both the real murders and the episode call their suspect a Ripper – as in Jack the Ripper.
The original murders were of a pair of children less than two months apart. They were both killed right outside of the buildings where they lived, and letters were sent to the mothers of the children claiming credit for the crimes, but they were written by different people.
Though 100 police officers were assigned to investigate the crimes, and other children were attacked, but not murdered, the case remained unsolved. While the cases were being investigated, locals mobbed those they believed could be the Ripper.
The comparisons used, and the way the public reacts to the cases, is what SVU takes from the still cold case, though the episode itself does not investigate a cold case.
The BTK Killer
Season 4, Episode 6 “Scavenger”
Most crime procedurals, especially those that focus on the investigations of a squad of detectives, take on a serial killer at least once. Most serial killer cases do not become cold cases. What happens is that individual cases the killers are eventually linked to go cold because of a lack of evidence.
In the case of the SVU episode “Scavenger,” the killer is known as RDK because of the name he uses in his first letter to the police. Here, a killer leads the detectives on a scavenger hunt to find his victims.
It’s inspired by the BTK Killer, who also sent letters to the police and the media after his killings. He even questioned in his first letter what he had to do to get in the newspaper. In SVU, RDK asks a similar question in his first letter, “Who do I have to kill to get on page 1 above the fold?”
Both cases also feature years between one batch of murders and the next, which is why some of the cases were considered “cold” until the BTK Killer was caught in 2005 as the result of corrupted data on a floppy disc.
The puzzling nature of “Scavenger” has seen it named one of the best Law & Order: SVU episodes.
The Baby Hope Case
Season 4, Episode 7 “Dolls”
“Dolls” is most often remembered as the SVU episode to feature a stellar turn from David Harbour as a villain obsessed with collectible dolls. It also, however, happens to be inspired by a real-life cold case.
The investigation in “Dolls” begins because the body of a child is found decomposing in the trash. The little girl is named Cherish Doe by the authorities until they can identify her. That’s what happened to Baby Hope when she was found in a cooler in 1991.
Though the little girl was estimated to be between three and five years old and likely Hispanic, beyond that, investigators had no way to identify her at the time. That’s the trouble the detectives run into in SVU as well, and much of the episode centers around the mother of a missing little girl who is afraid Cherish is her daughter.
In real life, Baby Hope was not identified until 2013, despite her case being resurrected in 2006 and 2011, and her body exhumed to get DNA. She was identified through DNA as Anjelica Castillo when an anonymous tip told her Castillo’s mother had talked about her missing daughter.
The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey
Season 4, episode 19 “Appearances”
Many crime shows have done their own version of the JonBenét Ramsey case or highlighted the potential for children’s pageants to be hunting grounds for criminals. SVU does that in an episode that sees them find the body of a little girl in a suitcase on a bus.
That’s very different from Ramsey being found in the basement of her own home, but what the two young girls have in common is that they both competed in pageants, and the discussions surrounding their deaths became tied to that.
Much of the media coverage of Ramsey’s death featured her in her pageant wear. While there have been many theories about the case, and many true crime series have spotlighted it in an effort to get those theories out there, the case remains unsolved.
Ramsey’s case has been criticized by those examining it for the way friends, family, and neighbors were allowed in and out of the Ramsey house by police. The house was not treated as a crime scene, despite the little girl being reported missing, until after her body was found.
Unless new evidence or a credible confession arises, it’s unlikely the Ramsey case will ever be officially closed.
Murder Of Adam Walsh
Season 6, Episode 13 “Quarry”
Technically, the murder of Adam Walsh is not a cold case. It’s also one of the most well-known missing persons cases in the United States. There are a handful of SVU episodes that actually take inspiration from what happened to Walsh, but “Quarry” has the most similarities.
The episode sees Olivia Benson receive information about the body of a seven-year-old boy. Though the boy has been missing since 1980, evidence suggests he may have been a victim or a man who is on death row, but the episode takes an unexpected turn when the killer is actually someone else.
Adam Walsh was abducted from a department store when he was only six years old. His head was found two weeks later. Though the investigation was pursued, and police believed that Ottis Toole, Toole was never charged with Walsh’s murder. The case was officially closed in 2008, though Toole died in 1996.
John Walsh became an advocate for the missing and victims of violent crimes after his son was taken. He also became the host of America’s Most Wanted.
The Boy In The Box
Season 7, Episode 7 “Name”
While most of the cold cases used to inspire SVU storylines are not presented as cold cases within the show, the case used to inspire the season 7 episode “Name” is different. The episode is a very different one for SVU.
In it, Stabler stumbles on the same cold case that one of the crime scene technicians is obsessed with because her father worked the original case in his spare time. He teams up with her to take a look at it. The case involved a young Hispanic boy found in a box who remained unidentified.
While the SVU episode actually expands to more missing boys, the real-life case involves a little boy who was found in a box on the side of the road in 1957. Despite plenty of publicity and periodic reviews of the case, the trail went cold for decades.
It was not until 2022 that the boy in the box was identified as Joseph Augustus Zarelli. He was identified using genetic genealogy, a tactic SVU has employed in many of its cases since the technology became available.
Now that Zarelli has been identified, the investigation into his murder is officially reopened.
The Disappearance of The Sodder Children
Season 7, Episode 10 “Storm”
“Storm” has a few different real-life inspirations. The most obvious is the displacement of Louisiana residents and the scattering of families following Hurricane Katrina. Here, sisters are brought to New York from Louisiana in an effort to save them from the storm, but he is really a predator.
That modern tragedy is combined with a much older case.
The disappearance of the Sodder children happened in 1945. On Christmas Eve, a fire broke out at the Sodder home. While the parents and four children escaped, five more children were unaccounted for. The family members were sure that the other children survived.
While the police ruled that the fire was caused by something electrical, the family doubted the official findings. They also did not believe the fire burned hot enough to completely burn the other children, whose remains were never recovered.
Rumors persisted that the children were kidnapped, and the Sodder family has tried to find their missing family for decades. There has been coverage of the story on National Public Radio and the History Channel, but what really happened to the Sodder children remains a mystery.
The Murder Of Sherri Rasmussen
Season 11, Episode 18 “Bedtime” and Season 14, Episode 14 “Secrets Exhumed”
The murder of Sherri Rasmussen has been covered by a lot of true crime shows, including Dateline, because the events of the case are so dramatic, and the outcome so surprising. The investigation into her death is certainly a lesson in detectives needing to turn over every stone.
Rasmussen’s body was found in her apartment in 1986. The police investigating initially believed that she was killed while someone was committing a robbery, and that theory was aided by some electronics found sitting near the door.
Her murder investigation went nowhere for 20 years. In 2008, the case was officially cold, but the investigation was reopened. It was found that Rasmussen’s husband’s ex-girlfriend was responsible for her murder. A police officer, her DNA was eventually matched to that taken from a bite mark on Rasmussen.
The events of the case actually provide the inspiration for two different SVU episodes three years apart.
In the season 11 episode “Bedtime,” a case the squad investigates reminds Captain Cragen of a case from 35 years earlier, and both a patrol cop and his ex are interviewers. The season 14 episode “Secrets Exhumed” sees an FBI agent trying to connect several murder cases to an unsolved rape-murder case in New York.
While the episodes are very different from one another, they both pull elements from the Rasmussen case and feature cold cases to boot.
Multiple Cold Cases And Investigators Provide Inspiration For The Same Episode
Season 12, Episode 17 “Pursuit”
So many of the SVU cases might point to specific cases for inspiration, but there are a lot of episodes of the Law & Order franchise that pull elements from multiple real-life cases. The season 12 episode “Pursuit” is one of those.
The episode sees the host of a popular true crime series that catches criminals come under threat. The SVU team is tasked with investigating the threats.
What’s unusual here is that the main character of the episode is inspired by the likes of John Walsh and Nancy Grace, who host crime television shows. The cases referenced by the fictional program reference real-life cases, like the missing Michaela Garecht, who disappeared in 1988.
Garecht’s case was the first missing persons case featured on America’s Most Wanted, but fingerprint evidence did not help catch her alleged killer until 2020. Likewise, the murder of April Tinsely from 1988 also helped inspire points in the episode. Her killer was caught with the help of DNA evidence in 2018.
The Gilgo Beach Killer
Season 13, Episode 15 “Hunting Ground”
The Gilgo Beach Killings, or the work of the Long Island Serial Killer (LISK), is the subject of several true crime documentaries today. At the time the SVU episode “The Hunting Ground” aired, however, many of the cases associated with LISK were considered cold for lack of movement.
“Hunting Ground” sees the SVU squad investigate the disappearance of an underage prostitute. When they begin their investigation, they find a pattern of working girls going missing. The missing women are linked by ads they placed for their services.
Many of the victims of the Gilgo Beach Killer were also sex workers who placed ads online for their work. Their bodies were found on a specific stretch of beach that was used as a dumping ground by the killer. The murders attributed to the killer spanned from 1993 to 2011.
A suspect was not arrested until 2023. While he was eventually charged with 10 different murders, some of those were 30 years after the initial investigations into the deaths. There were also more remains found in the area that he has not been linked to.
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