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| “ | Listen, we dust her while her husband's in jail, he'll talk. If she stays with us, he'll keep his mouth shut. But I don't wanna look at her no more right now; she got blood on my new shoes. | „ |
| ~ Bernanda coldly deciding what to do with Sherie Alverez. |
Bernanda Menendez is the secondary antagonist in the street racing arc in season 3 of Law & Order: Organized Crime, She is a drug dealer and enforcer for crime lord Antonio Duran.
She was portrayed by Ana Osorio.
Early life[]
Menendez grew up in Miami, Florida, where she was an avid street racer. As a young woman, she started working for drug lord Antonio Duran, selling his product on the streets; she also became his lover. She was arrested for drug possession and went to prison in Havana, Cuba, for two years, during which time she earned a correspondence course college degree and made connections with the major players in Duran's organization.
By the time she was released from prison and returned to Miami, she was Duran's main enforcer, feared and respected in the city's criminal underworld. She used her street racing skills in her career as a criminal, committing brazen daylight robberies in racing cars along with her gang in order to fund Duran's trafficking operation.
Eventually, Duran sent her to New York City to personally oversee drug shipments from Miami. He also promises to give her control of his New York operations, and that they would start a family together; she is unaware that he intends to leave his empire in New York to his daughter and grandson, and that he is merely stringing her along.
Appearances[]
"Trap"[]
When Tino Alvarez, one of Bernanda's low-level dealers, gets arrested, she and the gang's getaway driver Chaz kidnap his wife Sherie and threaten to kill her if he reveals anything about the gang to the police. Tino reaches out to Detective Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Organized Crime Task Force, for whom he sometimes works as a confidential informant, and begs him to save Sherie.
Stabler and one of his colleagues on the task force, Detective Bobby Reyes, pull Esteban over and search his car, where they find Sherie's ear pods and a blood stain on the floor. They arrest Chaz, so Bernanda decides to "take care of" Sherie and tells her right-hand man Cristobal Ruiz to "find another driver", the implication being he is to kill Chaz.
Stabler and his partner, Sergeant Ayanna Bell, send Detective Jamie Whelan undercover to one of the drag races where Bernanda recruits her drivers. The race is interrupted by police who arrest Ruiz, but Whelen impresses him by punching out one of the officers who are handcuffing him, so Ruiz takes him into Bernanda's gang. She takes him to meet Duran, and on the way orders him to outmaneuver Detective Bobby Reyes and cyber-technician Jet Slootmaekers, who are following them; when he loses them, she smiles flirtatiously at him and says, "We're going to have fun with you."
"The Infiltration Game"[]
Bernanda takes Whelan to meet with Duran, but he orders her to throw him out because he has drawn police and media attention. Soon afterward, Stabler approaches Duran posing as a drug dealer looking to do business with him, the crime lord sends Bernanda to spy on him, so she takes pictures of what she thinks is Stabler selling drugs, unaware that the "buyers" are in fact undercover detectives from Miami PD, who have joined in the NYPD operation after tracking Duran and Bernanda for two years. She then sets up a meeting between Stabler and Duran that leads to a tentative business relationship between them.
After the DEA unexpectedly raids Duran's office and kills Cristobal, however, he and Bernanda make plans to flee back to Miami. Stabler catches Bernanda before she can leave the city, however, and arrests her. Stabler interrogates her about Duran's whereabouts, but she refuses to talk, knowing that Duran would kill her. Whelan takes over the interrogation and tells her that Duran set her up to take the fall by putting her in charge of the whole operation, in case the police ever caught up with them. Feeling betrayed, Bernanda becomes a police informant.
At Stabler's direction, Bernanda goes to Duran's estate and tells him she needs to talk to him. Sensing that she is wearing a wire, Duran denies knowing anything and blames the drug operation on her and Cristobal. Enraged, she pulls a gun on him and demands that he admit what he did. She also tearfully confronts him about the promise he made to her to start a family; he coldly replies that he already has one. She calls him "no better than a snitch" and shoots him in the chest just as Stabler bursts in with Reyes and Whelan, having been monitoring her from outside the house. Duran dies of his wounds, and Bernanda is imprisoned for life for drug smuggling and murder.
External links[]
- Bernanda Menendez on the Law & Order Wiki
