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| “ | He always promised to take me away to a place where he would love me. And I just wanted so badly to leave this life. | „ |
| ~ Virginia confessing to killing Richard Schiller |
Virginia Hayes is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Wanderlust". She is a teenage girls who murders the middle-aged man she is sleeping with after he casts her aside.
She was portrayed by Lynn Collins, who also portrayed Tanya Barrett in Elementary and Leah Shaw in The Walking Dead.
Early life[]
Virginia lived with her mother, Annabel, in an apartment building her mother owned. She had a contentious relationship with her mother, an alcoholic whom she blamed for her father deserting the family; she believed that Annabel's drinking drove her father away.
Annabel took in a new tenant, travel writer Richard Schiller, who seduced her with his stories of exotic locales and promises to take her with him to see the world. They had a secret sexual relationship for two years, even though she was underage and he was three decades her senior.
Eventually, however, Schiller tired of her and made plans to move to Romania without her. One day, after they had sex, Virginia begged him to take her with him, but he refused, casually brushing her off by saying that he needed to "travel light". Heartbroken and enraged, she jammed he knee into his throat and kept pressing down until he finally choked to death. Upon realizing that he was dead, she tied him to a chair and stuffed her underwear down his throat and taped his mouth shut to make it look like he had been killed in a sex game gone wrong.
"Wanderlust"[]
Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigate Schiller's murder and question Virginia after she is arrested for shoplifting. She lies that the underwear belonged to Annabel and insinuates that her mother had unrequited feelings for Schiller in order to make her look guilty.
Annabel provides the alibi that she was with her boyfriend, Scott Dayton, whom Benson and Stabler come to suspect when they find out that he is a convicted child molester who stole his deceased brother's identity. They arrest him for identity theft and interrogate him about Schiller's murder, accusing him of killing the man because he was jealous of Virginia's crush on him. Dayton denies touching Virginia and says that he could tell that she and Schiller were sleeping together. Virginia, however, accuses Dayton of sexually abusing her and murdering Schiller.
Stabler believes Virginia's story because, as the father of three young girls, he feels protective of her. Benson, however, finds holes in her account of finding the body. When combined with forensic evidence of Schiller's semen in Virginia's underwear, these inconsistencies prove that she is lying about Dayton raping her and about finding Schiller's corpse. Cornered, Virginia attempts suicide by slitting her wrist, although she survives.
When Benson and Stabler confront Virginia about lying to them, she tearfully confesses to killing Schiller. She says that she and Schiller were in love, but that she snapped and killed him when he made it clear that he didn't want her anymore. The detectives arrest her, and she is convicted of second-degree manslaughter.
Trivia[]
- "Wanderlust" was Collins' TV acting debut.
External links[]
- Virginia Hayes on the Law & Order Wiki
