onight on NBC Law & Order returns with an all-new Thursday, February 2, 2023 episode and we have your Law & Order recap below. In tonight’s Law & Order season 22 episode 13 “Mammon”,” as per the NBC synopsis, “When a graduate student is found dead, Cosgrove and Shaw follow the evidence to a suspect with no clear motive. Price and Maroun uncover a money-grabbing scheme within a close-knit church. McCoy warns them to focus on the suspects and not the institution.”
Tonight’s Law & Order season 22 episode 13 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, Emily Wade was shot and killed mere feet away from her home. Prior to her death, she was a grad student. She lived in student housing. Unfortunately, security was pretty lax around that area. There weren’t any cameras or witnesses to the crime and so the detectives working the case had to turn to Emily’s inner circle. They couldn’t ask her family because she didn’t have a family.
She was a foster kid. They had to ask Emily’s friends if they knew anyone who had a problem with Emily or was giving her trouble. One of the friends mentioned that Emily had an issue with a local bar. It turns out Emily badmouth Nathan to a friend of hers he was dating.
The friendly eventually broke up with Nathan. He thought it was out of the blue until he started asking around and realized that Emily interfered in the relationship. Nathan blamed her for the breakup. He even followed her to the library on campus one day. But the cops caught up to Nathan. He tried to run when they came around with the questions and it was later revealed that he had cocaine on him. Hence why he ran. Nathan also claimed that he had nothing to do with Emily’s death and that the police looked into it.
Nathan did have a run-in with Emily one day. Only everyone failed to mention that Emily’s boyfriend broke it up. Emily was dating Bobby. He was a former Marine. He also threatened to kill her recently because he thought she was cheating on him.
He only did that because Emily usually didn’t have a lot of time for him thanks to her always studying and so he swung by her place with Knick tickets as a surprise. He found her all dressed up. She said she had a family obligation. Bobby didn’t believe her and that’s when he started sending threatening messages.
Bobby was right to be suspicious. He just wasn’t right to be threatening. Emily didn’t have any legal family because she grew up in the foster care system and yet she had a foster brother she was really close to. The same brother the detectives found by tracking Emily’s movements on the day she died.
They traced her back to a church. The church was being run by Pastor Mike. He was one of those guys that like suits as well as ten thousand dollar watches while claiming he gives back to the community. Detective Cosgrove distrusted the pastor right away, but they did ask him if he saw Emily and he said she was in checking up on her foster brother, Lonnie.
Lonnie and Emily spent five years together at the same foster home. Their love for each was the only good thing that came out of that place. He was her only family. Lonnie got laid off about a month ago and he last saw Emily when he was asking for money. Lonnie was the family obligation that Emily claimed. He was her only family and he was connected to her death because it seems Lonnie’s church was connected to her death. There was a van seen leaving the neighborhood around the time Emily was killed. And that van was actively used by members of the same church.
The van was even owned by a Vice Pastor. Vice Pastor Sherman has a record of burglary and drug possession. He found God. He seemingly turned his life around by becoming an active member of this church and, while many claim he leaves the keys out for anyone to find, it was Sherman who was paid fifty thousand dollars the day after Emily was murdered. Sherman was arrested for murder. They had him locked up for a few days before they began offering him a deal to reveal why he killed Emily. He later told the ADAs that Emily threatened to call the police on Pastor Mike if he didn’t return her brother’s money.
Lonnie had apparently given the pastor forty thousand dollars. He said he had to as part of his spiritual healing and that he owes the church his life. It was the Pastor who got Lonnie off of heroin. Lonnie was so grateful to the pastor that he refused to hear anything bad about him. He didn’t even want to talk to the cops when they tried asking questions about the pastor. He let his faith blind him and now his only family was dead. Emily had thought it was ridiculous that her brother gave forty grand away when he needs money for rent. And so she tried to help him.
Emily threatened to call the cops if the pastor didn’t return her brother’s money. This was a problem for the pastor because he doesn’t really pay taxes and he didn’t want the authorities looking into where the money was actually going. After Emily made her threats, the pastor reached out to Sherman. He knew Sherman was an ex-con. He asked Sherman to kill Emily for him and that’s what Sherman did. He killed Emily to protect the pastor and he later lied about that when it came time to testify against the pastor. It turns out the pastor’s lawyer visited Sherman in prison. And so he changed his story.
But too little, too late. The District Attorney’s Office now knew that Emily’s death was a murder for hire and so they continued going after Pastor Mike. They first proved his church was a fraudulent enterprise. Why does a pastor need a yacht or a luxury car? Why did the pastor take nearly ninety thousand dollars from Lonnie over four years when he was only making forty thousand a year and is now jobless? Lonnie gave his every cent to the church. The pastor then used that money to spend it on himself. And the paster confessed to what he did to a Senior Pastor who later testified against him.
After that, the pastor agreed to a plea deal. He was going away and the church was forever changed. Which was too much for Lonnie because he later overdosed on heroin and died.
THE END!