| “ | What do you want me to say, that I'm sorry? OK, I'm sorry. He was my father... I didn't want this to happen. | „ |
| ~ Sean faking remorse for killing his father. |
Sean McKinnon is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Pride and Joy". He is a sociopathic teenager who abuses, and eventually murders, his own father.
He was portrayed by Gabriel Olds, who also portrayed Robert Parker in Criminal Minds and Paul Carson in Dead Rising.
Early life[]
Sean was the oldest child and only son of Frank McKinnon, an apartment building superintendent, and his wife Katherine; he also had a younger sister, Maureen. He was intellectually gifted, getting into an elite private school on an academic scholarship and winning early admission to Princeton University. He was nevertheless filled with rage and shame over his family's working-class lifestyle, aspiring instead to the economic privilege and social status of his classmates. He took over the management of his family's finances, saying he wanted to better their situation.
He was especially ashamed of his father, seeing him as a failure and an embarrassment, even though Frank worked 12-hour days to afford his expensive school tuition. Sean eventually started taking out his aggression on Frank, beating him so often that he frequently had to go to the hospital. Frank claimed every time that he had injured himself while working, while Katherine was too afraid of her son to tell anyone what he was doing to her husband.
When Frank showed up at a school function in his work clothes, Sean was embarrassed and angry. During an argument later that evening, he hit Frank so hard with a hammer that he fractured his father's skull, killing him. He then went to his room to study, as if nothing had happened.
"Pride and Joy"[]
When Katherine finds Frank's body, she calls the police, prompting NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan to investigate. They theorize that a burglar killed Frank, and doubt that they will find the culprit. Sean, meanwhile, feigns grief, saying that he feels responsible for Frank having been in the wrong place at the wrong time because he was studying instead of helping in the boiler room.
When it comes to light that Frank was killed by his own hammer, however, Briscoe and Logan come to doubt their original theory, reasoning that a burglar would have brought their own weapon, and that Frank would not have heard breaking glass in a noisy boiler room. They briefly suspect Maureen and her boyfriend, who both have juvenile arrest records, but they both have alibis. The detectives then question Sean and find it odd that he is studying for a chemistry test the day after his father's death.
Briscoe and Logan learn about Frank's frequent hospitalizations and question a nurse who thinks that someone had been abusing him. They then question a neighbor, who says she heard two men shouting at each other just before Frank's death, and that one of them had thrown something through a window, which disproves the notion that someone broke in.
Meanwhile, forensics prove that Frank was killed in the boiler room and dragged outside, and Katherine's brother tells the detectives about witnessing Sean strike his father during an argument. They begin to think that Sean killed his father, moved the body, and broke the window to make it look like a burglar killed him. They bring him in for questioning and find enough evidence to arrest him for murdering his father.
Sean admits to killing Frank, but says that his father had been beating him, Katherine, and Maureen for years, and that he killed his father in self-defense. Katherine, fearful of losing her son as well as her husband, backs up his story. Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid does not believe either of them, however, and asks forensic psychiatrist Elizabeth Olivet to evaluate Sean. During their interview, Sean claims that he doesn't remember killing his father and that he feels remorse, but Olivet notes that the only time he shows any real emotion is when he describes his father embarrassing him in front of his friends by showing up to school in work clothes. She diagnoses Sean as a sociopath and says that he fits the profile of a child who abuses a parent.
Kincaid and Executive Assistant District Ben Stone talk to Maureen, who emphatically denies that Frank hit Sean or anyone else. They also check Sean's medical records and find out that a black eye he claimed to have been inflicted by his father was in fact a basketball injury, thus proving that Sean's story of Frank abusing him is a lie.
During Sean's trial, Maureen testifies against her brother, revealing that he abused their father constantly. Sean, meanwhile, puts on a show of remorse, and tearfully tells the jury that he loved Frank. While cross-examining Sean, however, Stone shows the boy his Princeton admission application in which he lied about Frank's occupation, saying his father was a building manager, not a superintendent; Stone says that Sean lied about his father because he was ashamed of him, and that shame drove him to abuse and eventually kill him. The jury agrees and finds Sean guilty of second-degree murder.
External links[]
- Sean McKinnon on the Law & Order Wiki
