(male announcer) In the criminal justice system,
sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous.
In New York City, the dedicated detectives
who investigate these vicious felonies
are members of an elite squad
known as the Special Victims Unit.
These are their stories.
Hey, guys. Hi.
You excited about the new playground?
Yes!
It's gonna be really fun.
What happened to the duckies?
Huh?
Baby ducks live here. Where'd they go?
(man) Hey, look at this.
Teeth.
Go back to your mom.
Come on. Stop the work!
Guys, come here.
I think it's human.
Sorry to add to your case load, detectives,
but this one belongs to you.
How can you tell?
Vic's a kid.
Still had a couple of baby teeth left.
You have those till age 12 or 13.
You find any more bones?
Just eight teeth and the mandible.
Sand's from a quarry in Rockland County.
Melinda! Check this out.
Battlestar Galactica?
Answers one question.
Death probably occurred in the late '70s.
I think I had that lunch box.
Okay, I always wanted to know this.
What?
Do Twinkies last forever?
Give you 20 bucks, take a bite.
Bottom line, we have no indication
this is a homicide, true?
Correct. The kid could have fallen in.
Uh, detectives... it is a homicide.
(Fin) How you know?
That's a bullet hole.
(Warner) They got you back to work already.
Only 30-year-old cases.
How's the dig?
Not bad.
This quarry's been closed since '76.
Just opened a year ago.
Narrowed our search area.
Got about half of them so far.
Definitely a boy?
Found his pelvis.
Unfortunately, that's about all the remains are gonna tell us.
No heel breaks,
no defects or abnormalities that might help us ID him.
Any hair and tissue are long gone.
Didn't find any clothing remnants.
Wouldn't have disintegrated.
Clothes were either dragged off by animals,
or he wasn't wearing any.
Detectives...
This might be something.
The print's almost completely faded off here.
"But he felt oppressed
by a vague sense of impending calamity."
As do I.
Take a look at these.
Now we're talking.
Molitor, Trammell rookie cards. These are worth some money.
They're in amazing condition.
This held up pretty well too.
All these little pieces of his life.
They should be able to tell us something about who he was.
"Go Dragons."
Pretty good artist.
Maybe he played for the Dragons.
Could they be a sports team?
Or a mascot.
Take a look at the number. 148.
School 148.
[school bell ringing]
(woman) From that long ago?
Could be the desaparicion.
Well, who disappeared?
Four boys, back in 1978.
Four boys went missing from this school?
Never heard from again?
They were around my age, 12 or 13.
I remember it was early in the school year
because it was still light in the evenings.
They played baseball after dinner.
That was the last time anybody saw them.
Do you remember their names?
I'll never forget.
Juan Alvarez. Hector Padilla.
Esteban Morales.
And Michael Rodriguez.
Back then, this neighborhood was in the three-seven.
That precinct's been closed for 20 years.
Meaning the files would be in a warehouse in Queens.
Assuming they can dig them up.
You know, in '78, all the New York papers
were on strike in the fall.
That's probably the reason we never heard of this.
Probably wouldn't have anyway.
To most people, they were just four Puerto Rican thugs
who ran away.
What do you think happened to them?
When I was a little girl, my mother said it was a monster
who takes little boys that don't listen to their parents.
For an unknown case, it's sure popular.
Files aren't in the warehouse anymore.
Somebody checked them out.
Who?
Hey, Millie-- Don't even bug me.
Whatever test results you're looking for,
I don't have them.
How about case files on four missing boys
from 1978?
Archives says you checked them out.
Why do you want them?
We found remains.
Where?
Why'd you take the files?
I was looking for something.
So am I, files.
Fine. Tomorrow, I'll send them to you.
No, I need them now. Today.
They're not here.
Where are they?
Look, I just don't want you to think I'm weird.
Too late.
(Millie) So I pulled a few cases.
A few?
50 or 60.
Any unsolved murder or missing persons case
where the victim was a Hispanic boy, ages 7 to 14.
Committed between 1960 to 1980.
Dad was a cop. Yeah.
He was a fingerprint analyst back in the day.
Before computers.
But this... this is the case
that got him.
April of 1970,
a man walking his dog near a vacant lot
calls the cops.
Says he sees a hand sticking out
of an empty water heater box.
Thought it was a doll at first.
But it wasn't.
No.
He was never identified.
The papers called him the Boy in the Box.
He'd been dead three to four days.
Moved at least twice post-mortem.
M.E. put him around nine years old.
But the cause of death was never determined.
Any suspects?
None.
A witness said they saw a man and a teenage boy
standing over an open trunk of a car nearby.
But it didn't lead anywhere.
Pretty soon, everyone forgot about him.
Not your dad.
Oh, no.
He worked on it almost every night.
Every weekend.
It was a bottom drawer case.
One you can't let go.
He memorized these.
Kept checking birth records,
just trying to find an I.D.
Worked on it till the day he died this past summer.
Now it's your turn.
[scoffs] No.
Not like him.
Not give my whole life to it.
But I would like to give him a name.
Here. I think this is the case you were looking for.
1978.
You think if it was four white boys missing,
the case would still be open?
Probably not.
But at least now we have remains.
(woman) That's my son's.
That's Juan's.
I'm sorry, ma'am. You can't touch that.
[woman sobbing]
(man) I told them.
I told the police.
Juan would not run away.
He wasn't that kind of boy.
They didn't believe me.
(Stabler) We're very sorry, Mr. Alvarez.
And where are those men now?
I want to tell them myself.
Well, the detectives that handled your case
passed away a long time ago.
Do you have any idea who might have done this to your son?
We always suspected... Robert Sawyer.
(Mr. Padilla) He was a handyman in the neighborhood.
Sometimes he'd hire the boys for odd jobs.
(Stabler) Do you think he did this?
(Mrs. Morales) He was always nice to Esteban.
That's what they do.
That's how they get the kids to trust them.
The cops let him off way too easy.
They gave him a polygraph test,
and he wasn't lying.
People can fool those.
They do it all the time, right?
Their scientific accuracy hasn't been totally proven.
(Mrs. Padilla) I have a question.
Where is my son?
(Mrs. Padilla) Is he dead?
(Stabler) We can't say for sure, Mrs. Padilla.
(Mrs. Padilla) But he probably is dead, isn't he?
(Stabler) After all this time,
it's likely your sons died when Juan Alvarez did.
But you can't find them.
That means there's still a possibility.
I don't think so.
Your boys would have tried to contact you.
Mrs. Morales, I'm sorry.
I just don't want you to get your hopes up.
Hope is all we've got, Detective Stabler.
(Mrs. Alvarez) It's supposed to be better to know.
To not think every phone call might be him.
To not look at crowds and wonder if Juan could be in there.
But I think I'll miss it.
I'll miss the hope.
(Stabler) Mrs. Alvarez said the handyman, Robert Sawyer,
was seen on the street with Hector Padilla
and Michael Rodriguez the night they disappeared.
But he was interviewed seven times.
He passed the poly, and he had an alibi.
Yeah.
One of his employees.
Carlos Guzman.
(Munch) Employees aren't exactly unimpeachable alibis.
Their livelihood depends on their boss not going to jail.
They still cleared him.
We only found one body in the quarry.
What if those three other boys killed Juan Alvarez
or were somehow responsible for his death?
They got scared and ran off.
27 years without a peep?
It's unlikely.
Hey, Millie, what kind of box was your boy found in?
Water heater. Why?
Sawyer listed as his primary occupation "plumber."
(Munch) Interesting coincidence.
You've gotta go back over the evidence
of your Boy in the Box.
Oh, I've looked at that stuff 1,000 times.
My dad, a million.
You never had a suspect.
Or another crime to compare it to.
What's the story with the blanket?
It was found near the body.
It's actually half a blanket, cut with scissors.
That detail was kept out of the papers, though,
in case the other half was found.
This...this was really all we had to go with.
See those marks?
Those marks indicate the box
was dragged part of the way through the lot.
This kind of water heater was pretty common.
Several hundred sold within city limits.
We were actually able to track down
about 75% of the buyers, though.
Even the ones who paid cash.
You keep saying "we."
"We tracked down the buyers."
Sorry.
Don't be. You grew up with the case.
This kid must be like your long-lost brother.
Check this out.
What is that?
Sand.
What if the first place Sawyer tried to dump the body
was in the sand quarry?
Why not just leave it there?
Maybe he thought it was too dangerous?
Place was in operation in 1970.
You can test it, right?
See if it's the same kind of sand.
Sawyer had an alibi.
Carlos Guzman.
You know, that's the good thing about old cases.
Time can change an alibi's mind.
Test the sand.
(Stabler) Carlos Guzman!
Who are you?
Detective Stabler. You got a minute?
What do you want?
I want to talk about Robert Sawyer.
I don't know where he is.
You knew 30 years ago.
Real good of you to help a guy out like that.
His alibi.
I just told the truth.
Who says you're lying?
I answered your questions, okay? I'm busy.
You're doing real well for yourself, I see.
Pool boy.
Kind of like plumbing, isn't it?
I own my own business.
And you're looking pretty ragged there, Carlos.
Like someone who's been carrying around
a lot of guilt for a long time.
Now listen to me...
you're not in trouble.
You were young and scared.
But I need to know where Sawyer is right now.
I do not know.
Okay?
Hey, we found one of the boys.
It's only a matter of time till we find the rest.
You can make this right.
The sand from the evidence bag
and the sand from the quarry are the same.
C-33 Concrete Sand.
However, it's pretty common.
It's found in playgrounds
and golf courses all over the place.
Which means whoever killed Juan Alvarez
probably killed the Boy in the Box.
But that's not holding up in court.
But it's enough for me.
We're both looking for the same guy.
Yeah, but I don't think
Carlos Guzman's changing his story
any time soon, so Robert Sawyer's still out there
free and clear unless you and I make some kind of connection.
Last known address was Spanish Harlem.
Same neighborhood as all four boys.
No idea where he lived from '68 till '77.
He had a P.O. box.
I still think there are too many similarities
for this to be a coincidence.
No parents, so siblings, or spouses,
and no activity on his social
since he went underground in '80.
Plumber, handyman.
That can be a cash-only game.
[cell phone ringing] No tax records.
Stabler. Yeah?
Yeah, we're on it.
Munch got a call from a psychiatrist
who claims one of her patients reported a murder.
From 1970.
A boy whose body was stuffed in a cardboard box.
(woman) I haven't seen Anna in years.
Not since she checked herself out of a psychiatric facility
and vanished.
Out of the blue, she calls me up this afternoon.
She won't say where she is, she won't come in.
What time'd she call? 2:30.
She use this line? Yeah.
Should be able to find her.
What exactly did she say, Dr. Singh?
It was difficult to follow, but in a nutshell,
she says that when she was 12,
her father murdered her brother
and forced her to help him dispose of the body.
They put the boy in a cardboard box,
threw the box in the trunk of the father's car.
And then left it in an empty lot.
This doesn't make any sense. Why is she reporting this now?
She says she had a dream and suddenly remembered.
She must've known we were investigating.
Was this case released to the media?
Absolutely not.
I didn't want Sawyer to know that we were looking for him.
Do you believe your patient's story?
Anna's a disturbed woman.
Years of drug use have severely damaged her brain.
But she was never prone to vivid hallucinations.
Got it, pay phone at a park in the Village.
She used to score ecstasy
in that neighborhood.
She must be using again.
I think she's gonna be disappointed.
That park was cleaned up years ago.
How could it be her brother?
One obvious problem with her story
is that she's white and the Boy in the Box is Hispanic.
Could've been adopted.
Or a foster kid.
It's been a while.
Maybe she realized there's no drugs and bailed.
That her?
Oh, yeah. What's left of her.
Anna Gable?
Dr. Singh sent us.
Are you okay?
Why don't you come with us?
You look like my brother.
Anna, what's your last name?
Do you know who the president is?
Do you know what year it is?
It's okay, Anna, you don't have to know the answers right now.
Do you remember talking to Dr. Singh?
Anna.
Tell me about your brother.
Mmmm.
N--I don't have a brother.
You don't?
But you told Dr. Singh that your brother had been killed.
Remember?
Oh--okay.
Anna, what happened to your brother?
The Boy in the Box.
Oh...
I--they stole him...
From where?
Mmmm.
Uh...
A--a--a hospital.
A hospital. Can you tell me--Anna?
2005.
What?
The year.
Is she high?
I don't think so.
Long-term MDMA users often have memory impairment
and a decreased attention span.
It's really hard work for her to maintain a simple conversation.
Okay, so if her memory's impaired,
do we believe her brother was stolen from a hospital
and then murdered?
Makes it really questionable.
I don't know if she's actually had this experience,
or whether she's taking a well-publicized case
from her childhood, the Boy in the Box,
and incorporating it into her memory.
I don't think she invented this.
The details are too close.
A witness said they saw a man and a teenage boy
standing over a trunk of a car near where the body was dumped.
That could very easily have been Anna and her father.
Except by that time, Anna's father was already dead.
Anna's dad died in 1961,
nine years before the Boy in the Box was murdered,
in 1970.
1977, Anna's mother died.
She left the farmhouse in Rockland County to Anna.
Rockland County. Where the quarry just happens to be.
(Munch) Along with a lovely shopping mall
and the bar where the Lindbergh baby
kidnapping plot was hatched.
It doesn't mean they're related to this case.
(Stabler) Look, Millie, the facts are,
her father was dead.
He couldn't have killed any of these boys.
Plus, she's got a history of drug arrests and psych holds.
That doesn't mean anything.
(Fin) It means she's unreliable, Millie.
You're wasting your time.
Look, York Hospital was involved
in a black market baby scandal in 1962.
That's just 30 miles away from where Anna grew up.
And one of the babies stolen was a Hispanic boy.
Let's go.
(woman) The kidnappings were before my time.
They caught the nurse responsible,
but weren't able to track down all the babies,
including this boy.
If the birth parents are still alive,
you could test 'em against your little guy's DNA.
Doesn't matter, it's not him.
How do you know?
I just know. It's not him.
Well, I guess that's a relief
in a way.
I remember that Boy in the Box.
Hate to think he was taken from here.
You memorized his prints too.
I need all birth records from '60 to '65.
Why?
How many babies do you think were stolen from this hospital?
Doesn't matter. Do you have them?
In the basement somewhere.
You'd have to look through them yourself.
Now, look, this is nuts.
Anna probably incorporated this baby scandal
into her fantasies,
just like she incorporated that boy.
Why now?
Why does Anna suddenly remember
the Boy in the Box case at the exact same time
that you're investigating it?
Her dad didn't kill anyone.
Her brother was not stolen from this hospital.
Now, I'm not gonna spin my wheels
on some woman who's fried every synapse in her head.
She was raised not 20 minutes away
from where Juan Alvarez's body was found.
She doesn't know anything about that.
Is that the boy who's been missing since the '70s?
I read it in the newspaper.
That's not possible.
No, I remember. It was a few days ago.
Here. Here it is.
[sighs] I'll be damned.
Maybe it triggered her memory.
(Huang) Anna.
Do you remember us?
We spoke at the police station.
Detective Stabler found you in the park.
Hey, Anna?
Help me out here. Do you recognize this blanket?
It's been cut in half, and it was found...
with this boy here.
Now, you know him.
Who is he?
You saw Juan Alvarez's picture in the newspaper.
And it helped you remember.
Helped you remember Hector.
Michael.
Esteban.
Anna, what happened to them?
What happened to them?
I--I don't know.
You said this boy was your brother.
Who is he? Who killed him?
Who killed him, Anna? No...
No brother.
Anna, listen to me--
(Huang) Eliot.
I don't know, Anna.
Maybe the only part of your brain you've got left
just remembers the little details about crimes
and pretends that you were part of them.
He burned it.
That...
with a cigarette.
He cut off the burned part.
It was a pretty blanket.
Who burned it, Anna?
Is this the man?
Was it him?
Dad.
(Huang) No, Anna.
Your father passed away when you were very young.
He lived at my house.
When I was away.
Maybe Sawyer was Mom's live-in boyfriend.
And then stayed there after Mom died.
These boys were killed in '78. Where was Anna at that time?
Committed to the state hospital the entire year.
Leaving Sawyer alone in Anna's farmhouse
in the middle of nowhere.
It's a perfect spot to kill four boys.
Go around back.
Doesn't look like anyone's lived here since Anna's mother died.
No basement in a house like this.
There's probably a crawl space underneath, though.
Could've ripped up the floorboards.
Unless he didn't want to exert the effort.
It's private.
Plenty of places to hide bodies.
This is gonna take a while.
Looks like a trash bag.
At least we can prove four little boys
didn't just vanish into thin air.
Only took 30 years to do it.
(Vizcarrondo) Picture's not gonna tell you anything.
You can stare at it every day for the rest of your life.
And they're still just pictures of dead kids.
I just thought once we found them,
everything would fall into place.
Who is he?
How'd Sawyer get him?
What, he steal him as a baby and raise him?
Or did he kidnap him?
Was the boy the child
of undocumented immigrants
that were too afraid to report his disappearance?
Maybe he worked for Sawyer like the rest of the boys.
Why dump one boy in a box?
And another at a quarry,
then bury the rest under his shed?
Why do you start to dump the Boy in the Box at the quarry
then take him all the way to Brooklyn
to finish the job, why?
He knew about the vacant lot.
What if someone scared him away from the quarry?
Okay, but eight years later, he returns
to the same quarry to dump Juan, but not the others.
Why?
How do you control four adolescent boys?
You scare 'em.
You kill one, and the others fall into line.
You have an accomplice.
Someone to help you wrangle them.
Like with the Boy in the Box. Mm-hmm.
The witness saw the teenager by the trunk of the car.
One of Sawyer's employees.
(Stabler) Carlos.
Why do we have to go back through this?
Why? Because all of these kids are dead.
They were all murdered
and then dumped like garbage.
You don't want to talk about it?
It's too upsetting for you?
(Stabler) Maybe he doesn't want to talk
about it because Sawyer didn't kill him.
Carlos did.
No, I didn't kill anybody.
Sawyer was cleared by the cops years ago.
Who am I to argue?
You know that's not true.
Well, you alibied him, Carlos.
Are you telling me you lied?
I didn't do anything.
Didn't do anything? Yeah. Right.
You did nothing.
30 years went by, and this little boy has no name
and four families had to go through life not knowing
if their little boys were dead or alive.
Why?
Because you did nothing.
[sobbing]
He said he'd kill Anna.
Anna Gable?
How do you know her?
I loved her.
She was really messed up,
but I loved her.
I was visiting my grandma in Brooklyn,
and he came by and he said I had to help him.
And I was about 14.
There's this kid in the trunk.
In a box, this dead kid.
So we're riding around,
and I'm freaking out.
He has to pull over because I have to throw up.
And he's screaming at me, he's hitting me.
And he makes me take this box
and leave it, and he says...
[sobbing] if I tell anyone, he would kill Anna.
I'm sorry.
Okay, now tell me about these boys.
What about these other boys?
I knew 'em.
But now I'm gonna tell you the worst part.
I'm gonna tell you why
I deserve everything I get.
Anna and I stayed in contact
even after she ran away,
even after they locked her up in that nuthouse.
When Rob killed these boys, I called Anna
and I told her everything.
I told her about the Boy in the Box,
I told her about these other boys.
And about how I was Rob's alibi.
And she said she didn't care.
She said she loved me anyway.
But why is that the worst part, Carlos?
Because it's my fault!
Rob found out I told Anna, he killed her!
Carlos, Anna's alive.
But Rob--
Rob said he killed her.
He said if I said anything, he would do me too.
That's what I believed.
All these years, that's what I believed,
and now you tell me that's not true?
Anna.
Anna, do you know me?
He did this to her.
Rob would go on jobs in people's houses.
And raid their medicine cabinets.
And he made Anna take whatever he could find.
He thought it was funny.
And it made it easier...
to do things to her.
Carlos, if you know where Sawyer is,
I promise you, we'll make him pay.
I don't.
I spent most of my life
hiding from him.
It's...not Sawyer.
It's him, Anna.
We don't have to protect him anymore.
His name isn't Sawyer.
He has a real name.
What's his real name, Anna?
He said he killed you.
(Vizcarrondo) Robert Sawyer.
Prints have been in the system since 1964
for fare beating in the subway.
Social Security Administration has no death record
of Robert Sawyer, but in 1968,
Mr. Sawyer had a sudden career change.
He went from being an accountant to a plumber.
Who does that?
No one.
Wait a minute.
What if his identity was stolen?
We've been thinking Robert Sawyer
took an alias.
Robert Sawyer is the alias.
No relatives, no marriages.
If he died--
Or was killed.
And no one reported him dead.
That's the perfect identity to steal.
So the real Robert Sawyer died in 1968.
That means the 1964 prints we have in the system
belong to him.
But we've got our guy's.
The man we know as Sawyer was polygraphed in '78,
but never formally arrested.
So they printed him and never put him in the system.
Until now.
Sheldon Kerrick! NYPD! Open the door!
Go ahead.
Police!
Bathroom, clear.
Kitchen, clear.
[Kerrick coughing]
Okay, let's keep this short if we can.
My client has end-stage pancreatic cancer.
Good. Hope it hurts.
Mr. Kerrick.
The evidence against you is overwhelming.
The nature of your acts is heinous.
A jury will not take pity on you because of your illness.
You will be found guilty,
and you'll be sentenced to prison
for the rest of your life.
However short that may be.
That's supposed to scare me? No.
I'm not trying to scare you.
I'm simply giving you the lay of the land.
And then I'll offer you some options.
In consideration of your medical status,
and that your death would likely occur
before the conclusion of a trial.
I'm offering the following:
You will plead guilty
to all charges.
While you are in state custody,
I will personally arrange for an oncologist
to take care of you.
And when your condition worsens--and believe me,
your condition will worsen--
I will not oppose your attorney's request
for compassionate release.
You would die a free man.
In return,
you will tell us the name of this boy.
And in the event that you do not know his name,
you will disclose everything that you do know about him.
And if that information leads to his identification,
same offer applies.
You jerk me around,
I will make sure that you are locked up
in the prison ward of a hospital until the day you die.
I don't remember.
Yes, you do, you son of a bitch.
You remember every one
of those boys that you murdered.
You remember every detail
'cause you play it over and over in your head.
Now, don't you tell me that you didn't kill him.
Don't tell me you don't know him.
Answer her question.
Sorry.
I don't remember.
Hey.
My father and a couple of the other cops paid for this.
It's nice.
Yeah.
Better than a numbered grave, I guess.
It's stupid.
I used to hate this kid when I was growing up.
I even thought my father loved him more than me.
That's why I know I messed this up.
I jinxed it somehow.
Well, I think someday we will be able to name him.
I also think you gotta give yourself a break, Millie.
Your father made a decision.
He spent his life...
on a dead child.
When he had a living child at home.
Yeah.
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