Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Episode 16.20 Daydream Believer

The third part of the crossover event begins with the Chicago P.D. team coming to the awful realization that Nadia has gone missing. Yates has her in the trunk of Lindsay's car, which Nadia borrowed to pick up Lindsay's birthday cake. P.D. tracks the plates, but it turns out the serial killer switched license plates with another car at a rest stop in Indiana. He's headed to his old stomping grounds - New York City, which means Voight, Halstead and Lindsay are headed there too. SVU tracks Yates on his way into the city and scours Yates' old haunts. They soon find Lindsay's abandoned car outside the city, and a bloody scarf inside. Nadia left it for them to find.

Meanwhile, Yates has made it to Elmherst and found his next victim, helping her with her bags before sexually assaulting and killing her in her apartment. When her roommate comes home, he attacks her as well, but she survives, though is severely brain damaged. A neighbor saw Yates, but the only thing she can remember is that he had "the nicest smile." SVU tries to find anything that ties Yates to the neighborhood, and soon learn he got a parking ticket a few years back three blocks away. After a witness sees Yates following a woman into her apartment, the detectives burst in to find Yates eating lunch with a woman named Susie. Shocked, Susie can't understand why Yates is being arrested - he's her loving fiancé!

At the precinct, Rollins and Halstead question Yates, who claims he ran into Nadia, at which point she asked him for a ride to NYC. She was looking to party, he says, and probably fell in with the wrong crowd. Yates creepily suggests that whoever has her probably took her to a remote location to take advantage of her, and then took her body to a special place where he could visit her. In the next room, Susie reveals she and Greg have been together for almost 20 years but just got engaged that day. Amaro and Lindsay show her photos of Yates' victims, but she refuses to believe the allegations against him. He wasn't kidnapping Nadia; he was at his special place on the beach. That's where he decided he wanted to marry her.

SVU and PD search the beach Susie mentioned, as well as the surrounding woods, where they find Nadia's body. Lindsay, Voight and Halstead are devastated. The good news is that Yates' burial grounds are yielding dozens of other bodies, including those of numerous missing women in the tri-state area. The bad news is that Yates attacks random women and doesn't leave any DNA evidence. The only non-random attack was on Nadia, which Barba believes is their best case against Yates.

At trial, Yates decides he'll be representing himself, with his lawyer, Ms. Crane, staying on as co-council. Yates tears apart the testimonies of Lindsay and M.E. Warner, claiming that Nadia had reverted to a life of drugs and prostitution before her death. And, as Yates was the last person to see her alive, besides the killer, his own testimony will back up his theory. When Benson takes the stand, Yates fingers Dr. Will Halstead, Jay Halstead's brother, as an alternate suspect in the similar NYC murders Benson investigated over a decade ago. Benson explains Will's alibi ruled him out, but Yates insinuates that Jay Halstead might have had something to do with his brother being cleared. Yates knows what he's doing.

When Yates takes the stand, he paints a picture of Nadia as a troubled young woman who relapsed to a life of drugs and prostitution. He agreed to drive her to New York after learning her boss, Sergeant Voight, was forcing her to have sex with him. He says he helped her get away. As he describes what Voight allegedly did to her, Yates is clearly enjoying himself, prompting Barba to try a new tactic. Barba questions M.E. Warner, tempting Yates with the gruesome photos of Nadia's body. Yates then questions Warner, asking for detail after excruciating detail about Nadia's degree of suffering before her death. It's clear to everyone in the courtroom that Yates is getting off on Warner's every word. His co-council begs him to sit down, but Yates refuses. When he finally sits down, it's over for him. The jury finds Yates guilty.

The next night, Voight visits Yates in prison and sneaks up on him in the bathroom, putting him in a chokehold and threatening him that someone will do to him what he did to Nadia. "It's coming," he says.