Daniel Pearce

Donna Brooks is found dead in her apartment, and a ""gentleman suitor,"" Richard Sutton (Richard Easton) is there, and thought to be dead but alive. He suffered a heart attack when he found her dead body. Donna's grief-stricken daughter, Joset (Isabel Glasser), says her mother had pancreatic cancer and was close to the end, but she still had plenty of time to date a variety of men. Several have alibis and Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) now think Sutton could be the killer. He's finally well enough to communicate and claims Donna was killed in the morning (originally the M.E. thought the night before) and he has an alibi. Donna was strangled by a special kind of climbing rope, and they decide to run the M.O. through the computer. It turns out two other rich elderly women were killed by the same type of rope.

Bull returns to work following his heart attack with a new rich client for the firm to represent: an insurance company being sued by a dying mother for denying coverage of her liver transplant.