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Luis Pacheco is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Punk". He is a gangster and assassin who murders corrections officer Charlie Tyner at the behest of Alice Simonelli, an inmate who Tyner is sexually abusing.
He was portrayed by Jacinto Taras Riddick, who also portrayed Rafael Zapata in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Overview[]
Pacheco is a freelance assassin with ties to the Paganos prison gang in New York City. He has performed dozens of murders, making him one of the most feared criminals in the city, and yet he always manages to evade detection and, thus, arrest.
While he is a cold-blooded killer, however, he does care for at least one person: His sister Candy, who is incarcerated. He regularly does favors for her such as putting money in her commissary account and using his connections in the prison to scare off inmates who bother her.
"Punk"[]
Candy sends a message to Pacheco through the "prison express" of letters delivered through a chain of intermediaries - inmates' spouses, partners, and friends - asking him to kill corrections officer Charlie Tyner on behalf of her cellmate, Alice Simonelli. Tyner had been sexually abusing Simonelli for months and had only weeks before had one of his fellow guards threaten her daughter to keep her from exposing him, so Pacheco agrees to kill him as a favor to Candy.
Pacheco stalks Tyner to his neighborhood bar and ambushes him as he leaves. He easily overpowers Tyner and forces him to his knees as a way of demeaning and humiliating him just as he had done to Simonelli, and then he shoots him in the head at point-blank range, killing him.
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis and Assistant District Attorney Abbie Carmichael investigate the murder and connect it to Simonelli, who had racked up several disciplinary infractions from Tyner - unaware that Tyner had used those demerits as an excuse to abuse her. When Simonelli refuses to talk to Carmichael, who had put her in prison in the first place, Briscoe and Curtis interrogate Candy, getting her to admit to Pacheco's involvement by threatening to have her sentence increased and her inmate privileges taken away. Briscoe and Curtis arrest both Pacheco and Simonelli, and Carmichael and Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy charge them with murder.
During the trial, Simonelli's lawyer, Danielle Melnick, manages to convince the trial judge to exclude the gun Pacheco used to kill Tyner as evidence, threatening the case against him. By the end of the episode, however, McCoy and Carmichael make a deal with Simonelli in which she would testify against him in return for a reduced sentence. Simonelli's testimony serves as damning proof of Pacheco's guilt, and he is convicted of murder and imprisoned for life.
External life[]
- Luis Pacheco on the Law & Order Wiki
