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| “ | I was alive again for the first time in years. Greta was going to take it away. I had to stop her. | „ |
| ~ Arthur Esterman rationalizing his murder of his own wife. |
Arthur Esterman is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Lust". He is a wealthy lawyer who murders his wife and then kills another woman in the same way to make it look like the murders were committed by a serial killer.
He was portrayed by Michael Gross, who also played Charles Webb in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Biography[]
Early life[]
As a young man, Esterman married a woman named Greta, who came from a wealthy family. Her parents did not approve of him but the two eloped.
Esterman was a lawyer by profession, but his wife's inheritance, coupled with the large salary she earned as a doctor, enabled him to take a lot of time off, to the point that one of Greta's friends remarked that he "spent more time on a tennis court than in a courtroom".
When Greta reached menopause, she lost interest in sex, so Esterman began patronizing prostitutes. He stole the identity of a law school classmate, Vartan Didian, and used it to open a secret bank account; he then stole $20,000 a month from Greta's trust fund to pay for his trysts. When Esterman's favorite call girl, "Miss Kitty", gave him Viagra and ecstasy to enhance his pleasure and performance, he became addicted to the sexual thrill, and found a drug dealer to regularly supply him with both drugs.
Eventually, however, Greta found out about Esterman's embezzlement and confronted him. Esterman told her everything and asked her to take ecstasy with him to rekindle their sex life. Greta, who specialized in treating people with HIV/AIDS, was horrified and outraged by Esterman's recklessness with her health, and said she was going to divorce him and leave him with nothing. Unwilling to give up his newfound playboy lifestyle, Esterman began planning to kill her.
"Lust"[]
One night, Esterman follows Greta to Central Park, where she is walking their dog, Rocky, and strikes her in the head from behind. He then rapes her with a tree branch and stabs her to death in a fit of rage. He wore a poncho to prevent the blood splatter from hitting him and discards it after fleeing.
When Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit return his dog and inform Esterman of Greta's murder, he feigns grief, and plays them a harassing phone call on their answering machine from Roger Pomerantz, a sex offender Greta had treated for an STD, to drive the investigation toward him. When Benson and Stabler bring Pomerantz in for questioning, Esterman accuses him of killing Greta and punches him in the face.
When Benson and Stabler find out that Pomerantz is innocent, Esterman steers them toward another of Greta's patients, Mario Molinari, a womanizer who is intentionally spreading AIDS. Benson and Stabler arrest Molinari for spreading AIDS but find that he is innocent of Greta's murder because he was already hospitalized. Esterman kills another woman, Mona Sidley, in the same manner as Greta in order to make it look like a serial killer is active in the area.
Benson and Stabler discover the financial transactions Esterman made as "Vartan Didian" and question him. Esterman pretends not to know what they are talking about, but they soon learn of his double life after talking to Miss Kitty. They get a search warrant for Esterman's house and find a pair of boots covered in dirt from the site of Greta's murder, but he insists that he was merely paying his respects to Greta and Sidley. When they confront him about paying for prostitutes as "Didian", he claims that Greta had given him permission to sleep with other women, and that he used an alias in order to avoid embarrassing her.
They ask Esterman for a DNA sample, but he refuses. They find out that Esterman had given blood months earlier, and Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot goes before a judge to try to compel Esterman, who represents himself, to turn over the sample. She is successful, but Esterman manages to convince the judge to forbid testing the blood for DNA.
SVU Detective Fin Tutuola, who once worked in the NYPD's Narcotics Division, goes undercover to contact Esterman's ecstasy dealer, and threatens to arrest him unless he informs on Esterman. The dealer directs him to the motel where he provides Esterman and Miss Kitty with ecstasy. Benson and Stabler get another search warrant for Esterman's motel room and arrive there as he is having sex with Miss Kitty. They find a single plane ticket to Brazil in Esterman's suitcase and tell Miss Kitty he is going to leave the country without her, angering her so much that she gives them the condom they used to test for DNA. The semen sample ties Esterman to both murders, and they arrest him. Esterman rationalizes the murders by saying that Greta was going to take away his newfound happiness, and that Sidley was collateral damage. He is found guilty of murder and rape and imprisoned for life.
Trivia[]
- Esterman is based on wife killers Eric Greineder and Craig Rabinowitz.
External links[]
- Arthur Esterman on the Law & Order Wiki
