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| “ | Mostly girls. Runaways. A couple, I snatched. None of them put up much of a fight, though. So, you want me to go in order? List them from front to last? | „ |
| ~ Grafton talking about his victims. |
Adam Grafton is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Pursuit". He is a serial killer of young girls who begins stalking Alicia Harding, the sister of one of his first victims.
He was portrayed by Christian Hoff.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Grafton is a sociopath who takes sadistic pleasure in raping, torturing, and murdering adolescent girls. He first stabs them in the spine, rendering them paralyzed and helpless as he rapes and tortures them, and then finally stabs them to death. It is implied that he revisits their burial sites to sexually abuse their corpses. He also served five years in prison for raping a prostitute and beating her nearly to death.
He kills in "clumps" of several victims during a short time period, followed by years-long "cooling off" periods. By the time of the episode, he has murdered 43 girls - "One for each year I've been living," he is fond of bragging.
In 1986, Grafton murdered 13-year-old Vanessa Harding. Vanessa's murder, which goes unsolved for 25 years, inspired Vanessa's older sister Alicia to become a television journalist specializing in exposing sexual predators. Harding became obsessed with finding Vanessa's murderer, and was aided by Executive Assistant District Attorney Sonya Paxton, who eventually became the Executive Assistant District Attorney for the NYPD's Special Victims Unit. Grafton, meanwhile, was just as obsessed with Harding, and began stalking her in 2011.
Posing as physician's assistant David Adams, Grafton began dating Harding's personal assistant, Rachel Gray, using her to access Harding's personal information.
"Pursuit"[]
After Harding hosts a TV special to commemorate the 25th anniversary of her sister's disappearance, Grafton mails her one of her own scarves, covered in blood. Harding is convinced that her stalker killed Vanessa and asks Paxton and SVU Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler to help her track him down.
Meanwhile, Grafton grows increasingly aggressive and depraved as the investigation continues, at one point breaking into Harding's apartment while she is away and masturbating in her underwear. When she does not give him the attention he wants, Grafton sends her an anonymous email with an image file containing pictures of a dump site in which he has buried five victims. Harding takes the bait and films a live special report at the site; at one point, she addresses the killer, calling him pathetic and saying that he sexually assaults his victims with a knife because he is impotent.
Enraged, Grafton retaliates by attacking Paxton at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and slitting her throat. Grafton escapes, but before Paxton dies, she manages to bite him, getting his DNA in her teeth. While Benson and Stabler wait for the DNA analysis, they check the sign-in logs at Harding's office and find that Gray's boyfriend "David Adams", one of the most frequent visitors, has no records of his existence anywhere; they realize that "Adams" is in fact the killer using an alias. Finally, the DNA on Paxton's body identifies Grafton as the killer, so Benson and Stabler devise a plan to use Harding as bait to draw him out.
They stake out Harding's apartment for anyone following her and see Grafton coming toward her with a knife. When they emerge with weapons drawn, Grafton takes Harding hostage by holding a knife to her throat. Ultimately, however, Benson manages to incapacitate him by shooting him with Harding's taser.
While Grafton awaits trial, Benson arranges a meeting between him and Harding in the hopes that he will reveal where he buried his other victims. Grafton refuses to admit to killing Vanessa, but he brags about killing Paxton, deriding her as a "meat sack" and blaming Harding for her death. He also laughs aside Benson's assertion that he will be executed, saying that he will die in prison of old age before the state has a chance to kill him. When Harding offers to interview him on TV, however, Grafton jumps at the chance and begins describing his murders in lurid detail.
Trivia[]
- Grafton is loosely based upon real-life serial killer Gary Ridgway, also known as the "Green River Killer", who also raped and murdered women in "clumps" and revisited the bodies for purposes of necrophilia.
- Grafton and his case are also inspired by multiple other real-life criminals:
- Ottis Toole, the serial killer responsible for the murder of Adam Walsh, with Harding being partly inspired by Adam's father, victims' advocate John Walsh).
- David Emery Misch, the then-unidentified criminal responsible for the disappearance of Michaela Garecht and her presumed murder, which was covered extensively on TV.
- John D. Miller, the then-unidentified criminal responsible for the murder of April Tinsley, who also sent obscene messages threatening to kill someone else.
- The unidentified murderer of Tammy Vincent, the subject of an investigation in which retired actress and forensics graduate Pauley Perrette participated.
- The Long Island serial killer, a serial murderer of women whose remains were found at Gilgo Beach, including Melissa Barthelemey, whose sister Amanda was harassed and threatened by obscene phone calls before Melissa was found.
External links[]
- Adam Grafton on the Law & Order Wiki
- Adam Grafton on the Pure Evil Wiki
