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| “ | Don't you get it, man? I'm doing you a favor! These people are ruining the country. Our country! They're killing innocent Americans, man. They need to be shipped back to China, where they belong! | „ |
| ~ Nelson justifying murdering several Asian-Americans to Detective Frank Cosgrove. |
John Nelson is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Camouflage". He is a white supremacist who murders several Asian-Americans in a mass shooting because he blames them for the spread of COVID-19.
He was portrayed by Ian Bell.
Overview[]
A white supremacist, Nelson particularly hates Asian-Americans, blaming them for the COVID-19 pandemic. A few months before the events of the episode, he lost his job as a New York Transit Authority worker because he was caught threatening Asian-American subway passengers.
He has a young daughter, Lacey, by his ex-girlfriend Jessica Farrell, but he refuses to pay child support.
In "Camouflage"[]
Obsessed with getting revenge against the Asian-Americans he blames for COVID and the loss of his job, Nelson goes into the New York subway armed with several assault rifles and opens fire on anyone he sees of Asian ethnicity, killing seven people and wounding dozens more. He then escapes through a subway tunnel and abandons the guns and ammunition, and goes to a friend's apartment in Rockaway to hide.
NYPD Homicide Detectives Frank Cosgrove and Jalen Shaw investigate the terrorist attack, and trace the weapons and ammunition to a local gun shop, where an employee admits to meeting with a homeless man who sells him the materials cheap. At his direction, Cosgrove and Shaw find the homeless man selling the remainder of the ammunition from Nelson's bag, which also contains a picture of Lacey. They find Lacey and Andrea, and the latter tells them where to find Nelson.
Cosgrove and Shaw, flanked by a SWAT team, go to Nelson's friend's apartment to arrest him, but he shoots at them as he tries to get away. The police soon surround him, however, and he rants that he is protecting the country from Asians as they take him into custody.
Nelson is charged with capital murder, and District Attorney Jack McCoy and Executive Assistant District Attorney Nolan Rice seek the death penalty against him, even though the latter personally opposes capital punishment. During Nelson's trial, Nelson's surviving victims testify that he only shot Asian-Americans, ignoring anyone who appeared to be of other ethnicities. His lawyer, Price's former law school classmate Andrea Rankin, surprises Rice by agreeing that Nelson committed a hate crime - which she then uses as a justification for an insanity plea, arguing that racism and bigotry are mental illnesses.
Price responds by showing the jury gruesome crime scene photos of the attack while painstakingly detailing Nelson's every move in the subway, as well as the wounds suffered by Nelson's victims, both living and dead. He then concludes his argument by stating that there is no way that a person suffering from genuine mental illness would be capable of committing a crime of that precision and scale; he then says that Nelson is not insane, but simply evil. The jury finds Nelson guilty of seven counts of murder and sentences him to death by lethal injection.
Trivia[]
- Nelson is inspired by multiple real-life criminals:
- Frank Robert James, the mass shooter responsible for the 2022 New York City Subway attack.
- Robert Aaron Long, the mass murderer responsible for the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings targeting the Asian community.
- Colin Ferguson, the mass murderer responsible for the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting.
- Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, who killed Vincent Chin in 1982.
External links[]
- John Nelson on the Law & Order Wiki
