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| “ | Petra was a stripper living off the proceeds of Sergei's victims. His sister Tatiana decided where the illegals would work off their debts. And Amanda was washing off the blood from their money. Those bitches lost their innocence way before I was even born! | „ |
| ~ Nikolai denigrating his victims. |
Nikolai Rossovitch (Russian: Николай Россович, Nikolay Rossovich), aka Gavin Sipes, is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Disappearing Acts". He is a serial rapist who targets women connected to a Russian crime syndicate, blaming them for his having to grow up in the FBI's Witness Protection Program.
He was portrayed by Tom Guiry.
Early life[]
Nikolai was the son of gangster Gregory Rossovitch and his wife Anna, who ran fraud and embezzlement scams for Russian mob boss Sergei Pearlman in Los Angeles. Eventually, Anna got greedy and started skimming off the top; Pearlman found out what she was doing and killed her by bombing her car, while also murdering Gregory's parents. Fearing that he and 11-year-old Nikolai were next, Gregory entered the FBI's Witness Protection Program and took his son with him, receiving new identities and federal protection in exchange for providing information about Pearlman's crime syndicate. The FBI faked their deaths by making it look like they had perished in the car bombing that killed Anna.
Over the next several years, Nikolai and Gregory were moved to new locations and given new identities several times, including one incident in which a 13-year-old Nikolai accidentally blew their cover when he introduced himself to a classmate using his real name, having forgotten his new one. He grew to hate the mob for robbing him of his childhood, and nurtured violent fantasies of revenge against them and everyone they held dear. He also began gambling and got addicted to the rush, throwing away huge sums of money in underground poker games, which often led to him and Gregory getting relocated because he was attracting too much attention from organized crime.
Six months before the events of the episode, the FBI relocated Gregory and Nikolai to New York City, where they ran a gym together under the names Peter and Gavin Sipes. Nikolai kept gambling until Gregory had to cut him off financially, and he ended up getting deep into debt with bookie Joe Tucci, who threatened to kill him unless he paid up. It was also at about this time that Nikolai was diagnosed with type II diabetes.
Nikolai blamed the Russian mob for his problems and made his long-held fantasies of revenge against them a reality by beating and raping Petra Ivanka, a stripper in a club Pearlman owned, as well as Pearlman's mistress. He then beat and raped Pearlman's sister Tatiana as she returned from a chemotherapy session to treat her uterine cancer. He was never caught for these rapes because both victims died shortly after he attacked them - Tatiana when she succumbed to her cancer, and Petra when Pearlman had her killed after she went to the police about her rape, fearing that she would reveal secrets about his business.
"Disappearing Acts"[]
Nikolai stalks his next intended victim, Amanda Curry, a corrupt accountant who launders Pearlman's dirty money, to her office. There, he breaks in and rapes, tortures, and sodomizes her before urinating on her in a final display of hatred and contempt. Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigate her rape, but she is arrested by federal agents for money laundering and tax fraud before they get a chance to question her.
Crime scene technicians recover DNA from the urine left at the scene that connects to the rapes of Petra and Tatiana. They write in their report that the rapist is probably in his 40s or 50s and doesn't know he has diabetes, reasoning that a younger diabetic would have learned as a child how to manage the disease. Because both women had worked out at Nikolai and Gregory's gym, Benson and Stabler go there to question Gregory, their main suspect, but end up talking to Nikolai, who introduces himself as "Gavin". Once he learns what they think Gregory has done, he calls his father to warn him, but they end up detaining him for questioning.
Benson and Stabler bring Gregory to the SVU station house, where he is recognized by Michael Kerring, a petty criminal arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, but whom Gregory pretends not to know. Gregory vehemently denies raping anybody, but he also refuses to volunteer his DNA, fearing exposure as a federal informant. Benson and Stabler try to talk to Curry again, only to find that she has been removed from her holding cell and that all records of her having been there have been erased. Detectives John Munch and Fin Tutuola go through Gregory and Nikolai's tax records and discover that they have multiple Social Security cards, leading them suspect that father and son are both in Witness Protection.
Munch and Tutuola go to the drunk tank to interrogate Kerring, who says that he thought he recognized Gregory as one of Pearlman's underlings, but then says he must have been mistaken because the man he knew was killed years earlier in a car bombing after talking to the FBI. Benson and Stabler try to track Gregory and Nikolai down, only to find that they abruptly left town and that U.S. Attorney Claudia Williams, who is handling the case for the government, has sold their house. With Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot in tow, they serve Williams with a warrant to turn Gregory over to their custody, but she refuses because doing so would jeopardize her investigation of Pearlman.
As a compromise, Williams provides Benson and Stabler with a blood sample from Gregory, which does not match the DNA from the rapes; his Y-chromosome does match, however, which serves as conclusive proof that Nikolai committed them. After Williams tells them about Nikolai's gambling addiction, Benson and Stabler interrogate Tucci and find out that Gregory paid as much of Nikolai's debt as he could. They then question Gregory, who says that U.S. Federal Marshals are schedules to escort Nikolai to have one final meeting with him before they are both moved to separate locations. When they follow Nikolai's FBI security detail, however, they find him sobbing over his father's dead body, Gregory having been murdered by Pearlman's thugs to keep him quiet.
Nikolai is charged with three counts of rape in the first degree, but Benson and Stabler's jobs are still on the line for interfering with a federal case. After learning from Tucci that Nikolai paid off his gambling debts shortly after his father's murder, Stabler interrogates Nikolai, who rants that his victims deserved what he did to them because they profited from the mob's crimes. When Stabler accuses him of setting up his own father to be murdered, Nikolai tearfully admits to betraying his father to Pearlman so he would give him money to pay off his debts and save his own life. Benson and Stabler arrest Pearlman, but, before he can testify, the mob boss sends an assassin to shoot him and his FBI bodyguard dead, meaning he will never be charged with his crimes.
External links[]
- Nikolai Rossovitch on the Law & Order Wiki
