Miriam Penner

Miriam Penner is an antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode Spectacle.

Before Spectacle
Miriam Penner lived in Manhattan in 2003 with her three year old son Danny. After Danny died of leukemia, Penner's sanity broke and she spent six weeks in a psych ward. After being released, she supposedly moved back to Staten Island with her parents. But she really moved to Staten Island by herself, and her parents really lived in Boca Raton, Florida. Before leaving Manhattan, Penner kidnapped three year old Jason Engels, the brother of Danny's former babysitter Greg Engels, who was 12 at the time. People stood by as Jason was kidnapped by the assailant. People stopped investigating Jason's kidnapping. For the next 8 years, Jason was a replacement for Danny.

In Spectacle
In 2011, Greg Engels was now 20 years old, and conspired with two college students, Lizzie Harmon and another boy, to force police to reignite the investigation to find Jason. The boy was to act like a 'captor' and look like he was going to rape Lizzie and film it for the entire college campus to see on the Intranet. This incident caught the attention of Detective Stabler (Benson is away to solve an out of state case). After Engels was put under suspicion, he lured Stabler to a warehouse. He threatened to get his 'monkey' to kill Lizzie unless Stabler read over the original case file and solve it once and for all. The Special Victims Unit eventually found Stabler and Greg, putting him under arrest.

Stabler gets Greg to reveal that Lizzie is still alive. When Benson gets back, the SVU reinterviews the original witnesses to the 2003 kidnapping. Just like before, the witnesses gave different descriptions of the car that the kidnapper drove in. But one witness mentioned a Mrs. Penner being there that day, something not mentioned in the interview 8 years ago. Miriam Penner was found to have lost her son Danny to cancer, spending time in a psych ward, and moving to Staten Island. She was also known to drive a green station wagon, the car given in one witness report. Detective Stabler and other cops went to Penner's house just before she was about to leave. Penner claimed she was going to visit her parents in Florida. Benson found Jason, now 11 years old, passed out with a drug under some clothes. Penner broke down, begging them not to take 'Danny', as Stabler looked on with slight sympathy.

Stabler finds out the filmed 'rape' was just a hoax to find Jason. Greg agrees to take full responsibility for everything, and then reunites with Jason. Jason calls him 'Gig', the name he called his brother when he was 3.