Tonight on NBC Law & Order returns with an all-new Thursday, February 2, 2024 episode and we have your Law & Order recap below.
In tonight’s Law & Order season 23 episode 3 “Turn The Page,” as per the NBC synopsis, “When a young woman is strangled, Yee connects the MO to a potential serial offender, leading Riley to revisit a case that went cold on his watch. Price makes a risky move to bait one of their own on the stand.”
Tonight’s Law & Order season 23 episode 3 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, Celeste was walking home when she was approached by someone she knew. She stopped for this person. She told them that they scared her to death by sneaking up behind her and she was even reprimanding them when things escalated between them. This person grabbed her by her throat.
He forced Celeste to tell him she loves him. After she did that, he then called her a liar. He got upset with her. He strangled her to death so violently that her neck snapped. Her body was spotted by a witness who saw a man running from the scene. The witness couldn’t tell his race or his height. All they saw was that he was wearing a red parka.
Detective Shaw and his new partner Detective Riley caught this case. They started out by talking to Celeste’s mother. They asked the mom if Celeste was dating anyone and she couldn’t say.
Her daughter didn’t tell her everything. Which becomes important later on. The detectives managed to track down Celeste’s ex. She started ghosting him. He was responding by stalking her. He would wait outside of her apartment. He was also three blocks away from the crime scene. The cops arrested the guy. They interrogated him.
It all resulted in nothing. Sure, he stalked her. He just didn’t kill her. He also claimed not to know who killed her and it seems Riley might have better understanding of the killer than he initially believed.
Riley transferred to Manhattan after working Missing Persons in Brooklyn. He had several missing women in his area that he never followed up on. These same women were all eventually found to have been murdered the exact same way as Celeste did. Celeste was a rich woman in the city. The other victims were all black and escort workers in Brooklyn.
Other than the way they died, there was no connection between them. Riley then followed up on a hunch to question the ex-boyfriend/stalker about Celeste.
He asked the guy if Celeste was working as a possible escort. She wasn’t. Only she was big into sex clubs. She liked to visit a few of them. She might have met their serial killer at one. Riley believed he did everything he could for the other three victims. They went missing. They were sex workers and there were no leads. Or at least that’s what he tells himself.
Shaw thought differently. Shaw thought Riley ignored the signs of a serial killer because the early victims were poor black women. He mentioned this to Riley and Riley swore he did everything he could. He treats all his cases seriously. The fact that he never checked up to see if the women returned home or if their bodies were found was the part that went unsaid. Things were only different now with Celeste because Celeste was again a rich white woman. The system was there to protect her. It wasn’t there to protect Theresa Potter, Angela Rice, or Olivia Washington.
The cops followed up on the sex club angle. They tracked Celeste down to one of them on the night she died. They checked the surveillance camera and they saw that Celeste was talking to one guy when she chose to leave. The guy then left less than a minute after her. The cops used the footage of the sex club to run facial recognition.
Their perp was identified as Bruce Elliot. He was a rich white guy. There was also security footage of him wearing a red parka on the night Celeste was killed. The cops used that to get a warrant for Elliot’s apartment.
They missed him by mere minutes. They did on the other hand find the red parka as well as a black woman who called herself his friend there. The escorted the woman out of the apartment and they used their warrant to search the place. They found a box with Celeste’s necklace in it.
It was there along with three other necklaces. They were Elliot’s trophies. He’d snatch them off all of his victims. He first targeted black women because he was building confidence. He knew he could kill them and walk because he was a rich white guy. And all the jury would hear was that the first three were sex workers.
The police knew it was going to be an uphill battle with Celeste alone. She was into sex clubs. Her history will be used against her and so they wanted to find Elliot before he hurt anyone else. They found him walking in his neighborhood. He spotted them. He pulled out a gun and he took a woman hostage.
Riley refused to wait for a hostage negotiator. He had something to prove and so he convinced Elliot to take him hostage over the woman. And the idiot did so because he thought holding a cop hostage would be safer than using a black woman.
It was in the little details that showed this man thought the absolute worst of women. Especially black women. Riley got close to Elliot and he easily overpowered him.
Elliot was arrested. He was charged with Celeste’s murder because that was the only one they could prove. His DNA was found on Celeste. He was also charged with kidnapping of his hostage. The judge denied him bail and everything was all set for court. Until Elliott used his considerable means to afford the best lawyer he could.
This lawyer used the sex clubs against Celeste. She tried to imply that maybe Celeste liked being choked and so that’s when Price included the other three murders as prior bad acts.
He was trying to show that Elliot was a serial killer. That he intentionally set out to kill woman he knew could never love him. Elliot’s lawyer then tried to use Riley’s history as an exemplar cop to say that he never suspected Elliot of the crime when he was looking for those three women. And so Price (after he got the go-ahead from his boss) went after Riley on the stand.
Price brought up that Riley had gotten suspended not long after first interviewing Elliot. He had been drinking on the job. His wife and kids had moved out. He had hit a captain.
He got suspended because he wasn’t doing well. He sought treatment and he was better now. He wasn’t even mad at Price for attacking him on the stand. He didn’t do his job back then. He wanted to fix that and so he found old photos of the first three victims all wearing the jewelry found in Elliot’s trophy box. They were used in court.
And Elliot was found guilty of murder.
THE END!