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“ | A two-hour session will either kill them or cure them, and I don't care which as long as their Gold cards are still good. | „ |
~ Winthrop displaying her callousness towards her customers. |
Laura Winthrop is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "By Hooker, By Crook". She is the madam of an escort service who has one of her clients killed.
She was portrayed by Patricia Clarkson, who also portrayed Tammy Swanson 1 in Parks and Recreation, Ava Paige in The Maze Runner franchise, and Margaret White in the 2002 TV adaptation of Carrie.
Early life[]
Winthrop is from an "old money" family with connections to New York City's social and political elite going back decades; she is also highly accomplished in her own right, holding an MBA from Harvard. She uses her intelligence, connections, and business savvy to run an escort service called "Poppy Catering", posing it as a party planning company while secretly making millions providing wealthy men with discreet "companionship".
She avoids direct involvement as much as possible, leaving the day-to-day business to her top earner, who calls herself "Jasmine". Meanwhile, she uses the proceeds of her illegal activities, as well as her family name, to become one of the biggest socialites in the city.
When one of her regular customers, businessman John Diamond, has a heart attack while he is with one of her girls, Jolene Curtis, Winthrop orders Cookie Molina, who works as her hired muscle, to toss him out and made it look like a mugging. Molina robs Diamond and hits him over the head with a baseball bat. Unbeknownst to him, however, Diamond is still alive when he hits him, and falls into a coma; he later dies of his injuries.
"By Hooker, By Crook"[]
While investigating Diamond's murder, NYPD Homicide Sergeant Max Greevey and Detective Mike Logan trace his spending to Poppy Catering, and Greevey arrests Curtis while posing as a john. Curtis says that Diamond collapsed while they were having sex, and called Jasmine, who sent Cookie to get rid of Diamond. Greevey and Logan arrest Jasmine and Cookie and find out from the wife of one of the escort service's clients that Winthrop runs the business. They then arrest Winthrop in the middle of a dinner party at her house.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette charge Winthrop with promoting prostitution, but she manages to walk out of the courthouse on relatively light bail by claiming that she had no knowledge of her business being used for prostitution. Meanwhile, her clients all refuse to testify against her, and a few of them in city politics try, unsuccessfully, to bribe and threaten Stone and Robinette into dropping the case. Stone ultimately charges Withrop with second-degree murder in order to force her to make a deal to give up her corrupt political connections.
Stone makes a deal with Cookie to testify against Winthrop, who tells the jury that she often put the health of her girls and the johns in danger. He also calls Curtis, who has just tested HIV-positive, as a witness to testify about Winthrop's callousness. Winthrop testifies in her own defense that she requires her employees to get regular medical checkups and makes a point of firing anyone who tests positive for HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease. While cross-examining her, Stone asks if she has ever tried to help an employee who tests positive or warned customers who have slept with infected women; she admits that she has not.
Knowing that she will almost certainly be found guilty, Winthrop makes a deal with Stone to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and serve two and a half to five years in prison.
External links[]
- Laura Winthrop on the Law & Order Wiki
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