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| “ | Shut up, you stupid bitch! This is the last time I'm gonna take care of you! | „ |
| ~ Crandall cursing his wife and partner-in-crime, Denise Cormier. |
Edward Crandall, also known as Edwin Todd, is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Greed". He is a con artist who sets up his wealthy wife to be raped and murdered so he can inherit her money.
He was portrayed by Henry Winkler, who also portrayed King Julien XII in All Hail King Julien.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Crandall and his wife, Denise Cormier, are both con artists who swindle wealthy people by marrying them, draining their bank accounts, and disappearing. Crandall steals the identity of an Edwin Todd and marries a recently widowed heiress, Jessica Blaine, claiming to have been a friend of her late husband. Cormier marries wealthy widower Curtis Johansen. Crandall and Cormier then hatch a plan to defraud their spouses.
Crandall uses Blaine's money to open a restaurant that is in fact merely a front business; he also gets Blaine to put the bulk of her money into it. Cormier, meanwhile, persuades Johansen to invest in the restaurant as well. She then uses Johansen's semen to falsify a rape, claiming that she was assaulted by a burglar. Six months later, she attacks Blaine with a crowbar and plants Johansen's semen, intending to frame Johansen for both crimes.
"Greed"[]
When Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigate Blaine's rape, they ask Crandall if anything had been stolen from their house; he replies that he was missing his Rolex watch. This briefly leads to a locksmith named Danny Ryan being arrested for the rapes, but he is ultimately found innocent. Crandall, meanwhile, plays the devoted husband to Blaine, who was rendered a paraplegic by the assault.
Eventually, however, Benson and Stabler find the real Edwin Todd, a 72-year-old man who lives outside of New York and has never even met Blaine; they realize that Crandall is a con man. The detectives suspect him of setting up the attack and conspiring with Cormier to steal her husband's money as well as Blaine's. While investigating the pair, the detectives discover that they share an apartment together as "Mr. and Mrs. Brown", and that they both have criminal records in Canada.
Benson and Stabler explain the situation to both Blaine and Johansen; the latter realizes that he has been scammed, but the former refuses to believe that her husband conspired to kill her. Sensing that he is in danger of getting caught, Crandall "confesses" to Blaine that he had an affair with Cormier, who attacked her out of jealousy. She believes and forgives him and refuses to testify against him. Crandall, meanwhile, asserts that she could not testify against him if she wanted to because spouses cannot be made to testify against each other.
With help from Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot's help, however, the detectives find out that Crandall and Cormier got married in Mexico a few years before, making their marriages to Blaine and Johansen legally invalid; therefore, Blaine and Johansen can testify against them after all. Crandall tries to charm Blaine into taking him back, but she tells him to go to hell, having finally seen him for who he is. He and Cormier are then presumably imprisoned for fraud and attempted murder.
Trivia[]
- Henry Winkler is the maternal first cousin of actor and comedian Richard Belzer, who portrayed John Munch, one of the main protagonists of Homicide: Life on the Street, and one of the deuteragonists of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. However, neither Winkler nor Belzer shared a scene together in the episode the former guest-starred in.
- Crandall is partly inspired by Raymond Fernandez, the leader of a killer couple targeting vulnerable women to swindle and murder.
External Links[]
- Edward Crandall on the Law & Order Wiki
