| “ | If you think I could do that to someone I love, what do you think I could do to someone you love? | „ |
| ~ Anne threatening Elliot Stabler's family |
Anne Gillette is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Shadow". She is a con artist from a wealthy family who murders her parents to inherit their wealth.
She is portrayed by Sarah Paulson, who also portrayed Sally McKenna, Ally Mayfair-Richards, and Wilhelmina Venable in American Horror Story, Dr. Zara in Abominable, Dr. Ellie Staple in Glass, and Mary Epps in 12 Years a Slave.
Overview
An intelligent, charismatic psychopath, Anne has spent her entire life conning and manipulating people, including her wealthy parents. She was thrown out of several schools for cheating, investigated for tax evasion, and suspected of embezzling $3.5 million from the Prestwick Foundation, a charitable organization her father bought her a seat on. Each time she gets in trouble, she uses her family's money and social connections to make the problem go away.
She has her father wrapped around her little finger, but has a combative relationship with her mother, who tires of her tarnishing the family name and using the family's money to finance her expensive tastes.
In "Shadow"
When her mother finally disinherits her, Anne retaliates by bludgeoning her parents to death with an axe and making it look like a robbery. SVU detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson investigate, and learn that Anne manipulated family friend Nathan Harding into helping steal from the foundation. Fraud detective Ash Ramsay, who has been investigating Anne's white-collar crimes for months, joins Benson and Stabler on the case; the three of them come to believe that Anne killed her parents so she could inherit their $200 million fortune.
Ramsay, who is also from a wealthy family, questions Anne. She gets under his skin by insinuating that he also wants his parents dead, and that his mother, whom she knows socially, is "very seductive". Ramsay and forensic psychiatrist George Huang realize that she is a psychopath, and warn the detectives that she is capable of anything.
Sure enough, Anne strikes back against the detectives by putting contracts out on their lives. Benson and Ramsay turn the tables on her by faking their own murders, and having SVU detective Fin Tutuola pose as the hit man. Once Tutuola and Anne have "escaped" to a hotel, Anne brags about killing her parents - unaware that Tutuola is wearing a wire. Benson and Ramsay burst in and arrest Anne, who finally lets her charming façade slip as she threatens to kill them all. She is then sent to prison for life.