Law & Order: Criminal Intent

This episode appears to be ripped from the headlines of the Robert Chambers case. Robert Chambers, dubbed the "Preppie Killer", Chambers pled guilty to manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin. He killed her in Central Park during the early morning hours of August 26, 1986. (The Law & Order first season episode "Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die" was also based on this case.) The "monster" in this episode, Mark Dietrich, seems to have been written with Chambers in mind. This episode also appears to be Ripped from the headlines of the "Central Park jogger" case involving Trisha Meili. Meili was the victim in a high-profile assault and rape case in NYC in 1989. She was violently assaulted while jogging in Central Park. Although several suspects had confessed on videotape, they retracted their statements within weeks. No DNA evidence tied the suspects to the crime, so the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confessions. In 2002, convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes, serving a life sentence for other crimes but not, at that point, associated by the police with the attack on Meili, declared that he had committed the assault, and that he had acted alone. The DNA evidence confirmed this. In the episode, the other "monster", Detective Ted Marston, feared exposure causing him to perpetrate a new crime.