| “ | You're never gonna find those bitches. They're gonna die, and you're never gonna find them. | „ |
| ~ Charlie Baker taunting Detective Fin Tutuola about the women he kidnapped. |
| “ | Death is closer to life than people think. All that blood you have pumping right underneath the surface of your skin... I could bite your neck right now. By the time they got in here, it would be too late. | „ |
| ~ Henry's outlook on life. |
In the next of the lengthy line-up of Law & Order PEs, we have Charlie Baker and Henry Mesner. These two are notable for both being depraved killers who target their families.
What's the Work?[]
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is a crime drama series set in the Law & Order franchise, centering on the Special Victims Unit branch of the NYPD who are tasked with investigating and solving primarily sexually-based offenses.
Who are Charlie Baker and Henry Mesner? What's He Done?[]
Charlie Baker[]
Charlie was raised alongside his brother Billy by their father Al, an alcoholic. Now despite this rough upbringing, Billy was good natured, but was easily manipulated by Charlie, who became a violent unhinged sociopath as he grew up, manipulating Billy into helping him hurt people. Charlie repeatedly sexually abused his brother, and while he did have a girlfriend at one point, when she witnessed him abusing Billy he threatened to kill her and they broke up. Al discovered the abuse and called Charlie a gay slur, resulting in Charlie physically beating his father everyday in order to keep him from going forward to the police. His father had found success as a superintendent for a wealthy apartment complex, and having to do manual labor for rich people cause Charlie to despise them due to their situation in life being much easier. He manipulated Billy into becoming a spree killer with him, starting by breaking into the house of a wealthy man named Evan Briggs, who was having dinner with his fiancé and another couple. Charlie forces the couples to perform sexual acts on each other and then has Billy shoot them. Another man who arrives late to the party is intercepted by Charlie and bludgeoned to death. The brothers then travel to Central Park and attack a family consisting of two parents and their two teenage daughters. Charlie once again forces the couple to perform sex acts on each other and then has Billy kill them, and takes the girls hostage. The father injured Charlie during the struggle causing him to walk with a limp, which allows detectives to catch onto his trail as they notice the limp in the footprints left outside the car due to it having been snowing that night. Charlie plants stolen items from the car into Billy's work locker to try and frame him, as up to this point he had Billy be the one to pull the trigger on the victims.
Detectives from the NYPD Special Victims Unit are on the brothers trail by this point, and they track down the credit card of the carjacking family, which is being used by Billy. They arrest him and bring him in for questioning, believing they have caught the killer. However, Charlie's bloodlust is not satisfied and he continues his rampage, attacking another wealthy couple; this time he is more sloppy and assaults the wife of the couple himself and then kills them both, leaving his DNA at the crime scene. Charlie is called in due to Billy's arrest and he manipulates Billy into confessing to the murders, although he still doesn't give up the location of the two missing girls abducted during the carjacking. Detective Duethorn re-examines the evidence and concludes that not only were there two sets of footprints but that since Charlie was observed walking with a limp, he matches one of the sets of prints and was involved with the crime. They also convince Al to turn on Charlie in order to help Billy, and proceed to arrest Charlie, who tells them that he'll never give up where the girls are being held. Al subsequently reveals to Billy that Charlie planted the evidence of the carjacking murders in Billy's work locker, confirming Charlie doesn't really care about him; Billy is devastated and reveals that Charlie orchestrated everything and that the girls are tied up on a water tower on the roof of their apartment building. The two of them are rescued and brought to the hospital. It's not known what happened to Charlie and Billy after this as the episode ends there, but Charlie has all of the evidence against him and his father and brother willing to testify against him, ensuring he would be found guilty after the episodes conclusion.
Henry Mesner[]
Henry Mesner is the son of the Mesner family, consisting of him, his mother and father, and his five-year-old sister Ruby. Henry has shown violent tendencies throughout his life, and his parents have attempted to get him therapy for it, but they never realized the scope of how bad his issues really were, that he was devoid of empathy. The NYPD Special Victims Unit become entangled with the Mesner family after Ruby has injuries reported at school. Detective Olivia Benson speaks with Ruby, who tells her that a "monster" did it, causing them to realize that she is being physically abused. They look at the parents, Tom and Violet Mesner, but when digging into their legal records they discover no reports of domestic abuse. They interview Henry himself and he claims it was their maid Irina who pushed Ruby down the stairs. Irina denies this, saying that Henry physically abuses Ruby to the point that Ruby calls him "monster". Detective Nick Amaro goes to speak with Violet, and she admits then anytime Ruby gets hurt, she's been with Henry. Amara speaks to Henry again and he admits he did push Ruby down the stairs as an experiment and that he didn't do it out of anger, he simply hates Ruby and wants to hurt her. Psychiatrist George Huang interviews Henry and determines that he lacks empathy, encouraging Tom and Violet to get him help. They finally relent as he becomes more violent, slashing his mother's hand with a knife and getting aggressive with Ruby. When Henry learns he will be sent away, he proceeds to trap his mother in the laundry room while his father is at work and sets the apartment on fire. He goes to his friend's Toby's apartment, at which point he locks Toby in the closet and drowns his dog Snowball, and then steals his father's gun. The police are called and Amaro arrives at the scene, eventually finding Henry holding a five-year-old boy named Sam hostage. Amaro convinces Henry to let Sam go, but he proceeds to shoot Amaro, who survives due to his bullet proof vest, albeit with a broken rib. Henry is then sent to an institution until he is eighteen since he is too young to be put on trial.
Eight years later (literally eight years IRL between episodes, they even got the same actor for Henry to come back), Henry has turned eighteen and his time at a facility has led to him seemingly breaking diagnosis and being able to understand empathy, as many others at said facility have reportedly been able to do. His mother Violet has died in a car accident, his father Tom remarried a woman named Holly, and he will now be living with his sister Ruby once again and his half-brother Arlo. Upon his release, he recalls murdering his friend's dog Snowball and tracks down Detective Amanda Rollins, who he had been on his case eight years ago. He sees her playing in the park with her daughter and gives her daughter a stuffed animal of a dog that he calls Snowball in order to psychologically mess with Rollins. He then tracks down Libby Blandon, the daughter of the psychiatrist that had overseen him during his time incarcerated, and proceeds to rape and torture her, and leaves her for dead. She survives the attack and the NYPD Special Victims Unit is alerted, and they soon discover that Henry has been let out much to their shock. They travel to his family home and discover Tom, Holly, and Arlo all butchered, with Ruby being at her friend house. A cop is posted outside said home, but Henry manages to subdue him and tie him up in the trunk of his car. He then attacks Ruby's friend and leaves her and her mother for dead, taking Ruby hostage at an amusement park. Rollins manages to convince Henry that she doesn't want him to die since she still sees him as a child and that if he lets Ruby go he can live, which he does. Rollins then arrests him and admits she was faking and that he is insane. On trial, he attempts to fake insanity by attacking one of the Detectives and is put back in a mental hospital. Rollins visits him and threatens him to stay away from her and her daughter, and last we see is him silently smirking, leaving it unclear whether he will be put in prison or a mental facility.
Mitigating Factors[]
Charlie Baker[]
His relationship with his brother is clearly one-sided, he abused him for years and then manipulated him into carrying out the murders and tried to pin it all on him. He definitely doesn't care for his father or girlfriend, since he beat his father daily and threatened to kill his girlfriend when she saw him assault his brother and didn't seem fazed by their relationship ending. His grudge against rich people isn't really based in any form of tragedy, we're told he just became angry because he was a regular worker observing the wealthy, but his father was successful even if they weren't rich, so it's not as if Charlie grew up in abject poverty and has that going for him as some form of tragic backstory. Furthermore, brutally murdering random people isn't any type of genuine retribution for something wrong these people did, none of them had ever even met Charlie. And in the end he was willing to pin it all on his brother to save himself, showing Charlie is a sadist who only cared about satisfying his own bloodlust.
Henry Mesner[]
This one is complicated. Henry in his initial episode is arguably somewhat sympathetic as his parents mishandle helping him significantly, he's clearly severely mentally ill and needed help beyond what they were giving him, but he is also extremely cold and emotionless and doesn't shown care or empathy for anyone. This pretty much all changes when we see him as a young adult, as not only is he no longer a child, but other young adults at the same facility as him actually have managed to break diagnosis and stop hurting people, while Henry was just manipulating everyone the entire time. He kills his entire family except his sister, whom he holds hostage and torments out of sadism. One argument that's been made for why he shouldn't PE is that he lets his sister go while holding her hostage so he can talk to Detective Rollins, but the thing is he only did this because Rollins promised that if he let her they could talk, and he wanted to talk with Rollins because he is shown to be attracted to her even in his first appearance as a kid, and had stalked Rollins and her daughter. He outright says that he finds human life meaningless and killed the rest of his family and his brother with no remorse, him letting his sister go was pragmatic from his perspective not an act of mercy.
His second appearance does have a discussion about whether Henry should be considered "insane". Basically, in the legal sense, to be "legally insane" means you are not competent to stand trial, or would be found "not guilty by reason of insanity". So many serial killers are determined to be "legally sane", i.e. still capable of knowing what they did was wrong. But Henry Mesner is still be all accounts a completely insane individual for the things he's done, and the Detectives acknowledge the hypocrisy of the system and how it messed up severely in the way that Henry's case has been handled from the time he was incarcerated. That being said, the Detectives also say that he is a monster, and Rollins, a vocal critic of how the system is handling Henry's case, also confronts him and tells him to stay away from her family, clearly not feeling any actual sympathy for him. So this is a critique of the legal and mental health system, but not the characters feeling sympathetic for Henry.
Heinous Standards[]
Charlie Baker[]
Charlie has 11 murders done either directly by him or done by his brother on Charlie's orders. He also has six attempted murders since he tried to shoot two officers arresting him, left Claudia and Diane to die, and was going to kill his brother and father for turning against him. That's enough to pass the baseline, but this is the Law & Order universe, murderers with high victim counts are very common here. The thing that makes Charlie stand out is the fact that he abused his brother and father repeatedly, raping his brother to the point of him being completely subservient to Charlie, and beating his father daily for trying to stop him from abusing his brother. There's also what he actually does to his victims, forcing them to rape each other at gunpoint, and leaving Claudia and Diane to die of frostbite in a cage on the roof of his apartment building. Making the victims perform acts on each other is particularly depraved even for this series, and the fact he abused his otherwise non-violent brother to the point of him becoming an accomplice to murder I'd say is enough to make him stand out even if there are killers with higher victim counts.
Henry Mesner[]
He has a total of thirteen attempted murders, three of which were successful, that being his father, step-mother and younger brother. That puts him past the general baseline, but how does he manage to stand out in a franchise full of killers? Well first off, he abused his sister out of sadism, killed a dog, lit his apartment on fire and left his sister, mother, and friend for dead, something that could have hurt everyone in said apartment had it not been caught sooner, threatened to murder a five-year-old boy, raped and tortured the daughter of his psychiatrist, and implied he would kill Amanda Rollin's daughter. You have to remember that he can't really be compared to the likes of Adam Grafton, Franklin Barnes, etc. since he is an eleven year old boy when we first meet him; and while he's eighteen when he's released, he still has basically zero resources especially after killing his family. So now we compare him to other child killers in the series, and it's not even close, there have been episodes where a kid killed one person or another child, for example Jake O'Hara, but Henry attempts to commit five murders in one day as a young boy and would have succeeded had the fire not been put out or if he had shot Amaro in the head instead of the chest.
Final Verdict[]
Firm yes to both, Charlie is a sadistic lunatic who commits some of the most awful crimes in the series and tries to pin it all on his brother, while Henry is a child sociopath that commits far more heinous crimes than any of the other young offenders shown in the franchise.