| “ | That night, I had a cold - almost didn't go out. Glad I did, though. She was a particularly rancid piece of meat, 20 bucks a pop. 'Course, those were 1979 dollars. And this little junkie whore, weighed about 80 pounds. I remember lifting the bag so tight it lifted her clear off the ground. | „ |
| ~ Ridley bragging about the women he murdered |
Peter Ridley is a supporting antagonist from the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Hysteria". He is a police officer in the NYPD's Vice Squad; unbeknownst to his fellow officers, he is also a serial killer who preys on the very prostitutes he investigates.
He was portrayed by Garret M. Brown.
Background
Ridley was raised by his mother, a prostitute who would lock him out of their apartment while she serviced her clients, leaving him only Saltines for dinner. He grew up to hate women, and as a young man he assaulted two prostitutes and his ex-wife. Nevertheless, he managed to be accepted into the NYPD, despite multiple red flags in his psychiatric evaluation. He did not distinguish himself as a police officer, remaining a low-level member of the Vice Squad for 31 years - during which he raped and strangled 18 prostitutes, ritualistically posing their bodies so that, if placed next to each other, they would look like they were holding hands.
Hysteria
When a college student is found raped and strangled in a known prostitution area, Special Victims Unit detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson question Ridley and his partner, Sal D'Angelo; Ridley tries to misdirect them by mentioning that he had heard of similar murders committed in a different area of New York. However, they come to suspect that the killer is a police officer after questioning one of his surviving victims, who says that her attacker shined a police-issue flashlight in her eyes and wore gloves with fingerprint powder.
The detectives suspect D'Angelo at first, so SVU Captain Donald Cragen asks Detective Lennie Briscoe, who used to work in the same precinct as D'Angelo, about him. Briscoe says that, while he dislikes D'Angelo, he considers Ridley the "total wacko" of the pair, and tells Cragen about witnessing Ridley's violent mood swings during a precinct golf tournament. Cragen gets Ridley's personnel file, which reveals that he is likely facing early retirement because of disciplinary problems. Finally, Benson finds evidence linking Ridley to several unsolved homicides.
When the SVU detectives bring Ridley in for questioning, Ridley looks at crime scene photos of his victims, reliving the experience of killing them. Knowing that he's caught, Ridley calmly admits to having murdered women for 31 years, all under the NYPD's nose. However, he says that he didn't kill the college student (the murderer turns out to be her boyfriend). When Stabler tells Ridley that he will be sentenced to death regardless, Ridley replies that he wants all of his murders on the record, "for posterity". He is then presumably sentenced to death and executed.
