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| “ | I help people! | „ |
| ~ Garrett trying to justify her murders |
Hope Garrett is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Vulnerable". She is the director of an assisted living facility for elderly people who kills her residents with drug overdoses in order to feel powerful and important.
She was portrayed by Mary Kay Place.
Early life[]
Garrett suffers from Malignant Hero Syndrome and Munchausen's By Proxy, which both drive her to make other people sick in order to save them, and thus feel powerful and important.
She worked as a nurse for many years at a retirement community called Oak Glade, where she poisoned multiple residents with epinephrine, killing seven. She was not arrested for any of these murders, but her superiors suspected foul play and quietly fired her in order to avoid bad press. She was also stripped of her nursing license.
She eventually got an administrative job at another elderly care facility, Jubilee Towers, rising up the ranks until she became the facility's manager. There, she poisoned two residents, once again with epinephrine, and resuscitated them, earning the praise and attention she craved. On Christmas Eve 2001, however, she poisoned an old woman who died.
"Vulnerable"[]
When Bess Sherman, a senile resident of Jubilee Towers, is sexually assaulted, Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigate and question Garrett, who does everything she can to incriminate nurse Hal Shipman, who has been cited before for behaving inappropriately with patients.
Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot finds a settled wrongful death suit that had been filed by a female resident's family against Jubilee Towers a few years earlier that contained a non-disclosure agreement, which makes the detectives suspicious that the business is hiding something.
Cabot gets a court order for the victim's body to be exhumed, and Medical Examiner Melinda Warner finds an injection mark on the victim's neck that is unaccounted for in her medical records. Because the body had been embalmed, however, it is impossible to tell if the woman had been poisoned.
Benson and Stabler question Garrett about the lawsuit, and she says that no one at Jubilee Towers was to blame for the woman's death, and excuses herself. Moments later, Bess goes into cardiac arrest, causing a code blue emergency. She is able to be stabilized, however, and Garrett takes the credit for saving her. She also accuses Shipman, whom she has just fired, of trying to kill Bess.
Benson and Stabler arrest Shipman, who confesses to sexually assaulting Bess but insists that he did not try to kill her, claiming that he had been hacking into the nursing home's computer to steal drugs. SVU Detectives John Munch and Fin Tutuola check the computer's history and confirm Shipman's alibi, meaning that only one person could have tried to kill Bess - Garrett. Benson and Stabler question several of Garrett's employees, who say that she has been present for several code blue emergencies and saved several residents' lives, although three died on her watch. The detectives find records of Garrett ordering massive quantities of epinephrine that correspond with dates of code blue emergencies, proving her guilt. They arrest her as she is trying to explain Bess' cardiac episode to her family.
Cabot indicts Garrett for seven counts of murder and several counts of attempted murder. During the trial, Garrett repeatedly interrupts the proceedings, claiming to have saved countless lives while rationalizing the murders by saying that her victims were "going to die anyway". She makes such a scene that she has to be dragged, literally kicking and screaming, out of court. She is found guilty of every charge against her and executed.
Trivia[]
- Garrett is primarily inspired by serial killer Kristen Gilbert. She is generally loosely derived from the "angel of death" serial killer profile, with some details of her crimes evoking other angel-of-death killers, including Norwegian serial killer Arnfinn Nesset.
External links[]
- Hope Garrett on the Law & Order Wiki
