SVU 300th Episode Features Half A Dozen Abducted Boys
While en route to a Yankees game with his father David (Hamish Linklater), Wyatt Morris (Luke Fava) is abducted from a subway platform.
Though Wyatt's abduction is linked to another, very similar case that took place in the neighbourhood in 1999 (and several others around various boroughs over the intervening years), those turn out to be casualties of various schemes to empty derelict buildings of their residents so that the properties can be gentrified; Wyatt was abducted as a punishment for his father's professional arrogance and igratitude.
The re-opening of a very old child abduction case was already reminiscent of the Etan Patz story, even before the episode got to the excavation of a basement's concrete floor.
The span of time between the crime and the identification of a suspect was much shorter on TV; there was no real estate motive in the Patz case; the last abducted boy, Wyatt, is found alive and unharmed.
The real estate "fixer" Louis Hoda is played by Tom Sizemore, whose characters look guilty even when they haven't done anything.
The cops go raging after Louis before they even determine who owned the buildings he may have set on fire or whether there are human remains in them. Good thing they end up getting him to confess!
In carefully repurposed Season 1 footage, we see flashbacks of Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Munch (Richard Belzer) working on the disappearance of the very first missing boy, Hector Rodriguez, so they both get in lots of pensive staring. Secondarily taking it personally is Amaro (Danny Pino), who clearly sees in Wyatt's parents' ongoing divorce a warning about his own possible future.