| “ | They must be destroyed. | „ |
| ~ Brooks about his victims. |
Simon Brooks is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Trophy". He is an insane religious fanatic who kills several African-American teenagers because he thinks they are sinners.
He is portrayed by Isiah Whitlock Jr.
Biography
After killing his first victim near the bank of the Hudson River, he leaves a note reading "They must be destroyed", leading investigators to suspect the killing is the work of a white supremacist. After four more murders, the police realize a serial killer is on the loose, and suspect white supremacist Andrew Dillard, who has the means to access each of the victims.
Dillard is later arrested and charged with the murders, but evidence exonerating him is found in the form of a witness statement claiming that one of the youths was seen by an African-American man, and the handwriting in the notes does not match Dillard's. However, prosecutor Diana Hawthorne withholds the statement and convinces a handwriting expert to lie on the stand that Dillard's handwriting matches that of the killer, leading to Dillard being convicted and Brooks escaping arrest. Brooks later confesses to his mother, who puts him on anti-psychotic medication that quiets his homicidal urges.
After his mother dies, Brooks stops taking his medication, and as a result murders two more teenagers before detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis link him to both victims and bring him in for questioning. When Curtis asks him to swear to his innocence on a Bible, Brooks confesses to killing the two boys.
Brooks says that he killed the two boys because they had been wearing crucifixes and images of Saint Justin (the mascot of their school) while shoplifting and looking at pornographic magazines, and were thus guilty of blasphemy. Briscoe and Curtis ask him if he had been inspired by Dillard, but he says that Dillard had nothing to do with any of the murders; Brooks says he killed all of the boys.
Brooks is then institutionalized after being found legally insane.
