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| “ | They weren't innocent! They had to die, or they were going to kill us all!... She said that she was a good American, and that raghead said he was our friend. They're all liars! We have to stop them, or they're going to kill us all! | „ |
| ~ Webster justifying having raped and murdered two Muslims |
Sean Webster is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Hate". He is a racist, Islamaphobic spree killer who rapes and murders two Muslims and sets their bodies on fire.
He was portrayed by Reynaldo Rosales.
Early life[]
When Webster was a child, his father, Seth, left him and his mother, Eleanor, to marry a Kuwaiti woman. Eleanor told her son that Seth was killed in Operation Desert Storm and that all Arabs and Muslims were terrorists. As a result, Webster grew up to hate people of Middle Eastern descent; he attacked a Pakistani classmate in high school, and as an adult blamed Arabs and Muslims for his own failures, such as not getting into college, working a menial job as a fuel oil delivery truck driver, and still living with his mother.
When he tried to apply for financial aid to go to school, Webster found out not only that his father was still alive, but that he was married to an Arab woman with whom he had children. Webster became obsessed with getting revenge on Arabs and Muslims and developed violent fantasies of raping and murdering them.
He joined the Interfaith Council, a community outreach group dedicated to improving relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, to troll for Muslim victims. He finally selected one, a peace activist named Mira Elbisi, because he believed she was using her philanthropy to plan a terrorist attack. He got himself assigned to deliver oil to a community event she was organizing, and, once there, attacked her, raped her with a lead pipe, and doused her in fuel oil and set her on fire while she was still alive.
"Hate"[]
Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigate Elbisi's murder, at first believing that her estranged husband killed her. Soon afterward, an emboldened Webster claims another victim, killing another peace activist named Tariq Assad, sodomizing him with a lead pipe, dousing him in fuel oil, and setting him on fire. As Assad dies, Webster shouts, "Killer! You'll burn in hell for what you did to us!"
Benson and Stabler examine security footage from Elbisi's community event and see Webster talking to her while wearing his company's uniform. They try to question him at work, but he panics and runs away. Stabler catches up to him, however, and arrests him for murder.
During his interrogation, Webster rants that Arabs and Muslims are a threat to "our way of life", and even accuses Benson and Detective Fin Tutuola of being part Arab, hurling racial epithets like "coon" and "boy" at the latter, who is Black. Stabler plays the "good cop" by pretending to hate Muslims, as well, which provokes Webster into blurting out that he did not want to kill Elbisi, but that he felt that he had no choice. Meanwhile, Tutuola and Detective John Munch search the apartment he shares with his mother and find racist literature and cleaning fluid that contains benzene, the accelerant used in the fires. This proves to be enough evidence for Assistant District Attorney Casey Novak to charge Webster with rape and murder as hate crimes.
Eleanor hires Oliver Gates, a defense attorney known for representing people accused of hate crimes, to represent her son. He enters an insanity plea on Webster's behalf, claiming that he is genetically predisposed to hatred and violence. As if to prove his point, Webster beats his Muslim cellmate to death while awaiting trial, a crime that Novak adds to the charges against him.
During the trial, Gates calls neurobiologist Emily Sopher as an expert witness, and she testifies that hatred, aggression, and violence are hardwired into Webster's brain. Novak calls as a rebuttal witness forensic psychiatrist George Huang, who frequently works with SVU, and who says that Webster's actions are motivated more by his own experiences than his genes. Webster testifies in his own defense that Arabs and Muslims are all terrorists, that they killed his father, and that killing them is a necessary part of a supposed war between the United States and Islam; he becomes so agitated while preaching his hatred that he has to be taken out of court.
Suspecting that Webster wanted revenge for his father's death, Novak asks Benson and Stabler to find out how the elder Webster died. They discover that Seth Webster is still alive, and they bring him to his son's jail cell. Seth tries to apologize to his son for abandoning him, but Webster lashes out at his father and threatens to set his "Arab whore" and his "half-breed kids" on fire. His defense strategy ruined, Gates agrees to Novak's terms: that Webster pleads guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and serve consecutive life sentences. Before Webster can be sentenced, however, several Muslim inmates, friends of the man Webster murdered, attack and stab him to death.
External links[]
- Sean Webster on the Law & Order Wiki
