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| “ | If you turn around, I'll kill you. | „ |
| ~ Ashford to Catherine Lansing before torturing her for 36 hours |
Michael Ashford is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Agony". He is a sadistic psychopath who brutally tortures a woman at the instigation of his sister, who is dating the woman's ex-husband.
He was portrayed by Alexander Robert Scott.
Early life[]
Ashford inherited his father's woodworking studio, Ashford Woodworking, when the elder Ashford retired. Beneath a calm, professional exterior, he was a violent psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain upon innocent people.
His sister, Michelle, was apparently aware of his true nature, as she asked him to kill Catherine Lansing, her boyfriend Roger Lansing's ex-wife whom he never got over; she asked him to "get rid of the competition" and inflict as pain upon her as he could to "make it look like some psycho did it".
Ashford stalked Catherine to her apartment and broke in, ordering her at knife point not to turn around. He then tortured her for 36 hours, cutting, burning, and sexually assaulting her with his woodworking tools. He left her to die, but he did not count on a mail carrier approaching the apartment just as he was exiting the building. He panicked and stabbed the man three times in the chest, killing him, before walking away calmly as if nothing had happened.
"Agony"[]
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis investigate Catherine's attempted murder, eventually arresting Matt Bergstrom, a serial killer who has tortured and murdered at least six women with a cruelty and brutality that resembles that which was inflicted upon her.
Bergstrom makes a deal with Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Abbie Carmichael to confess to trying to kill Catherine and lead them to where he buried his victims' bodies in return for a prison sentence of 25 years to life instead of the death penalty and legal immunity for the six women he murdered. Unbeknownst to them, however, Bergstrom has never even met Catherine, and he is only pleading guilty to her assault as part of a plan to get away with the murders he actually committed.
Meanwhile, Ashford and his sister slip an anonymous note under her door threatening to hurt her again in hopes that it will scare Roger away for good. (It backfires, however; Roger becomes even more focused on Catherine than before and starts phasing Michelle out of his life.) Realizing that they arrested the wrong person, Briscoe, Curtis, and Lieutenant Anita Van Buren re-examine the crime scene evidence and realize that one of the wounds Catherine suffered was caused by a woodworking tool. Briscoe and Curtis question Ashford at his work and arrest him after finding an awl on the premises that would have caused the same kind of wound.
Realizing that he is caught, Ashford confesses to attacking and torturing Catherine at his sister's instigation, which results in Michelle's arrest, as well. McCoy and Carmichael turn both of them over to federal prosecutors, as killing a postal worker is a federal offense, and they are both sentenced to life in prison without parole. They also manage to trick Bergstrom into pleading guilty to a murder he committed in Texas in order to put him in prison for life, as well.
External links[]
- Michael Ashford on the Law & Order Wiki
