A "Jack the Ripper" type murderer, who justifies his crimes with paranoid religious motivation set on by a rapidly deteriorating medical condition, is on the loose. After a citywide manhunt, Detectives Benson and Stabler are tasked with finding the killer.

A 6-year-old boy wounded in a shooting is brought to the ER but abandoned by his brother, who reported it, and their mother, who fears for her own life. The case leads the detectives to a woman who is on the run from an abusive drug-dealer boyfriend.

Detective Stabler and Dr. Huang question a convicted serial killer on death row, hours before his execution, with the hope of solving an old murder case for the sake of the victim's parents. The investigation goes haywire with mixed results.

A high-powered executive is raped, but the situation is complicated by her involvement with the Feds and the Russian mob - as well as a father-son duo who are in the federal witness protection program and an agent who appears bound and determined to protect them, regardless of consequence.

The brutal rape, and subsequent death, of a female motorist turns out to be an undercover FBI informant acting as a cyber vigilante for catching online pedophiles to capture the predator trafficking internet porn. The detectives find the victim's husband murdered and follow the trail of evidence for the latest victim she had been tracking, which ​turns into an international case of teenage prostitution, with ties to the Czech Republic.

The body of a nine-year-old beauty pageant contestant is found raped and murdered on a bus, but the case goes beyond the killer when it leads detectives to a virtual-pornography website.

A man accused of raping several neighborhood women denies everything and represents himself in court.

Benson and Stabler have trouble identifying a male murder victim in his 20's found in a pile of sheets in the West Village; they later suspect an outspoken minister who was in the process of flooding the victim with hate mail and death threats. When the activist's alibi checks out, the detectives turn their attention to a professor who objects to the victim's thesis on the failure of sexual re-education groups.

When it becomes obvious that a forensics expert raped and murdered a student, the investigation focuses on a criminology professor Cragen arrested decades earlier for similar crimes, but is the professor a perpetrator or a victim?

When a concert turns into a mob scene, a teenager is brutally assaulted; Detective Amaro ends up defending the prime suspect's reputation.