1.7 "Law & Order: Los Angeles" - "Ballona Creek" Quiz

Answer: Bicycle

This episode begins with a conversation between two employees of the Los Angeles Department of Public Works, or DPW for short. Luis is the worker who finds the bike, while Don complains about people thinking that the water is a trashcan. Three teenagers throw rocks at the workers while one of them claims to be the owner of the bike.

Then, one of the workers is alerted to a dead body in the water. He vomits after seeing the corpse.

Answer: Stab wounds

Detectives Winters and Jaruszalski arrive at the scene and confirm that the dead body is Don's, the worker we saw earlier. The medical examiner tells the detectives that Don has multiple stab wounds on his torso and he also shows defensive wounds on his arm. When interviewed by LAPD, Luis tells the detectives about the boys throwing rocks at them earlier.

Answer: Helmet

The detectives go to Ballona Creek, the last place where Don was seen conducting tests on the water. Detective Winters quickly notices a yellow helmet with the logo of the Department of Public Works, and he identifies the item as Heller's. Not far away from where they found the helmet, Winters and Jaruszalski also see a large bloodstain.

This leads them to believe that this was the actual crime scene, and the body was later dumped where they first found it.

Answer: Toyota Prius

Winters and Jaruszalski stop by Don's workplace, the L.A. County Watershed Management Division. His former boss told the detectives about how Don found high levels of mercury in the water, and how he brought it to the attention of the E.P.A. They inspect Don's car, which we learn is a Toyota Prius when Winters turns the car on and the name appears on the screen.

The Prius is a hybrid car and is therefore considered better for the environment than conventional vehicles.

Answer: Carne asada

The detectives suspect that Don was secretly going to places far away from Ballona Creek. They stop by a Mexican food stand and ask the clerk whether he has seen Don, but the employee responds that he has not. Jaruszalski mentions that he is starting to regret eating carne asada.

He also refers to Winters' "pibil", which is an allusion to another delicious Mexican food: cochinita pibil. Winters then reveals that this neighborhood was his "first beat", which was largely full of drugs and prostitutes.

Answer: A ride home

The case takes a stunning turn when the police connect various murders that happened in the 1990s to the same area where Heller drove by days before his own murder. The detectives now suspect Heller was somehow involved with these killings. They interview a survivor, Diana McDermott, who recounts the painful events of that night.

She says that the criminal offered her a ride home, and that she accepted it so she got into his car. Then, the man pulled into an alley and held her at knifepoint.

Answer: They didn't know there had been murders before Sylvia's

With the discovery of a new girl being killed, the detectives believe that the original murderer from the 1990s is killing again. They visit the family of one of the victims, Sylvia. Her parents appear shocked that she was murdered by who is now believed to be a serial killer, since no one told them that there was a killer in their area.

They say that they thought Sylvia was killed by "one of her drug friends", and are very upset that they weren't warned there was a murderer in their neighborhood.

Answer: Familial DNA

Through familial DNA, an innovative technology that can find not just a person's DNA, but their relatives as well, the police begin searching for a suspect. The Attorney General authorized the LAPD to use this technology. It leads them to Brandon Duffy and his father, who refuses to be searched and files a restraining order against the police. Counsel for Duffy and the ACLU argue that familial DNA "targets innocent people", but the prosecution says that the findings prove at least that an immediate relative of Brandon Duffy was involved in the crime.

Answer: Bunny man

The detectives find out that Brandon Duffy was adopted, so his adoptive parents are ruled out as suspects. They now focus on Duffy's biological relatives, one of whom is his father (an unidentified rapist). Winters and Jaruszalski discover that Luis Cordero, who is genetically related to Duffy, lived in the same area where the murders were committed, and worked as a janitor in the LAPD's Rampart Division. Officers Martel and Greeley remember that they used to call that janitor "bunny man" after a punk band called Echo and the Bunnymen, because the janitor had a tic that made him repeat back the last words he heard.

Answer: No

The detectives figure out that Luis Valdez, the worker they interviewed at the beginning of the episode and who supposedly found Don's body, is the same person as Luis Cordero. He is arrested and becomes the prime suspect. However, a judge orders him released because his arrest stemmed from tainted evidence. The prosecutors get a new chance when Angela Cordero reveals that her uncle Luis was the one who raped her. Luis is arrested by the Santa Ana police since that is where the rape of her niece occurred.

In light of the new evidence, the judge allows the murder cases to go to trial. Faced with the possibility of the death penalty, Cordero says that he found Don "nosy" because he kept asking questions. He insists that his behavior changed when he stopped taking his pills. D.D.A. Dekker makes a passionate plea to the jury for them to hold Cordero accountable. Though we never find out how the jury decided, we can assume that Cordero was "guilty" due to the overwhelming evidence against him, including his own confession.