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Garrett Perle and Louise Karnaki are the main antagonists of the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Game".
They are portrayed by Seth Gabel and Trisha LaFache, respectively.
History[]
Louise Karnaki was in love with the gaming addict Garrett Perle and submitted to his demands. When Perle wanted to kill in a crime spree based on his favorite game, NtenCity, after it wasn't enough to create his own fan designs into the game itself, Karnaki complied. She lured lonely sex fiend Larry Tauber, who was years older than them both, out of a strip club to set him up with a prostitute named Melody Quinn just for Perle's plans. The murderous couple then beat and kicked Quinn to death after they ran her over with a sports car, followed by Perle responding to an unidentified person calling Quinn with police dialect learned from the game as a taunt after the murder. Both then stole her items before driving away from the scene. Perle then paid the game creator Stuart Davis to send Tauber a harassing email to make him commit suicide. Perle and Karnaki afterwards beat and kicked Tauber's corpse and stealing his loot also as part of the game.
The SVU detectives responded to the crime scene as they suspected one of Quinn's clients ran over, raped, and beaten her to death. After the detectives interviewed a client of hers who was on a client list of her pimp Eddie Shaw, Detective Elliot Stabler interviewed another client who was the last person Quinn ever met as his DNA inside her would match, the client admitted to having sex with her the night she died, but denied raping or killing her. He then answered Stabler's question that the car he owns is a Lincoln Navigator, which was not the type of vehicle that was used to run over Quinn. The detectives then concluded that none of her clients had access to black sports cars as they cleared them along with Quinn's family and friends as they all had alibis.
A young boy named Dickie Stabler asked his father questions about the woman, and whether NtenCity was related to her death. Thanks to Dickie's help as he also plays the game to show them parallel sequences between it and the murder case, Stabler, Captain Donald Cragen, and Detective Fin Tutuola now determine that Quinn's fate was based on the same game her murderers played. Dr. George Huang gave SVU points regarding the possible identification of the culprit addicted to NtenCity.
The detectives tracked the young couple with the help of two local strip club dancers hired to entertain Tauber prior to his death, who identified Perle via sketch artist as their cameras did not work, as well as Karnaki's phone calls to Tauber. They first brought the unamused Karnaki to the precinct where she denied her involvement with Perle or their crimes, stating she was at home. However, she soon changes her attitude as Stabler shows evidence from her boots to her as he tells her they will charge her with the murder of Quinn once the DNA of the latter matches the blood on Karnaki's boots. Now terrified, Karnaki pleaded with her lawyer to help her, but ADA Casey Novak would offer nothing because of her crime, but offered to put a good word for her to the judge in the account of sentencing if the teenager collaborated with them. Stabler demanded the name of a male suspect drawn in the sketch as Karnaki implored him not to tell him she had told them, but the detective displayed no sympathy for her as he asked again, in which she gave up Perle as her accomplice.
Perle set up a trap using a degaussing loop that wiped his hard drive when the police arrested him at his residence, but Quinn's blood and tissues were found on the couple's clothes worn during the murder. Perle bragged in interrogation about his love for violent games, but pretended to not know what it was like to kill someone by saying he was jealous cops were warranted to kill.
As the pair reveal more about Tauber in their roles, the authorities gave them psychological evaluations requested by Huang to determine whether they were innocent pawns that were mentally controlled by Tauber or cold-blooded murderers on their own will. Afterwards, Huang correctly stated that Perle is a sociopath who has a clear conscience but does not regard while Karnaki simply follows his demands as a woman in love.
In court, the couple tried to say they "weren't" competent in their gaming addictions and that Tauber "controlled" him and Karnaki. But when Davis' self-deleting email got found, the prosecution confronted Perle on the stand. Perle got amused and boasted he thought the crimes and even the trial were all a joke, which ruined his and Karnaki's defense arguments.
Both Perle and Karnaki were found guilty of murder in the second degree and imprisoned for life. As Karnaki shed in tears at hearing the verdict, Perle made one more violent gesture in court while being escorted out.
External links[]
- Garrett Perle on the Law and Order Wiki
- Louise Karnaki on the Law and Order Wiki
