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| “ | You stupid boy! You stupid, hateful boy! | „ |
| ~ Roy cursing his son |
Roy Hines is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Pravda". He is a respected journalist who tries to kill his own son, Carl, for disgracing the family name by writing fake news articles, only to accidentally kill Carl's girlfriend.
He was portrayed by Glynn Turman.
Early life[]
Roy was a respected journalist who wrote several prize-winning newspaper articles for the New York Sentinel about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and who eventually became a high school journalism teacher. His son, Carl, followed in his footsteps by becoming a reporter at the Sentinel, and quickly became the newspaper's rising star by writing several well-received features articles under the mentorship of the paper's chief editor, Ben Elkins, who had been Roy's editor during his early career.
Unbeknownst to Roy and the Sentinel's readers, however, Carl was in fact both plagiarizing his stories or making them up out of whole cloth, while using non-existent "anonymous sources" to fool the newspaper's fact-checking department. Elkins secretly knew that the articles were fake, but he kept quiet about it because they increased the newspaper's circulation, and because his reputation and career would be ruined if his protégé was exposed as a fraud.
Eventually, however, Roy found out what Carl was doing after finding plagiarized quotes in his articles. He was both ashamed of and insulted by what Carl had done; he saw Carl's fake stories as a stain on the Hines family name and an affront to all the hard work he had to do to succeed as a Black man in journalism during an era in which Black reporters risked their lives just to do their jobs.
Unable to live with the shame of his son's actions, Roy decided to kill Carl and then himself, which would also free him of the intense sciatica pain he had suffered for years. When he broke into Carl's apartment with a gun, however, he found Carl's girlfriend Katya Jelenak, who also worked at the Sentinel, there, alone. Katya screamed, believing Roy to be a burglar, which caused Roy to panic and stab her to death with a pair of scissors.
"Pravda"[]
Detectives Robert Goren and G. Lynn Bishop of the NYPD's Major Case Squad investigate Katya's murder and question Carl, who says he was covering a story in Pennsylvania at the time of the murder. They initially suspect Elkins, who was also sleeping with Katya, and ask Roy about a benefit dinner Elkins claimed to have attended with him at the time of Katya's death, an alibi Roy confirms. Later that night, Roy tells Carl that Katya's murder had been "a wake-up call" and chastises his son to "stop messing up".
Goren and Bishop try to track down one of the sources in Carl's notes, only to find that the listed phone number doesn't exist; they also discover that Carl has not reported any expenses to the Sentinel's accounting department. Since his articles, which take place all over the country, would have required him to submit receipts, and because some details in them appear word-for-word in other articles in other newspapers, they believe that he is making up his stories. They theorize that either Carl or Elkins murdered Katya after she found out what Carl was doing.
To test the theory of Elkins as the killer, Goren and Bishop confront Carl about his fraud in front of Roy and say that Elkins must have killed Katya to preserve the Sentinel's reputation and his own career. Both Roy and Carl deny that the stories are fake, while Roy says that Elkins was outraged that Carl had "forgotten his place" by sleeping with Katya. He also tells Goren that Carl does not understand how lucky he is not to have had to fight his whole life just to be taken seriously.
The anger and resentment Roy directs at his son makes Goren suspicious, so he and Bishop search his office and find Carl's press clips, which contain plagiarized quotes. They also find out about his debilitating sciatica and find a recently cleaned .38 revolver. Goren theorizes that Roy figured out that Carl was creating fake articles and broke into his apartment to kill his son and himself, and that he killed Katya in a fit of panic after finding her there instead of Carl. He and Bishop find factual backing for this theory when they revisit the crime scene and find out that Carl had tried, unsuccessfully, to remove evidence; they realize his only reason for doing so would be to protect his father.
Goren and Bishop get a search warrant for Carl's apartment with help from Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver, who makes sure that both Carl and Roy are present for the search. When Goren brings up Carl's fraud and plagiarism, Roy says he is disappointed in his son for what he did. Goren also brings up Roy's revolver, and then says he intended to use it to kill Carl and himself, but that he ended up killing Katya when she surprised him. Upon realizing that his own father had planned to kill him, Carl angrily tells Roy that he had been smart enough to fool the best news editors in the world, and even Roy himself. Roy responds by calling Carl a "stupid, hateful boy". As Goren and Bishop arrest Roy, Carl demands, "How could you, Dad?" As he is being taken into police custody, he asks his son, "How could you?"
Roy is then imprisoned for life for murder.
External links[]
- Roy Hines on the Law & Order Wiki
