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| “ | He raped my sister and got her pregnant. That's why I cut his balls off! | „ |
| ~ Alec confessing to castrating and murdering Josh Galli. |
Alec Bernardi is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Babes". He is a teenage boy who castrates and murders a homeless man as revenge for supposedly raping and impregnating his younger sister.
He was portrayed by Philip Ettinger.
Early life[]
Alec is the eldest child and only son of Peggy Bernardi, and the older brother of Peggy's daughter Tina. His parents had him as teenagers and his father died when he was young, forcing Peggy to work late hours as a waitress to support the family, so Alec helped look after and care for Tina while their mother was at work. He was extremely protective of Tina, especially when it came to boys. In their teens, Alec and Tina both attended Blessed Heart, a private, Christian high school. Unbeknownst to either Alec or Peggy, Tina entered into a "pregnancy pact" with three of her friends to get pregnant and have babies together.
In "Babes"[]
One night, Alec overheard Tina talking to one of her friends on the phone about the father of her baby, a schizophrenic homeless man named Josh Galli and jumps to the conclusion that Galli raped her. He let his anger cloud his judgment and he gathered school supplies to help him punish Galli. After stalking Galli for awhile, Alec confronted him and after a fight castrated him and set him on fire, accidentally burning himself in the process. The burning Galli was reduced to running the streets before he ended up crashing into a restaurant, ultimately killing him.
Due to the nature of the crime, SVU were called in and they note the perp suffered some form of a burn because of the sloppiness of the fire. While investigating Galli's murder, Detective Elliot Stabler and Sergeant John Munch trace the blowtorch used to kill him to Blessed Heart. There, Alec's classmate Max Matarazzo tells Stabler and Munch that Alec helps clean up the school's laboratory, which they realize would give him access to the blowtorch. When Stabler and Munch approach Alec to question him, he panics and runs away, but Stabler catches and subdues him. They also spot on burn mark on his hand, implicating him as the killer.
During his interrogation, Alec confesses to the crime but admits that killing Galli was accident. However, he had to punish Galli and even says that his father would be proud of him on how he avenged his sister's rape. A distraught Peggy arrives at the SVU precinct and bails Alec out of jail. After Stabler and Munch discover the pregnancy pact, they go to Peggy's house and tell her what happened, forcing Tina to tell her mother that she had consensual sex with the older neighbor Galli and her brother, likely overheard her joking on it. She further states that Alec killed Galli for nothing. Peggy blames her family's plight on Tina's friend and classmate Fidelia Vidal, who started the pregnancy pact; she believes that, had it not been for Fidelia, Tina would not have gotten pregnant, and Alec would not have killed Galli. She later sends Fidelia a series of emails telling her to kill herself, and makes it look like they were sent by her baby's father, Donald "Dizzer" Zuccho. This results in Fidelia's apparent suicide, for which Peggy is charged with murder. This led to the Bernadi family suffering backlash, with them visiting and finding Alec at home before they are taken into protective custody.
It is ultimately revealed, however, that Max, Fidelia's boyfriend, had murdered her and made it look like she killed herself. At the end of the episode, Alec is sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for murdering Galli. His family was distraught by his fate and Tina later apologized to Galli's father on her brother's behalf.
External links[]
- Alec Bernardi on the Law & Order Wiki
