Nora Hodges

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“	Well, it's not as though he's an innocent victim, is it? He's a pedophile. He deserved it!	„
	~ Nora attempting to justify poisoning her granddaughter to scam Billy Tripley.

Nora Hodges is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Sick". She is a con artist who poisons her six-year-old granddaughter to make it look like she has cancer and falsely accuses wealthy pedophile Billy Tripley of molesting her, all so she can exploit the girl to make millions

She was portrayed by the late Cindy Williams.

Biography[]

Background[]

She is the grandmother of nine-year-old April Hodges, who was placed under her care after her parents abandoned her; she is also a con artist who uses April in her scams. Almost a year prior to the events of the episode, Hodges began poisoning her granddaughter's food with mercury to make it look as though she was suffering from leukemia, planning to exploit April's "illness" to make money. The con worked; she bilked several people out of $60,000 through bake sales, canister donations, and Internet solicitations, all purporting to help pay for April's "treatment".

Hodges read about how toy mogul Billy Tripley was being accused of child molestation by Jeremy "JJ" Ostilow Jr. (with his parents Jeremy Ostilow Sr. and Ann Ostilow having accepted Tripley's payout of $4 million for their silence and JJ's), prompting her to begin another scam to collect a generous amount of hush money from him.

"Sick"[]

Hodges sets her scheme into motion by taking April to Tripley's house during one of his many parties for ailing children and sneaking upstairs to the billionaire's bedroom, where she steals a strand of his hair from his hairbrush that she later plants in April's underwear. Hodges then begins coaching her granddaughter on what to say about Tripley, even creating a scrapbook of information about him that she quizzes her from daily. Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit, who are investigating child sexual abuse accusations against Tripley, bring Hodges and April in after April's counselor comes to them with his suspicions that the girl had been molested.

However, her scam finally comes to light when a private investigator hired by Tripley's legal team catches her shoplifting at a department store, attempting to steal $200 worth of merchandise. She tells Benson and Stabler while in custody that she shoplifted to get new clothes for April because the cancer treatments had wiped her out financially. However, medical examiner Melinda Warner reveals that the pelvic x-ray she took of April during her rape trauma exam showed that a bone marrow biopsy was never performed on her, meaning that she never had cancer. Dr. Kyle Beresford discloses that April had been suffering from mercury poisoning for almost a year, which has caused permanent damage to her body, and April would likely have died if not for the medical examination.

Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak goes to talk to Hodges and her lawyer Cleo Conrad at Rikers Island. Hodges claims that something must be wrong with her, and Conrad says that she suffers from Munchausen by Proxy. Novak dismissed the defense, saying that the fact that Hodges orchestrated April's false claim revealed that she knew exactly what she was doing. Hodges tries to justify her actions by saying that Tripley is a pedophile who got what he deserved, which Novak counters by saying that her deception would make it easier for him to get away with sexually abusing other children in the future. Novak tells Conrad that she will not charge Hodges for the Tripley scam, but rather for child abuse and grand larceny, and that she plans to seek the maximum sentence for Hodges. When Hodges pleads with Novak to think about her granddaughter, a disgusted Novak says that she will add another charge of attempted murder against her, and that the jury will see that Hodges is motivated not by mental illness, but by greed.

Hodges is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree charges of fraud and attempted murder. April, meanwhile, is put in foster care.

Trivia[]

As the Billy Tripley case is based on the accusations of child abuse against Michael Jackson, Nora is presumably based on Janet Arvizo, the mother of one of the children allegedly abused by Jackson who was accused of using her son to run a cancer scam.

External links[]

Nora Hodges on the Law and Order Wiki

Navigation[]

Villains

Exiled: A Law & Order Movie
Gianni Uzielli