Stephanie Harker, née Stevens (Bellamy Young), was the main villainess of "True North," episode 9.09 of Law & Order (airdate December 9, 1998).
Backstory[]
Canadian-born Stephanie Stevens worked as a receptionist at her father's souvenir stand in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Along with befriending Wendy Naughton, her envy of the rich tourists she saw there on a daily basis drove her to dream of leaving the city and become wealthy, with her fantasies becoming more twisted after a rich boy mistreated her during their relationship and also used her for sex. One of their trysts resulted in the conception of a child, and after getting an abortion, Stephanie dated various other men—with one of them being used car salesman Pete Barnett. One night, she used one of his cars, a red Ford Escort, to run over and kill Rhonda Harker, the first wife of multimillionaire chairman Ronald Harker.
Events of "True North"[]
A year after killing Rhonda, Stephanie married Ronald, and she wasted no time living off his riches, often doing so to maintain her partying lifestyle, which involved her using drugs and cheating on her husband multiple times. Having correctly deduced that his second wife was nothing more than a gold digger, Ronald began filing for a divorce. Armed with this knowledge through unknown means, the villainess confided in another friend of hers, Doris Nichols, and one of her illicit boyfriends, Gerald Petoskey. She then devised a nefarious plan to kill her husband, paying Doris $50,000 to kill both him and his daughter Caitlin (who was also Stephanie's stepdaughter). The latter committed the two murders at the Harker apartment, but later on, the evil Stephanie shot her accomplice in both her chest and her back in order to cover her tracks.
When she was found by Rey Curtis and Lennie Briscoe, she portrayed herself as being the victim of a violent and crazed Doris, claiming that she had to kill her out of self-defense. The callous and deceptive serial killer also claimed that her deceased friend was Ron's mistress, but when the pair interviewed his friends, they all denied the false claim. Stephanie attempted to flee back to her native Canada, but she was indicted and arrested for all four murders after her involvement in the death of Ron's first wife was unveiled.
During her testimony, Stephanie denied all of the charges against her, but during an increasingly heated cross-examination by Jack McCoy, she eventually snapped and revealed her true colors, accusing her husband's rich friends of looking down on her and also claiming that women were "jealous" of her (among other things). After that, she was convicted for the deaths of her husband, her stepdaughter, and her accomplice. The villainess subsequently faced being punished by the death penalty, and made a plea for life during her sentence hearing. She did so by admitting to everything she had done and fantasized about during her childhood before concluding by painting herself as a good person who made bad decisions. Despite that, Stephanie was sentenced to death, and was most likely executed offscreen.
Victims[]
- Rhonda Harker (run over with a red Ford Escort)
- Ronald Harker (by proxy; killed by Doris via two bullets to his chest)
- Caitlin Harker (by proxy; killed by Doris via a bullet to her chest)
- Doris Nichols (shot in both her chest and her back with a gun)
Quotes[]
- "The women were jealous of me! The men all wanted to get me in bed! (Jack: "And you were happy to oblige!") No! Not anymore! Nobody takes advantage of me anymore! (Jack: "You were on your way back to that souvenir stand, weren't you? Where you belong!") I am smarter than all of them! They had it handed to them; I had to work for it! They think I was trash? They don't know anything!" (Stephanie revealing her true colors)
Trivia[]
- Bellamy Young returned to the Law & Order franchise as Monica Jarrow on Law & Order: LA. Furthermore, she also played Melinda Stone on NCIS, Diane on Two and a Half Men, Tina Moore in Mystery Woman: Vision of a Murder, Sarah on Supernatural, Candace Ford on Castle, Monica West on CSI: Miami, Margaret Pollack on Franklin & Bash, and Karen Pappas on Whiskey Cavalier.
- Bellamy Young portrayed a movie villainess for the first time when she appeared as the Camazotz Woman in the 2018 Disney film A Wrinkle in Time.
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