Law & Order: Criminal Intent

When a promising high school basketball player disappears -- and the private investigator looking for him is murdered -- Detectives Goren and Bishop dribble around the local courts and find what could be a missing link -- unscrupulous gamblers and college recruiters. But the cops keep throwing up bricks until they discover that several other talented players have transferred to a high school with a championship tradition and they suspect a more personal connection might yield the winning clues.

After they receive an anonymous letter, Detectives Goren and Eames exhume the body of an elderly man whom they discover was poisoned. The posse of suspects includes his artistic and ambitious widow and Harvey, a snobbish charity fundraiser with shady mob connections. The detectives hope to discover how the celebrity-loving Harvey gained his seed money to attract New York's high society as well as his connection to the widow -- but the key may lie with his bitter and resentful mother.

When a wealthy father is found savagely beaten to death, Detective Goren and temporary partner Bishop find a family album of suspects, including the victim's soon-to-be ex-wife, a nanny who cared for the couple's adopted Romanian sons and a suspicious aunt and uncle. However, after Goren delves deeper into the family's past, his only hope of sorting out the jumble of possible killers is to call for a clan reunion -- in family court.

When a young and female computer-game employee is found strangled Detectives Goren are initially distracted by a related hacker until they link the victim's penchant for gaming to her former employers -- two intense and talented game creators who are under pressure to deliver their next hit following popular "DeathMatch." But the investigation takes a different turn when Goren finds a third partner who was kicked out and demanded financial satisfaction and the detective understands the link between the brainiacs.

When an Argentine immigrant is found slashed and beaten in the family's bathroom, Detectives Goren and Bishop believe the wounds were self-inflicted -- but her husband's (guest star Thomas G. Waites) history of violence makes the police think he could have been responsible for other racially motivated murders that were discovered by his wife. But since they cannot implicate the suspect in his wife's death, Goren explores the family's tragic history on both sides and struggles to find a link to the kneecap-murders of a string of Jewish men.

When someone spikes the punch -- leaving three dead in an isolated island church -- Detectives Goren and Bishop first believe the murders are related to parishioner politics, but then discover a sorrowful sexual lifestyle among the town's jaded youth that points to three teenage girls who might be connected to the drownings of three former lovers. The heady Goren uses his knowledge of "Siddhartha" to query one of the girls (guest star Shayna Levine) whose undying allegiance to a male classmate (guest star Billy Lush) is harrowing.

When a young man is knifed and murdered, Detectives Goren and Eames discover evidence that links the crime to practioners of a Santeria cult -- and their investigation soon narrows to two former convicts who dupe the mother (as Lyz Webster, guest star Anne Twomey) of the victim into believing that she has special clairvoyant powers. However, in order to make a better case against the couple and track their involvement in the slaying, crafty Goren must get inside the exploited woman's head to convince her that she truly has a psychic gift.

In search of a missing bookkeeper, Detectives Goren and a pregnant Eames stumble upon a ledger's worth of bodies, including the victim's hitman brother who botched a job and was whacked two years ago -- and the tortuous trail seems to lead to an imprisoned mobster who is due for parole. But when a key suspect linked to all the slayings turns up facedown in the river, the cops have to think outside the box to unravel the tangled we

When a promising young architecture student is found murdered with a screwdriver, Detectives Goren and Eames  discover that the victim's bold design for a new and prestigious downtown building strongly resembles those of a celebrated architect (as Ben Laurette, guest star Olek Krupa) -- whose personal life is even more elaborate than his blueprints. By tracing a nexus of women, the detectives look for a connection between the slain man and the skyscraper designer in a byzantine case that would singe the pages of Architectural Digest.

The bizarre but lethal point-blank shootings of two contact lens salesmen and a plastic surgeon put Detectives Goren and Eames on the trail of a suspect who might harbor racist delusions about the damage caused by cosmetic beauty enhancements. Their search seems to dead-end with a drug-induced paranoid man (Barry Del Sherman) but when the police receive an anti-Semitic letter, Goren smells more than one possible slayer.