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| “ | You're all alike. Every last one of you. | „ |
| ~ Bill Harris revealing the depths of his misogyny. |
William "Bill" Harris is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Behave". He is a serial rapist who stalks and repeatedly rapes his victims for years so that they live in fear of him.
He was portrayed by James LeGros.
Biography
Harris is a sadistic serial rapist who stalks and repeatedly rapes women several times over a period of years, returning to assault them again whenever he feels the urge to make a woman "behave" by doing whatever he says. He uses his job as a traveling salesman for a medical supply company to rape women all over the country, stealing their driver's licenses so he can keep track of them and rape them whenever he pleases. His "comfort zone" of victims work in hospitals, including doctors, nurses, administrators, and even patients.
He treats one such victim, Vicki Sayers, with particular brutality. He first raped her in 1995, when she was working as a candy striper at a hospital in New York City. He took her driver's license and threatened to kill her parents if she told anyone. Three years later, he again attacked Vicki, who by then was a sophomore at Hudson University; he broke into her apartment, tied her up with duct tape, and raped her repeatedly until the next day. He raped her a third time in 2000 in Los Angeles, a week before her wedding, which she called off afterwards because she was too traumatized. Finally, in 2011, he found her again in New York City, living like a hermit because she was so afraid of him, and attacked and raped her in an alley. Every time he raped her, he told her to "behave" herself.
"Behave"
Vicki is taken to a hospital after the fourth rape, where Special Victims Unit detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler try to question her. Terrified, she runs out of the hospital and back to her apartment, which she almost never leaves. Benson tracks her down and convinces her to have a rape kit done, and Vicki tells her the whole story of what Harris did to her.
Benson and Stabler take a police sketch of the rapist, made from Vicki's description, to a hotel where a bottle of lubricant that the rapist dropped is sold. The desk clerk says it resembles Harris, a frequent guest, and Benson and Stabler take him in for questioning. He stands in a lineup, and Vicki identifies him as her rapist. Harris has an alibi, however; the night of the rape, he was in Providence, Rhode Island for a trade show. Vicki runs up to him and begs his forgiveness, but he pretends not to know her.
Benson eventually discovers that Harris sneaked out of his hotel room and drove to New York City to rape Vicki. Benson resolves to give Harris a taste of his own medicine; she, Stabler, and fellow SVU detective Fin Tutuola follow Harris everywhere he goes, and out him as a rapist at a trade show. Humiliated and enraged, he threatens Benson and Vicki, and reveals the extent of his misogyny by snarling, "You're all alike, every last one of you." From this statement, Benson deduces that he has other victims, and discovers open rape investigations in several states that fit Harris' M.O.
Unfortunately, the rape kits in nearly every case are either degraded or lost. Benson finally catches a break in Los Angeles, where detective Rex Winters tells her that Harris has rented a storage space for the past 10 years, that he has a warrant to search. Benson and Winters find photographs and video tapes of all of Harris' victims, along with their driver's licenses and detailed notes about their movements spanning years. Winters says that the cases against Harris in Los Angeles have all passed the statute of limitations, but that Benson still has a chance in New York.
Harris is charged with raping Vicki, but catches another break when Judge Elizabeth Donnelly says there is not enough evidence for a trial because the DNA is too degraded, and lets him go. While examining the evidence again, however, Benson realizes that the duct tape Harris used to bind Vicki must still be in an evidence locker. Sure enough, the detectives find the duct tape, which has Vicki's and Harris' DNA on it. Benson and Stabler arrest Harris for kidnapping, a crime that will put him in prison for twenty-five years, and take him to their station house, where Vicki is waiting. Panicked, Harris tells Vicki he loves her and did not rape her, but she is unmoved. As Benson and Stabler lock him up, Vicki throws Harris' own words back in his face: "Behave yourself".
External Links
- Bill Harris on the Law & Order Wiki
