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| “ | There's no one like Cassie. | „ |
| ~ Willard obsessing over Cassie Germaine. |
Terry Willard is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Surveillance". He is an erotomaniac who is obsessed with concert cellist Cassie Germaine and expresses his "love" by stalking her and putting cameras in her apartment so he can watch her without her knowledge.
He was portrayed by Nate Mooney, who also portrayed Ryan McPoyle in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Connor O'Brien in Criminal Minds.
Early life[]
Willard suffers from erotomania, a mental illness that causes him to become fixated on people he has never actually met and to believe that they are in love with him. He works as an electrician and as a web designer and uses his high-tech equipment to stalk people in both the real and virtual world.
He began stalking cellist Cassie Germaine in 1997 after he heard her play while walking through her college's school of music. When she inadvertently smiled at him, he immediately became obsessed with her, taking pictures of her without her knowledge and keeping a detailed journal of the romantic relationship he imagined that he had with her. He used his Internet skills to steal other people's identities and credit card numbers so he could pay for flights to the various concert halls around the country where Germaine, who joined the New York Philharmonic Orchestra soon after he began stalking her, played, convinced that she was playing her music just for him. Eventually, he got caught and went to prison for four years.
When he got out of prison, he got a job as a web designer, but he was fired when his work suffered because of all the time he spent stalking Germaine. Ironically, during all the time he was telling himself that she loved him, there was a woman in his life who actually had feelings for him - his landlord, Aimee Slocum, who considered him her boyfriend even though he barely gave her the time of day.
"Surveillance"[]
After Germaine is attacked, beaten, and sexually assaulted, the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigates the attack. They initially suspect that the assailant, who also sent her threatening messages such as smashing up her cello and sending her bouquets of flowers with dead rats inside, is her conductor and abusive boyfriend, Robert Prescott, because he filmed himself having sex with her, and several other women, without their knowledge. When Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler interrogate him, however, he provides an alibi - he was cheating on Germaine with another woman at the time of the assault.
With help from NYPD computer technician Ruben Morales, Benson, Stabler, and their fellow SVU Detectives John Munch and Fin Tutuola discover that someone had installed a webcam in Germaine's apartment that connects to a live Internet feed. They trace the website to Willard and discover that he has been spying on her nearly 24/7, including her having sex with Prescott. They get a search warrant for his apartment and find pictures, press clippings, and video recordings of Germaine going back years.
The SVU team stakes out Germaine's latest concert and see Willard sitting in the audience. They arrest him even as he yells, incorrectly, that Germaine invited him. While interrogating him, Stabler and SVU Captain Donald Cragen try to trick him into revealing his guilt by pretending to be on his side, saying that Germaine was lucky to have him in her life and that it must have been unbearable to see her have sex with another man. Willard insists that Prescott took advantage of her and curses him for abusing her - something he only could have known if he had been spying on her. He admits to planting the cameras to "keep an eye on" Germaine, but he says he has no idea what Cragen and Stabler are talking about when they mention the threatening messages.
Slocum bails Willard out of prison, and later shoots Germaine in the back to eliminate her as a rival for his affections, even though she survives. When she tells Willard what she did, and that she was the one who assaulted her and sent her threatening messages, he recoils from her, accusing her of harming the love of his life. Enraged, Slocum stabs Willard to death, a crime for which Benson and Stabler later arrest her.
External links[]
- Terry Willard on the Law & Order Wiki
