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| “ | It was all her idea. She had this whole thing planned before she even got pregnant.... I heard her on the phone. She's good. You know what she did? She's giving birth in the hotel, and she's on the phone taking bids between contractions! | „ |
| ~ Shaw betraying his girlfriend and partner-in-crime Debra Elkins. |
Stephen J. Shaw is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Breeder". He is the boyfriend and accomplice of con artist Debra Elkins, with whom he runs an adoption scam in which they promise Elkins' unborn baby to several rich couples, only to take all their money without giving any of them the child.
He was portrayed by Judson Mills.
Early life[]
Shaw grew up poor in Poughkeepsie, New York. Amoral and none-too-bright, he scraped by for most of his life on day labor and petty scams. He started dating Debra Elkins, who told him that she was planning to run a scam in which she would get pregnant and promise to give the child to several different wealthy, childless couples so she could bleed them dry financially before giving the child to the highest bidder after giving birth. Shaw had no desire to be a father, however, so Elkins had sex with a random stranger and got pregnant.
Shaw and Elkins contacted three well-off, childless couples - Herbert and Dorothy Baxter, Les and Gwen Savitt, and Ric and Mary Cushman - and promised them each that she would let them adopt her baby; each of the couples believed that they were the only ones she had contacted. She took each couple for all they were worth and threatened to have an abortion every time they tried to cut her off. Shaw procured pictures of aborted fetuses from pro-life groups and mailed them to the couples to scare them into giving Elkins more money.
When Elkins went into labor, she and Shaw checked into a hotel, where she took bids from each couple in between contractions. After she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, she lost a lot of blood, but she would not let Shaw take her to the hospital, telling him instead to get the baby to the nearest maternity ward so they could make "a quick sale".
"Breeders"[]
Shaw puts Elkins in a cab and puts the baby in a maternity ward. Before he can contact Elkins to coordinate the sale, however, Dorothy Baxter, desperate to have a child and fed up with Elkins toying with her, pretends to be the boy's mother and takes him to her house.
After Elkins nearly bleeds to death, her doctors take her into surgery and call the police. NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan investigate the disappearance of the baby and eventually find and arrest Dorothy and return the baby to Elkins. After talking with the couples whom she and Shaw fleeced, however, they voice their suspicions about the pair to Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Claire Kincaid, who give Dorothy a suspended sentence and begin investigating Elkins and Shaw.
Eventually, Stone and Kincaid find out about Elkins and Shaw's scam and charge them with kidnapping and grand larceny. Elkins and Shaw insist that they did not explicitly promise anyone that they could adopt the baby, which would make them technically innocent of the charges against them. During the trial, meanwhile, Les Savitt testifies in Elkins and Shaw's defense, saying that they never told him and his wife, or anyone else, that they could adopt the child. That same day, Elkins and Shaw officially allow the Savitts to adopt the baby.
Soon afterward, however, Shaw approaches the Savitts and demands $100,000, threatening to contest the adoption if they refuse. The Savitts go to Stone and Kincaid for help, and they file an additional charge of extortion to the indictment against Elkins and Shaw. They meet with Stone and Kincaid and deny that they extorted anyone. Seeing that Shaw is the weaker and less intelligent of the pair, Stone tells him that Elkins will put all the blame on him and leave him to serve the rest of his life in prison. Shaw panics and, over Elkins' furious objections, tells Stone everything about how they extorted all the money they could from their victims. Stone offers them a plea bargain in which they both serve four and a half to nine years in prison in return for a guilty plea; seeing no other way out, they both accept the deal and go to prison.
External links[]
- Stephen J. Shaw on the Law & Order Wiki
