Tonight on NBC Law & Order returns with an all-new Thursday, January 26, 2023 episode and we have your Law & Order recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order season 22 episode 12 “Almost Famous,” as per the NBC synopsis, “After a teenager is killed, Cosgrove and Shaw discover what lengths kids will go to these days to become Internet famous. Price and Maroun take a risk to go after who they believe is the real criminal in the case, but wind up back where they started.”
Tonight’s Law & Order season 22 episode 12 looks like it is going to be great and you won’t want to miss it. So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back from 8 PM – 9 PM ET for our Law & Order recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our Law & Order SVU recaps, spoilers, news & more!
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In tonight’s Law & Order episode, Eli Barone was found dead of a gunshot wound. He died just outside of his apartment building. He was only fourteen. He didn’t have any weapons or drugs on him. All he had was some money and his cell phone yet someone felt the need to take his life. Detectives Cosgrove and Shaw wondered why.
They were shocked by how young the victim was. They wondered why he hadn’t been home on a school night and it turns out Eli snuck out on the night he died. He made sure to be home when his mother’s shift ended because he knew she would check up on him when she arrived. And he also knew if he put some pillows under his blanket that he could sneak out without worrying about his mother.
Mrs. Barone didn’t even suspect he had snuck out. She thought he was still asleep when the cops came knocking on her door and they informed her about her son’s death. But that poor mother had no clue about a lot of things. Eli never told her that he met up with an acting coach. This supposed coach told Eli that he could be a star and he fell for it. He went to this man’s apartment alone. He snuck out so that he could do photoshoots with him. He never suspected that Sean Kapinksi was in fact Sean Capples. He was a sex offender.
Capples was charged in Chicago for possession of child porn. He was supposed to stay named and shamed and yet he moved to New York with a new name and started over as if nothing had happened. Capples has moved several times in the past year. The cops went over to his place to talk to him and they found him with yet another teenage boy. They called the boy’s parents. They arrested Capples and Capples later had the nerve to say he wasn’t a pedophile. He said he was only on the sex registry because he sent a picture of his girlfriend topless to another friend while he himself was in high school.
Capples claim he was a legitimate acting coach. He was helping his students reach their potential. He didn’t really have a reason for why this always seemed to happen without the parents’ knowledge about these classes. So the cops checked security cameras to see if Capples followed Eli back to his apartment building. They didn’t find Capples. They did on the other hand find a food deliveryman that stayed in the building for thirty minutes and who walked out of it with Eli’s bike. They later tracked that man down. He said he found the bike in the hallway.
It turns out the guy likes to case the places where he delivers. He tries to steal packages. He saw the bike and he took it. He even passed a man with a bike. He passed the superintendent named Virgil Gilbert. Virgil claimed not to have left his apartment after six. Yet, there was a literal eye witness proving he lied to the police. Virgil did leave his apartment. He also got a new door for his apartment and blood was found near the hinges of the door frame. It didn’t take long for Virgil to confess to murder. He said that Eli broke into his apartment. Virgil grabbed his gun and he fired.
He didn’t know until it was all over that it was Eli. He also covered up what he did because Virgil didn’t have a license for the gun. The police investigated Virgil’s claims and he had been telling the truth. Eli broke into his apartment the night he died. Virgil thought he was protecting his family and funnily enough all of this occurred because Eli wanted to become internet famous. Eli broke into the apartment because he was doing a kick down the door challenge. He met an influencer who convinced him that he could become famous with the challenge.
Max Brewer was that influencer. He was seventeen. He lived in a large apartment in the city that was known as the content house. He was basically controlled by his manager and his manager even talked Max into getting arrested. He told Max not to give up the video of Eli breaking down the door. This was in spite of the police having a search warrant. Max was so busy following what his manager said that he walked into a manslaughter charge and was remanded to prison. It wasn’t until Max’s parents contacted the District Attorney’s office that everyone realized it wasn’t Max idea to do a kick-down-the-door challenge. It was his manager’s.
Jason Wheeler finds kids online. He agrees to represent them and in exchange for making them famous – they had to do whatever he wanted. They couldn’t say no. They had to do dangerous stunts. They had to let him pick where they lived, handle their money, and be in charge of their lives. Max was told that if he talked he could walk if he helped them take down Wheeler. He jumped on the offer and Wheeler was later arrested. However, Wheeler got a lawyer that was willing to fight dirty.
The lawyer implied Virgil had molested Eli. Eli went to his apartment to confront him and Virgil killed him to cover up what he did. This lawyer also contacted Max. She convinced Max to not testify against Wheeler and he was trying to flee the state when the detectives found him. They arrested him. They held him on a witness order. Max claimed he couldn’t risk losing the content house or all of his followers and so he was refusing to testify against Wheeler. And he didn’t break even after Nolan threatened to arrest him for manslaughter.
The District Attorney’s office reached out to Wheeler’s other victims. The people he pushed into comas and crippled themselves and they found enough to get Wheeler to accept a plea agreement. He’ll go away for ten years. And Max still got arrested for manslaughter.
THE END!