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| “ | I wasn't afraid of him. He was eating sausage like a pig. There was a knife. I picked it up. He just looked at me... and laughed. He called me a snitch, and then he turned away. Like I'm nothing! I just kept stabbing until he didn't move anymore. I am not a coward! | „ |
| ~ Leon confessing to killing his father. |
Leon Iliescu is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Securitate". He is the son of Romanian gangster Alex Iliescu who helps him murder his uncle Nicholas to make him proud, and then murders Alex when he casts him aside.
He was portrayed by Morgan Weisser.
Early life[]
Leon is the son of Alex Iliescu, a former member of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu's secret police. Leon idolized his father, but the elder Iliescu ignored his son, mocking him as weak and calling him "Mouse", and sent him to the country to be raised by servants. When Leon asked his father to let him live with him, Alex sent him to his brother Nicholas and his wife Karen in New York City to raise him. Nicholas and Karen tried to raise Leon to be a law-abiding citizen, but the boy spent his childhood and adolescence dreaming of being feared and powerful, just like his father.
After the Ceaușescu regime fell, Alex fled Romania to New York City and became a small-time gangster. As a front for his crimes, he worked for Nicholas in the latter's furniture store, where he once again crossed paths with his son, who was now a young man. Leon tried to please his father by helping him with forge copies of customers' credit cards to steal their money, but Alex still ignored him.
Nicholas eventually found out about Alex's credit card scam and told Karen and Alex that he was going to turn in his brother to the police. Seeing a chance to finally win his father's love, Leon told Alex that Nicholas was going to the police, but is stunned and horrified when Alex killed Nicholas, whom he loved dearly. Nevertheless, Leon was thrilled when his father started treating him with respect for the first time in his life, so he did not go to the police or tell Karen the truth about what happened to Nicholas.
In "Securitate"[]
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan investigate Nicholas' murder, at first suspecting two drug addicts found with his wallet. They eventually learn that the addicts merely stole Nicholas' belongings after finding his corpse and talk to Alex after finding his business card among the stolen items. Alex claims to know nothing about his brother's murder, but when his right-hand man and fellow former secret policeman Tommy Zanescu is arrested for participation in the credit card scam, he tells Briscoe and Logan that Alex killed Nicholas in return for the promise of a reduced prison sentence.
Briscoe and Logan arrest Alex, but his lawyer manages to get the charges against him dropped on a technicality. He then goes home, where he finds Leon waiting for him, asking to move in with him. Alex, who no longer needs his son's help, tells him to go away and calls him a "snitch". Angry and hurt, Leon impulsively grabs a knife and threatens him with it, but Alex merely laughs at him, provoking Leon to stab him to death in a fit of rage.
Karen confesses to killing Alex to protect Leon, but Briscoe and Logan quickly uncover evidence proving that Leon murdered his father and arrest him. Leon's lawyer enters a plea of "cultural insanity" on his behalf, claiming that Leon was traumatized as a child from witnessing his father torture and murder political dissidents back in Romania, and that he was conditioned to see killing as a sign of strength and power.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette do not believe that Leon's defense is real, but they are concerned that it might sway a jury, so they have forensic psychiatrist Elizabeth Olivet evaluate him. Leon tells Olivet that, as a child, he regularly saw his father torture and kill people and that he admired the power and wealth that he gained through his cruelty.
When Stone and Robinette question Zanescu about Leon's childhood, however, he laughs aside the idea that Alex killed people in front of his son and tells them the truth about Alex sending Leon away at a young age. He also tells them that Leon informed on Nicholas to his father. Stone and Robinette confront Leon with this information in front of a heartbroken Karen, who accuses her nephew of betraying Nicholas. Leon then tearfully confesses that he killed his father to prove that he is not a coward or a "mouse". He then pleads guilty to manslaughter in the first degree and goes to prison for killing his father.
External links[]
- Leon Illiescu on the Law & Order Wiki
