T. J. Hooker Season 4, Episode 20: Serial Murders

1

Night Vigil

On routine patrol with Corrigan, Stacy is shot when unwittingly walking in on an armed robbery, leaving her hospitalised in a coma and with a bullet lodged dangerously close to her heart. With Stacy facing precarious surgery, Hooker, Corrigan and Romano search out the robbers, who are armed with armour piercing bullets. But Hooker's determination to catch the thugs, no matter what, sees him putting his career on the line.

60 min

2

The Two Faces of Betsy Morgan

Hooker and Romano by chance spot a van swerving dangerously over the road – in which a pair of teenage prostitutes are being held against their will by two men. When the van crashes off the road, they find one of the girls dead after being strangled – the latest victim in a series of killings by ""The Boulevard Strangler"" and his accomplice, who are prying on young runaways. Hooker finds that the surviving girl has run away after being abused at home, and leads a double life – a perfect high-school student, and as a prostitute. But now the girl is in danger with the killers after her, who are concerned that she can identify them in the murder of the other girl... Meanwhile, Corrigan considers leaving the force to take a job teaching.

60 min

3

Pursuit [a.k.a. Hot Pursuit]

Hooker and Romano give chase of a couple of armed robbers who have held up a local bank and taken a teller hostage - a high-speed pursuit which ends in the thieves' car ploughing into the side of a tanker. Hooker receives criticism over his decision to give chase, which deepens when it's learnt that the young woman taken hostage has lost her unborn baby as a result of the crash. An old girl-friend of Hooker's, now head of security at the bank, is concerned that the high-speed pursuit was unnecessary and is prepared to testify against him. Meanwhile, the extravagant couple of robbers, who go by the aliases of Bonnie and Clyde, are still at large and pulling heists.

60 min

4

Hardcore Connection

While on a prostitution sting, Hooker spots veteran vice officer Daniels' car parked outside a motel, and goes to investigate just as the officer is shot by an assassin. Both the gun-man and the prostitute Daniels was meeting with flee the scene, and the officer's superior reports that Daniels wasn't there on Police business, and what's more, was found with money suggesting that he'd been taking bribes. But Hooker is adamant that the veteran officer is innocent of the accusations, and has two days before the funeral to clear the officer's name and find out what he was really doing at the motel. The girl Daniels was meeting with holds the key to the true circumstances, and Hooker forces her ex-roommate, a reluctant, wise-cracking ex-prostitute, into helping him track the down. But the girl is hiding in fear from the dangerous porno producer who was involved with the officer's shooting.

60 min

5

Anatomy of a Killing

Following an execution-style murder connected to a drug racket, Hooker joins forces with ex-partner and personal friend Jim Cody to solve the killing and put the drug ring out of business. But as they investigate the case, it becomes apparent that Cody's own daughter is a heroin addict and involved with key members of the drug ring.

60 min

6

Target: Hooker

Hooker and Romano are on patrol when their car is hit with a chemical based fire-bomb, which leaves Romano blinded. With Romano in hospital and facing permanent loss of sight, his girlfriend Maggie, a fellow Officer, takes his place as Hooker's partner as they investigate who was behind the attack and why. Unbeknown to them, a recently released convict, who's deceased cell-mate was put away by Hooker, has hired a chemical genius to wipe Hooker out, but the attempts on Hooker's life have deadly consequences for Maggie.

60 min

7

Model for Murder

Investigating the killing of a fashion model, who had also been working as a high-class prostitute, Stacy's contact, another model, is too found murdered in similar circumstances. Stacy befriends the murdered girl's room-mate, and goes undercover as a model at the company that the girls belonged to, to try and root out the killer, who is using sale of the girls to ensure a large order of costumes. But Stacy's handling of the case causes some friction between Corrigan and herself.

60 min

8

A Kind of Rage

While on a stake-out to capture a strangler who is killing homeless women, Corrigan receives a blow to the head while struggling with a suspect, leaving him with a concussion which triggers sudden, unexpected bouts of enraged behaviour. But the suspect Corrigan took on isn't in fact the strangler, and with the real killer still on the loose, Hooker and the team must track him down before he strikes again. Corrigan's refusal to acknowledge his condition doesn't exactly help matters.

60 min

9

The Confession

Responding to the latest in a string of rape muggings on women using automatic teller machines, Hooker finds that the latest victim is Episcopal female priest Beth Harrison, an old acquaintance. Although terrified, she agrees to testify when Hooker and the team nab the culprit, but the attacker cunningly goes to church to give confession about the rape to her, leaving Beth sticking to her sworn vow of silence over confessions and thus refusing to give testimony. Hooker tries to convince her to go against her beliefs and testify, or else the rapist will be free back on the streets and strike again.

60 min

10

Grand Theft Auto

Romano, celebrating his new Porsche sports car, takes Hooker out for a night at a dance club, but the car is stolen, hitting a gypsy king as it speeds away. The injured man and his 10-year-old niece have been tracking the thieves trying to recover stolen automobile parts, but they refuse to give any information to the Police. The next day, the man is murdered, but the niece once again refuses to talk. Hooker reluctantly releases the girl into the custody of her older sister, hoping that she might open up to her about the killing, but the young gypsy girl is determined to avenge her uncle's death.

60 min

11

Street Bait

After the third in a series of murders on attractive young blonde women, Stacy goes undercover to work as a salesgirl at a shopping mall store where each of the girls had worked, to act as bait to try and lure out the killer. With Stacy wired up, Hooker, Corrigan and Romano keep tabs on her until the killer makes himself apparent, but Hooker is concerned when the gun used in the murders suggests the killer to be a cop, and all indications point to the store's security officer being the culprit. But the operation puts Stacy in a dangerous position.

60 min

12

The Surrogate

After a woman in a troubled marriage, whom Hooker meets in a bar, is fatally stabbed, he notices a similarity with three other cases, and a pattern emerges that all of the women had phoned in to a relationship therapist's call-in radio show before they were murdered. Convinced that the connection to the radio station is the key to the killings, he tries to persuade the show's therapist to help him track down the killer, but she is very reluctant, worrying that the bad publicity will stop callers to her show... During the investigation, Stacy and Corrigan rescue a young baby and it's mother from a brutal attack stirs feelings between them.

60 min

13

Trackdown

A parking attendant's suspicion leads to the discovery of a woman's body in the trunk of a car, sending Hooker and the team on the trail of a psychotic killer who is on a cross-country murder spree. Meanwhile, the deranged killer lures a young woman into his clutches and takes her hostage, leaving behind her husband and sick baby. Hooker persuades the Detective in charge of the case to let him place a trap to try and catch the killer and get the woman back safely, but it places Stacy in great danger.

60 min

14

Outcall

The shooting of a masseuse girl in Chinatown convinces Hooker that a Vietnamese crime mob is operating in the area and trying to take over the district's message parlours. With information from a Vietnamese girlfriend of Corrigan's, Romano goes undercover at the parlour in the middle of the trouble as an outcall driver, while Stacy works as one of the massage girls; but when Stacy's cover is roused, Hooker must race to save her.

60 min

15

The Bribe

When Hooker and the team assist in a large drugs bust, the main dealer escapes, but a videotape is seized that incriminates Hooker for seemingly taking bribes to keep prostitutes out of jail. Stripped of his badge and gun as he awaits being charged with corruption, he travels to Las Vegas and meets up with the prostitute accused of bribing him, in a bid to clear his name and get to the bottom of the drug operation by nailing the mastermind crime lord at it's centre... Meanwhile, Corrigan asks Romano to use his trainee lawyer skills to help a pregnant woman caught up at the scene of the bust who is an illegal immigrant.

60 min

16

Love Story

An attractive woman named Teri, whom Hooker meets when giving a speeding ticket, finds that her friend has been robbed and raped, and herself is attacked when she unwittingly stumbles onto the scene, until Hooker comes to the rescue. She aids him as they try to identify the violent gang behind the attacks, and in their together, they quickly fall in love, but things take a nasty turn when the gang track Teri down and badly attack and rape her. The result of the attack takes its toll on her and Hooker's relationship, and causes Corrigan, Stacy and Romano to become concerned that Hooker's fierce pursuit of the gang is being clouded by personal feelings and the want for revenge.

60 min

17

Hollywood Starr

Dani Starr is an attractive Hollywood Detective who lives alone, dresses snazzily, and always gets the job done. While en route to Hollywood to deliver a captured jewel thief, Hooker and Corrigan are ambushed by the thief's men, who free their leader. Hooker teams up with Dani Starr to find the sprung thief, who is the prime suspect in the murder of a porn film producer. As they search for leads, they find that there is a Mob connection; Hooker learns that Dani's husband was previously murdered by the Mob, and she is determined to find those responsible.

60 min

18

Sanctuary

Corrigan and Stacy stop a car for speeding, only to have the trio inside open fire on them with automatic weapons, badly wounding Corrigan. Hooker and Romano are first on the scene, and the trio, who comprise of a woman who is a convicted murdered and two men who have broken her out of prison, take sanctuary in a nearby church, with Stacy and the seriously injured Corrigan as hostages. With the church surrounded with SWAT Officers, Hooker must try and negotiate not only with the gun-happy thugs, who are demanding a safe passage to Mexico, but also reason with the church's priest, also a hostage, who has beliefs that he is determined to stick to, not matter what the circumstances.

60 min

19

Homecoming

Hooker's children come to visit their father, but the vacation is interrupted after Corrigan and another Officer unwittingly disrupt an armed race-track heist, which leaves Corrigan's fellow Officer dead. The robbers were under the pretence of being ambulance attendants, and Hooker has reason to believe that the robbery was an inside job; but the case means that his time with his cherished kids is limited.

60 min

20

Serial Murders

Hooker's investigation into a series of gristly murders by a pair of religious crazies is accompanied by Sergeant Leigh Stockwell, a close, old friend, whom is somewhat his protégé. But Stacy becomes suspicious that Leigh is using cocaine, an addiction which not only jeopardises the case and Leigh's job, but also Hooker's life.

60 min

21

Lag Time

Unbeknown to Romano, his law school teacher is living with ex-convict Jack Lewis, the ring-leader behind a string of armed robberies. Already upset about the recent death of a close friend, Stacy is almost killed when she and Corrigan respond to armed robbery on a pawn shop, when the thug she apprehends disarms her. As Hooker and the team search for Lewis, who specialises in training criminals to disarm cops, the incident leaves Stacy with shaken confidence and an internal investigation over the lapse which nearly cost her her life.

60 min

22

The Throwaway

After an armed box office heist where the robbers escape on motorcycles leaves Hooker and Romano's patrol car destroyed by a bomb and a young man dead, Hooker and the team are on the look out for an infamous criminal named Willie Donovan, whom Corrigan has a grudge against after the collapse of a previous investigation. But a shoot-out with Donovan which leaves Donovan dead, a gun from the robbery room of Corrigan's previous Police department, and an exaggerated report of Police brutality from a informant all mount up to Corrigan being assigned to desk duty while he is investigated. Hooker intends to prove Corrigan's innocence, while putting a stop to the series of robberies.

60 min

23

The Chicago Connection

Hooker goes to Chicago on a supposedly simple three hour extradition trip, to bring back a felon wanted for fencing stolen items, but ends up being paired with fast-talking, wise-cracking Detective Sidney P. Stover, who is planning to use the fencer Hooker is due to take back to arrange a bust on a dangerous drug supplier's operation.

60 min