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| “ | I saved those girls. They're alive because of me. Me! I gave them life! | „ |
| ~ Michael Williams rationalizing his crimes. |
Michael Williams is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Imprisoned Lives". He is a pedophile who kidnaps, rapes, and imprisons several young girls, creating a cult-like "family" of the children he forces them to bear.
He was portrayed by the late Michael Massee, who also portrayed Funboy in The Crow, Jacob Dawes in Criminal Minds, Spellbinder in the animated series The Batman, Gustav Fiers in The Amazing Spider-Man franchise, and Ira Gaines in 24.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Williams is a pedophile who preys on young girls. He used his job as a maintenance worker to scope out his victims before he kidnaps them. He has abducting three girls over an 18-year period, snatching them with the help of his first victim, April Hendricks, whom he brainwashed into believing he saved her from her drug addict mother's sexually abusive boyfriend. He keeps his victims chained up in the basement of the house owned by Agnes Minetti, a friend of his mother.
He makes his victims call him "Pa" and Hendricks "Ma", and controls their every move, telling them when they can and cannot go outside. He rapes them until they mature past his age preference, and then has April help him kidnap another young girl.
When he leaves the house, he returns to his wife Dagmara, with whom he has two sons and he was a loving father to them. He fathers another child with one of his victims, Kayla Greyland, his second victim, who gives birth to a son she names Buddy. Williams would keep the child isolated, never letting him go past the house. Dagmara and their two sons are unaware of his crimes and believe Minetti is his mother.
After Minetti dies, Williams buries her in the backyard and does not report her death so he can continue to collect her Social Security checks. He poses as Minetti's son Tony to avoid making her neighbors suspicious. He also told neighbors that Buddy was actually his nephew.
"Imprisoned Lives"[]
Williams takes Buddy to Times Square but abandons him when a police officer approaches them. Realizing that his crimes would soon be discovered, he takes April and Kayla and attempts to leave town, leaving his third victim, Rhonda Davis, for dead because his abuse had left her malnourished and brain damaged. After Kayla works up the strength to escape, he leaves April at a McDonalds, and goes back to his other residence as if nothing happened.
The NYPD's Special Victims Unit finds April and interrogates her about Williams' whereabouts, but she is too traumatized to give them any useful information. Fortunately, Kayla manages to tell the police and press her real identity, before she is taken to the hospital. She tells Detective Olivia Benson that Buddy is her son, but that he does not know who she really is, as "Pa" had made the boy believe she was her sister, "Sissy". Moments later, the police find Minetti's body.
Benson investigates the case further and discovers that, as a child, April had been friendly with her school's janitor, Michael Williams, who was questioned about her disappearance. Detectives Fin Tutuola and Nick Amaro go to Williams' residence and arrest him on suspicion of having murdered Minetti, as well as raping and kidnapping the three women.
Tutuola and Amaro interrogate Williams, while Benson and Detective Amanda Rollins question Dagmara, who insists that Williams is a good man and refuses to believe he did anything wrong. Williams, meanwhile, denies having killed Minetti, and insists that he "saved" his victims from lives of drug abuse and poverty. When Amaro presses him about the rapes, he says that, after kidnapping Kayla, he no longer "needed" to rape children. Finally, he admits that he is Buddy's father, and justifies his actions by saying that he provided the boy with the only home he has ever known. He also callously revealed that he never truly cared about Hendricks. despite her previously being loyal to him
After deciding to provide Williams' victims with counseling and having Hendricks institutionalized, a disgusted Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba declares that he will make sure that Williams goes to prison for the rest of his life. SVU were also okay with this because of the nature of his crimes.
Trivia[]
- Williams is primarily inspired by Ariel Castro, a sexual predator responsible for a series of kidnappings and rapes over years of captivity, targeting three girls in Cleveland, Ohio, even siring a daughter with one of them. The girls escaped and were rescued, Castro being arrested and hanging himself in jail. His wife also died from cancer as a result of brain trauma from Castro beating her viciously.
- Williams is also inspired by Thomas Hose, the abductor and rapist of Tanya Nicole Kach.
- He bears many similarities to Old Nick, the villain of the novel and film Room; both kidnap young women and hold them prisoner, and both force their victims to bear their children.
External links[]
- Michael Williams on the Law & Order Wiki
