| “ | I didn't mean to do it! After what he said about mom, he made fun of me. He said I wasn't pretty enough, that my legs were too heavy. He just turned his back on me! He just walked away! | „ |
| ~ Tracy confessing to killing Julian Decker |
Tracy Brandt is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Skin Deep". She is a teenage wannabe fashion model who is seduced by predatory photographer Julian Decker, and who murders him after he casts her aside.
She was portrayed by Claire Danes in her only villainous role to date.
Early life[]
Tracy was raised by her mother, Angela, after her father, Jeffrey, divorced her. She wanted to be a fashion model like her mother and tried out for several modeling jobs, but she had trouble getting work because the head of Angela's talent agency, Celeste Foxx, said that she had "pudgy, bad legs".
In order to pay for Tracy's private school tuition, Angela started working for photographer Julian Decker, a sexual predator who made extra money by pimping out his models. In addition to prostituting Angela, he took nude pictures of her and used them to blackmail her into working exclusively for him. When he grew bored with her, he began grooming Tracy, who was only 15, by taking her to exclusive parties and showering her with attention. She was flattered by his advances and believed him when he promised to make her a star, so she began sleeping with him, eventually convincing herself that they were in love. Decker also talked her into posing nude for him, just as he had with her mother.
Eventually, however, Angela found the nude photos and forbade Tracy to see Decker anymore, telling her daughter that she was going to have him arrested for statutory rape. Tracy ran to Decker, who took her into his bed. After they had sex, however, Decker told her to get out, made fun of her looks, and cruelly taunted her that her mother was worth more to him as a prostitute than she, Tracy, would ever be to him as a model. Heartbroken and enraged, Tracy stabbed Decker in the back with a pair of scissors, killing him instantly. She then fled the scene, terrified, and told Angela what happened. Angela promised to keep her out of trouble.
"Skin Deep"[]
While investigating Decker's murder, NYPD Homicide Sergeant Phil Cerreta and Detective Mike Logan question Angela, who says that, on the night of the murder, she went to the gym and then had dinner with Jeffrey, an alibi supported by Jeffrey himself. When they search her gym locker to see if her alibi checks out, however, they find fingerprints that match those found on the murder weapon. This gets them a search warrant for Angela's house, where they find a pair of panties stained with Decker's semen and vaginal secretions that are an 80% match to her DNA, so they arrest her for second-degree murder.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette base their trial strategy on the theory that Angela was angry about Decker making her turn tricks and not paying her enough for them. Robinette questions Jeffrey, who says that Angela had called him that night and asked him to tell the police that she had been with him the night of Decker's murder. He also questions Foxx, who says that Decker had taken photos of Tracy for her modeling portfolio, as well as Tracy's friends, who say that she had bragged about having an older boyfriend. With this new information, Stone and Robinette begin to suspect that Decker had been sleeping with Tracy, thus giving Angela another motive to kill him.
Stone threatens to call Tracy as a witness, so Angela tries to plead guilty to manslaughter to protect her. However, her lawyer, Shambala Green, talks her out of it, and the case proceeds to trial. Forensic psychiatrist Elizabeth Olivet examines Tracy, who says that she was in love with Decker but does not seem angry at her mother for (supposedly) killing him, which makes Olivet suspicious. She tells Stone and Robinette that is possible that Tracy killed Decker, which would explain why the vaginal secretions in the panties found by Cerreta and Logan only partially matched Angela's DNA. They compel a blood sample from Tracy and have the panties tested again, this time getting a perfect match to her DNA.
Stone and Robinette meet with Jeffrey and offer to be lenient with Tracy if he admits that he and Angela conspired to lie to them to protect their daughter. He confesses to lying to the D.A.'s office, and Stone tells Angela that they will now be able to arrest Tracy for murder. Angela insists that Tracy did not know what she was doing, and Green convinces Stone to give Tracy a chance to explain herself.
Stone meets with Tracy and Green at Riker's Island, where Tracy confesses to killing Decker and tearfully relates how he had exploited and humiliated her. Green asks Stone to make a deal with Tracy in which she serves three years in prison and gets counseling, and Stone agrees.
External links[]
- Tracy Brandt on the Law & Order Wiki
