  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | Tania screamed for her sister. Okay? Beauty couldn't stop shaking. Dee? She pissed herself. And Meredith... She just kept saying 'No, no, no, no, no'... I kept her alive for days. I killed them. All of them. | „ |
| ~ Trace Lambert bragging about the murders he committed. |
Trace Lambert is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "They'd Already Disappeared". He is a serial killer who murders and mummifies women.
He was portrayed by Blake DeLong.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Lambert was raised by his mother Maggie, a cruel, angry woman who repeatedly mocked him and called him a failure. Just as she predicted, he grew up to be a chronic underachiever, flunking out of high school and getting stuck in a menial job with a traveling carnival. Beneath his ne'er-do-well exterior, however, Lambert was in fact highly intelligent and resourceful, and put his intellectual gifts to work at his only passion: torturing and murdering women.
He committed his first known murder when he poisoned a landlord who was showing a rental garage, making the death look like a heart attack. He took over the garage, giving him space to "work" as he developed his violent fantasies and prepared to make them a reality. He then killed his girlfriend, Meredith Hart, after raping and torturing her for days. He kept her body in the garage, removing her organs and treating the corpse with household chemicals until it was effectively mummified.
He then began kidnapping, raping, and murdering women as he traveled around the country with the carnival, preying on prostitutes and runaways because he thought they would not be missed. The women he murdered in his native New York City he mummified and kept in the garage, experimenting on their organs with household chemicals.
By the time of the episode, he had been active as a serial killer for 10 years, having murdered dozens of women.
"They'd Already Disappeared"[]
Detectives Amanda Rollins and Joe Velasco of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit discover Lambert's murders while investigating the sexual assault and kidnapping of two prostitutes, Tanya and Beauty. A young boy in the neighborhood tells them that a "vampire" had taken the women into the garage, and frequently went into and out of the garage at night. Rollins and Velasco go into the garage and notice a foul smell. Upon investigating further, they discover several mummified bodies and jars filled with human organs. The grisly crime scene horrifies even veteran police officers like Captain Olivia Benson, who admits that she has never seen anything like it in more than 20 years of investigating sex crimes.
The detectives find Lambert after questioning Meredith's young son, who says that he had last seen her getting into a pickup truck with a strange man. The boy, who is on the autism spectrum, provides them with the exact license plate number. They arrest Lambert at Maggie's apartment, where he lives with her. Lambert insists that he is innocent, while Maggie tells Benson that he is not smart enough to have gotten away with so many murders.
While interrogating Lambert, Benson says that the killer must be highly intelligent, and even expresses admiration for his knowledge of forensics. She then tells him that his mother thinks he is too stupid to have done it. As intended, this tactic pumps up Lambert's ego and wounds it at the same time, and he starts talking. He begins talking about the murders in the abstract, detailing the years of study the killer must have put into sciences such as taxidermy, anatomy, and chemistry, and how intelligent and sophisticated he must be to be able to commit so many murders undetected. When Benson dismisses the possibility that someone like him could be that smart, it pushes Lambert over the edge; determined to prove his superiority, he admits to all of the murders, bragging about what he did to his victims and demanding that Benson tell his mother what he did.
At the end of the episode, SVU Sergeant Fin Tutuola tells Benson that the FBI has taken over the investigation of Lambert's murders, and suspects that he has committed even more than he admitted. He also says that federal authorities will seek the death penalty against him.
External links[]
- Trace Lambert on the Law & Order Wiki
