Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, January 23, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below.
In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 26 episode 10 “Master Key,” as per the NBC synopsis, “When a teen from a group home goes missing, the squad must quickly determine if he ran away or was abducted. Velasco puts pressure on the system at large for letting children slip through the cracks.”
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In tonight’s Law & Order SVU episode, Anthony Reed disappeared from his group home one night. He was sixteen. He’s been in trouble before. Only things were different tonight. He left behind his cell phone and that was very telling for the woman that ran the home.
She knew no teen would willingly leave his phone for long, but according to Anthony’s roommate, he threw most of his stuff into trash bags when he left. It’s like he didn’t plan on coming back.
Not even for the cell phone. The home called the police once Anthony missed curfew. It was considered a critical missing. Anthony eft the group home in the company of an adult man and it couldn’t be his father because both parents were dead.
Anthony had an ankle monitor. He was technically out on probation. The cops tracked the monitor to a pizza place. They found the item in the pizzeria’s bathroom.
It appears to have been cut and so Anthony really didn’t want to be found. He left willingly. He’s staying away willingly. Or at least that’s what the police thought. The police considered changing the case from critical missing to run away. The only thing that stopped them from doing so was because Anthony left in the company of a stranger.
They spoke with Anthony’s case worker. His father was murdered when he was ten. His mother overdosed a year later on fentanyl. He doesn’t have any family.
He couldn’t possibly be related to the man that picked him up. The cops later found security footage of the man with Anthony. They spotted his car. Its license plate. It belonged to a man named Colin Clark. He wasn’t in the system. He was married and he didn’t have kids. The cops raided his home. His wife didn’t know where he was or who Anthony was. Anthony was a stranger to her.
The wife told the cops that her husband was a contractor. This helped them find Clark. The cops ultimately found a dead Clark in bed and Anthony was still holding the gun. The poor teen was crying.
He was in his underwear. It should also be noted that Clark’s remains were down to the underwear as well. The police had theories about what happened. They suspected that Clark groomed Anthony. Anthony didn’t have friends. He was bullied at school. He lived in a group home where he wasn’t given the attention he needed. He probably was groomed by an experienced predator.
Only the evidence didn’t match the theory. It also didn’t match Anthony’s story. Anthony claimed that Clark forced him into the minivan at gunpoint. It doesn’t make sense because he went back to the group home to get his things after school. Clark couldn’t have grabbed him from his school if he returned to the group home to get his things. He also left behind his cell phone. He cut his ankle monitor. He had several chances to escape Clark and didn’t take any of it. And things get stranger from there.
Anthony claimed he got the gun away from Clark. He said he shot Clark in bed. The evidence and that including the blood stain showed that he was standing when he got shot. He was then moved to the bed after he died. There was also another fingerprint on the gun. There was a third person in that room. Anthony refused to talk about that third person. He also later changed his story. He claimed he did go with Clark willingly. They’ve been talking online. Clark was supposed to help him get to California and that they were staying at the motel until the heat died down.
Anthony claimed that Clark was on the phone with his wife. She was begging him to come home. Which again didn’t make sense because the woman didn’t know her husband was missing. Anthony kept coming up with a new story and so ADA Carisi planned on charging him with murder. It was just SVU that didn’t believe Anthony killed someone in cold blood. They looked into him. The only person visiting him at juvie was Aurora Miller. She was the director of the group home. She also gave them backstory on Anthony.
Anthony was sexually abused by an older boy at his first foster home. It took a year before his case worker found out about it and it wasn’t reported to the police. Anthony didn’t want to go to the cops.
He didn’t even want to talk about it with Miller. The only one he ever talked to was the caseworker, Michael Strickland. Strickland has been written up a few times for being too involved in the younger kids. He acts like a big brother. He takes them out for pizza and videogames. Most kids thrived thanks to his closer attention. It was just a handful like Anthony that never improved.
Strickland was brought in for questioning. They got his fingerprints. They told him that they were testing it for the fingerprint left on the gun and so Strickland admitted he was there. He said Anthony called him for help. He claimed that Anthony killed Clark and that he took the gun away. He said he left the gun behind when he left in a panic. The cops asked Anthony about it, but Anthony refused to tell them what really happened. The cops had to work the case without him and what they found was heartbreaking.
Strickland wasn’t in a sexual relationship with Anthony. He was pimping out Anthony. He pimps out a lot of kids in his care on Craigslist and he’s been doing it for years by the looks of Anthony’s photo on the ad. Anthony was right to be afraid of him. Anthony first met Clark as a john. They stayed in contact.
Clark later offered to help get Anthony away from Strickland. They were going to run away together. Anthony was happy to escape at first, but he panicked. He called Strickland because he was too scared of leaving this life away from that monster.
Strickland showed up at the motel. He told Anthony to kill Clark. When Anthony couldn’t do it, He put his hand on top of Anthony and made the teen kill Clark. They then moved him to the bed so that it would like Clark sexually assaulted Anthony. Anthony told the truth when he learned that it wasn’t just him that was getting pimped out by his caseworker.
Some of the other victims were at his group home and so Anthony talked in the hopes of protecting them. The cops would go on to find plenty of johns willing to testify against Strickland in return for a lesser charge. Meaning the case against Strickland was airtight.
He will never work with children again and human trafficking carries a hefty prison sentence.
THE END!
