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| “ | What's going to happen to me? Who's going to take care of me? | „ |
| ~ Tessa while being arrested. |
Tessa McKellan is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Manipulated". She is a lawyer who pretends to be paralyzed to get attention, and who frames her husband for murder as revenge for cheating on her.
She was portrayed by Rebecca DeMornay, who also portrayed Mrs. Mott in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Natalie Koffin in Mother's Day, and Milady de Winter in the 1993 film adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
Early life[]
Tessa's father was a wealthy, prominent attorney, and she joined his law firm as a young woman; after he died, she inherited control of the company. She also married Linus McKellan, who was also a lawyer. While she seemed to have the perfect life, however, she had a hidden dark side; she suffered from Munchausen Syndrome, a psychiatric disorder in which people cause themselves to become sick in order to get attention and sympathy from others.
In 2003, Tessa and Linus were in a car accident in which the former was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She eventually regained the ability to walk, but by then she was so addicted to the attention she received from everyone in her life that she pretended to be permanently paralyzed so people would shower her with attention and sympathy indefinitely. Linus felt so guilty about Tessa's supposed paralysis that he waited on her hand and foot, and accepted her refusal to have sex with him, believing that she was not physically capable of it. She also kept him in the dark about her ruse by refusing to let him go with her to the doctors she supposedly saw.
Eventually, Linus had an affair with Tessa's junior associate, Vicky Riggs, who was moonlighting as a stripper. Tessa suspected him of cheating, and hired Walter Inman, a former employee of a private military contractor she once represented, to spy on her husband. She also paid him to steal viruses and bacteria from a hospital so she could inject herself with them to get sicker, passing them off as insulin for her diabetes.
When Inman told her that Linus was sleeping with Riggs and her roommate and fellow stripper Josie Post, she decided to punish him by framing him for murder. She paid Inman to kill both women and put Linus' semen, which she had kept after performing oral sex on her husband.
"Manipulated"[]
While investigating Riggs' murder, Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit question Tessa about any enemies she or Riggs may have, and Tessa tells them about a labor case she and Riggs had been working on involving a Mafia-owned strip club - the very same club where Riggs worked her "other job". As Tessa intended, Benson and Stabler learn of Linus' affair with Riggs, and bring him to the SVU station house to question him. After they release him, Tessa performs oral sex on him again, and later gives his semen to Inman, who then kills Post and plants it on her body. Benson and Stabler arrest Linus for both murders.
While re-examining the crime scene, however, Benson and Stabler realize that the killer had gotten in through the window after climbing up the building, meaning that he would have special military training. Their investigation eventually leads them to arrest Inman, and threaten to take the money she paid him, with which he is paying his daughter's college tuition. In return for the police leaving his money alone, Inman tells Benson and Stabler that Tessa hired him, and provides DNA evidence proving his story; he also tells them about her faked paralysis.
Benson and Stabler arrest Tessa, whose lawyer pleads insanity on her behalf, claiming that her Munchausen's makes her incompetent to stand trial. Forensic psychiatrist George Huang interviews Tessa, who denies being mentally ill and accuses Inman of framing her, all while complaining about her physical ailments. Huang diagnoses her as having Munchausen's, but he says that she is competent to stand trial. McKellan's lawyer manages to persuade Judge Lena Petrovsky otherwise, however, and she declares her unfit.
With nowhere else to turn, Benson and Stabler decide to talk to Linus, telling him that Tessa framed him. Linus refuses to believe it at first, but when they confront him with the fact that he has never actually talked to any of Tessa's doctors, he becomes suspicious. When Tessa asks him what is wrong, he takes control of her wheelchair and pushes her into their pool, and watches with horror as she reflexively kicks her legs in order to swim, proving that she is not paralyzed. Tessa begs Linus to stay, but he angrily replies that she is on her own. When she frantically asks Benson who will take care of her now, Benson replies that Tessa will never be alone in prison.
Tessa is then found guilty of murder, grand larceny, and fraud, and imprisoned for life.
External links[]
- Tessa McKellan on the Law & Order Wiki
