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| “ | I didn't force Shawn. He seduced me. How could I deny him? I never beat him like Jansen beat his boys! It's not the same thing! | „ |
| ~ Walt Massey rationalizing his abuse of his stepson. |
Walter "Walt" Massey is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Angels".
Known to be a deplorable individual, he is a member of a pedophile ring that smuggles young boys into the U.S. from Latin American countries and "adopts" them so they can sexually abuse them.
He was portrayed by Michael Hayden.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Massey is a successful pediatric dentist in New York City; he is also a pedophile who sexually abuses young boys. He and his friends Brett Jansen and Stewart Lynch regularly book vacations to Latin American countries through a human trafficking ring run by corrupt travel agent Anthony Damon, who arranges for them to have access to children to abuse and videotapes them molesting their victims. On one of these trips, Massey and Jansen filmed themselves gang-raping a boy, and each kept a copy of the tape.
Massey married a single mother he met through a personal ad and became stepfather to her two sons. He adopted them and showed the boys fatherly love, due to how abusive their biological father was. He soon began sexually abusing the older of the boys, Shawn. He manipulated the boy into silence by saying that his abuse was "the way fathers are supposed to love their sons", and that no one would understand if he told them. His wife, meanwhile, worshiped him for rescuing her from her abusive ex-husband, and so refused to see that there was anything wrong with their sexless marriage.
Jansen called Massey to treat his two adopted sons, and sexual abuse victims, Ernesto and Jose, whom he had picked up during a trip to Guatemala. Massey was outraged after seeing the bruises and sexual injuries the sadistic Jansen had inflicted upon the boys, so he incapacitated him, surgically castrated him, and slitting his throat, making sure he suffered as much as possible. After the murder, he cleaned himself up in the shower to wipe away any DNA and headed out.
"Angels"[]
Detectives John Munch and Fin Tutuola of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit first encounter Massey while investigating the death of Jose, who had run away from Jansen and hid inside a bus, only to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Massey denies knowing anything about Jansen's death, but he asks about the boys' well-being.
After the SVU team unravels Damon's trafficking ring and arrests him and Lynch, they find the tape that Jansen made of raping a boy with another man whose face is never seen and note that the only thing visible about the second rapist is a tattoo on his forearm. As no one they arrested from the pedophile ring has such a tattoo, the detectives start looking into Jansen and Lynch's other associates and find that Massey had treated Ernesto and Jose. They begin to suspect Massey, noting it would make sense that he kept a low profile by not being a client of the sex tours or being a member of the Metropolis Club and realizing that a dentist would have the anatomical knowledge and medical experience necessary to surgically remove Jansen's testicles. They look deeper after learning he treated other children from the child sex tours.
Detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson obtain a search warrant and question Massey's wife, who protests his innocence but admits that their marriage is lacking, with Massey paying more attention to Shawn than to her. Stabler talks with Shawn, who tells him about Massey's abuse. Horrified, his wife agrees to help Benson and Stabler put Massey in prison.
Munch and Tutuola arrest Massey at his office in front of his patients. Stabler interrogates Massey and plays the "good cop", insinuating to Massey that he, too, is a pedophile, and that he believes that what Massey does to Shawn is an expression of love, as opposed to Jansen forcing boys to have sex with him. When Stabler says that Jansen got what he deserved, Massey cannot resist bragging about the "appropriateness" of Jansen's punishment. This reveals his guilt, as only the killer would know about Jansen being castrated.
Stabler drops his act and forcibly rolls up Massey's sleeve, revealing that he has the distinctive tattoo seen in the video. When Stabler accuses him of killing Jansen, a panicked Massey says that Jansen "ruined it for everyone" and that he had to stop Jansen from further abusing his foster sons. Stabler retorts that he is going to stop Massey from further abusing Shawn, and places him under arrest for murder and child sexual abuse. Massey frantically claims that Shawn seduced him, and that what they do is not the same thing as what Jansen did to his boys. Stabler replies that it is in fact worse, as he abused his stepson and betrayed his family's love and trust.
Massey is then found guilty of murder and serial child rape and executed.
External links[]
- Walt Massey on the Law & Order Wiki
