In Law & Order: SVU season 26 episode 1, "Fractured," Detective Kate Silva (Juliana Aidén Martinez) joins the SVU squad, having transferred from homicides. The episode starts out with Olivia picking up Silva, noting the detective hasn’t been assigned a car yet. As the two drive to the gun range to meet the rest of the squad, Olivia tells Silva her dad is "good police." He’s been a cop for 35 years and the deputy commissioner for 10. Silva says she’s been working for Olivia for three weeks and this is the first time Olivia has brought any of this up. Once at the gun range, Silva mentions to Velasco (Octavio Pisano) her theory that Olivia is testing her, and he tells Silva not to overthink it.
Silva's skills are put to the test even more when Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) gets a call about three law school students/roommates being attacked, with one of them brutally murdered. As the investigation kicks off, the spotlight of suspicion is placed on the fourth roommate, but did he do it?
Here’s what happened in the Law & Order: SVU season 26 premiere.
Three roommates try something new and things turn deadly
Law school students and roommates Elodie (Lexi Minetree), Teddy (Jeremy Gill) and Damon (August Blanco) are studying when Shelli (Larkin Reilly) walks in feeling deflated having not met any men at pickleball. Teddy cracks a joke at Elodie's expense before getting up to leave to go on a date.
In Teddy's absence, Elodie and Damon offer Shelli wine and comfort. Shelli quickly notices the exchanged looks between her roommates and accuses them of sleeping together. At first, Elodie and Damon play coy but ultimately admit it. The duo invites Shelli to join in a threesome, and Shelli consents as Damon puts the chain lock on the door. While the three of them are entangled, Teddy comes home and tries to get into the apartment, but with the chain lock on the door, he's only able to crack the door open to spot his roommates intertwined without him.
Later that night, Damon is asleep on the couch when he hears someone trying to get into the front door. Remembering he put the chain lock on and believing Teddy is trying to get in, Damon opens the front door only to be hit in the head and knocked out. The masked assailant goes into Shelli's room and assaults her next. By the time SVU is called to the scene of the crime, Shelli is dead, Damon and Elodi are on their way to the hospital and Teddy is on the couch, having just given his initial statement to police.
All eyes are on roommate number 4
At the hospital, Olivia and Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly) talk to Elodie, who shares she was at home in bed when she heard Shelli screaming "no." Elodie rushed to Shelli's room to see a white college-aged man attacking her, but was unable to identify him. When the assailant noticed Elodie, she ran but he caught and sexually assaulted her. Elodie has no idea why someone would murder Shelli as she pretty much kept to herself and likely didn't anger anyone.
Back in the squad room, Fin (Ice T) and Bruno (Kevin Kane) question Teddy. He says he returned to the apartment around 2 or 3 am and found Damon on the floor bleeding, Shelli dead and Elodie naked on the floor. After covering Elodie with a blanket, he went outside and called his dad. His father instructed him to call campus security as they’d likely arrive at the scene faster. While Teddy waited for help to arrive, he stayed outside. Fin and Bruno find it odd he called his dad before law enforcement and that he didn’t go back inside to see after his friends until authorities arrived.
Velasco and Silva arrive back at the scene, where investigators share there was a hidden camera in Shelli's bedroom located in the smoke detector. They're hopeful that footage of the camera will show who murdered Shelli, but it's revealed the camera was shut off before the crime occurred. However, footage was pulled of the threesome. Olivia and Renee are shocked by the footage as Elodie didn't mention it, and they leave to speak with her again.
Elodie says she didn’t think having sex with her roommates that night would matter to the case, but Olivia and Renee say it does. Elodie was not aware there was a camera in Shelli's room and is horrified. The detectives pivot the conversation to Teddy and ask about his relationship with Shelli. Elodie shares it was a love/hate relationship as Teddy used to tease her, but Elodie was convinced he had a crush on Shelli. Olivia asks if it's possible Teddy came home early that night and saw the threesome, but Elodie doesn't know.
Bruno and Fin are talking to Teddy again. They ask him about the date he allegedly went on. Teddy admits the date cancelled, so he returned to the apartment around midnight to see through the crack of the front door his roommates kissing. Teddy admits to feeling left out and angry, but says he left and went to a bar before going to play chess in the park. Bruno and Fin ultimately track down Teddy's late-night opponent, who vouches for him.
Shelli has an enemy after all
Bruno gets a call that Shelli was listed as the administrator for the camera, but another IP address was registered to it. Fin and Bruno track down Shelli's classmate Sam Ellis (Ari Dalbert) on campus. He claims Shelli asked him to help her set up a camera in her room. Sam describes Shelli as a good friend. When pressed about his whereabouts the night of the murder, he says he was at home alone.
Curry later shares with Olivia and Carisi (Peter Scanavino) that Sam has the perfect GPA, no girlfriend and wasn't really involved in any campus groups. However, other students said Shelli "friend-zoned" Sam. Bruno adds Sam downloaded the video of the threesome. When confronted with the latter information, Sam says he watched the video out of concern for Shelli as she looked off in the footage.
Suspicion continues to shift to Sam when the timeline of his night falls apart. He said he was at the library, left to go home and went to sleep by 1 am. However, campus security footage shows him walking on campus with a towel in his hand at 2 am. Thinking the towel may have been covering the missing murder weapon, Velasco and Silva take off to go and retrace Sam's steps.
Walking around campus, Silvia takes notice of an unhoused person with a cart rummaging through a trash can. Velasco and Silva approach him with a picture of Sam, but he's unable to identify him. As Velasco speaks with him some more, Silva goes through the man's cart until she finds a bloodied towel and a hammer. He claims he got the hammer out of a nearby trash can and planned to use it to build a house. Forensics proves it's the murder weapon and Sam's DNA is on the handle, which is enough for Sam to be charged.
During the murder trial, Sam professes his innocence. He asserts he found the hammer and was just getting rid of it, and he watched the video out of concern for Shelli. It's not until Elodie reveals to Olivia that Shelli used to attend a women's empowerment group that the case takes a drastic turn.
The leader of the group Samantha (Lauren Marcus) reveals Shelli recently recorded a video. In it, Shelli claims she's no longer afraid to say no and she wants to say no to Sam. When the video is played in court and Carisi grills Sam about Shelli rejecting him, he quickly unravels and apologizes for what he did to Shelli.
New episodes of Law and Order: SVU air on Thursdays on NBC and become available the next day on Peacock.
