Well, Law & Order adapted this crime for an episode that aired a couple of seasons ago, and they were faithful to the details of the real crime except in one area: the murderous gang of teens ended up being white. And there was one more nasty little surprise in store -- the ringleader of the group was named Reagan! He ended up receiving the death sentence (none of the real-life perpetrators did, BTW). A PC victory all around.
I love Jerry Ohrbach, too. First saw him as incompetent mobster "Kid Sally Bananas" in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, and often heard his rendition on recordings from the original B'way Chicago of a song that's a variation on "Ya' Gotta Have a Gimmick." Years later, I saw him play the "criminal" brother of Martin Landau in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. Though it was before my time, the young Ohrbach's first big role was as the star of The Fantasticks. He's always good, and I've heard he's a real nice guy to his fellow thespians and crew members, unlike Sam Waterston, who's a notoriously unprofessional SOB.
Regarding the real case you mentioned, I believe the same writer dealt with L&O's misrepresentation of it a while back. I'll have to check on that.
.... Not to be outdone, Law & Order's "heavy" could have been written by John Grisham. A high-end, Manhattan real estate agent, upon finding out that an interracial couple seeks buy a co-op in his building, sends a letter to the co-op board, objecting to the sale on explicitly racial grounds. Next, he gets the idea that a black colleague stole a client from him, and shows the colleague that he's got a gun stuck in his pants. That gets the racist fired; now he's even angrier. Soon thereafter, while hanging out with a friend during the evening, he hails a taxi, but a middle-aged black man beats him to the car. The white shouts racial epithets at the black rider, who refuses to give up the taxi. The white hails the next cab, whose driver he orders to follow the first cab. The racist ignores his friend's advice to drop the matter; the friend exits the cab. The racist follows the black rider to the latter's destination, and guns him down on the street.
Were a successful, young, white Manhattanite to write such a letter, it would have found its way to the front page of every newspaper in town, and the man would have been fired from his job, and prosecuted and sued for civil rights violations. But in Law & Order's parallel universe, there was no reaction to the letter.
The killer argues that minorities are "out to get whites." Producer Dick Wolf and his writers are thereby suggesting that any white with the same complaint, is also a savage monster. But one doesn't have to spend much time in New York, to know that minorities are out to get whites. It was January, 1991, when a white NYPD detective confirmed for me, that black-on-white racial attacks are an everyday event in New York. The detective added, that for "political reasons ... there are some things you're not allowed to say." And so, the rare white-on-black attack is treated as a "hate crime," but the constant black-on-white attacks almost never are, even when black attackers use racial epithets.
And make no mistake about it: Anti-white racial epithets are perfectly "normal" in New York. But in 16 years in this town, I have yet to hear a white call a black a racial epithet. Hell, in all those years, I've only heard whites say the "n" word three times in private.
And although black racist monsters are a dime a dozen in New York, no such white, racist monster has been recorded in at least fifty years. The Law & Order story was "ripped," alright. It was a rip-off of the ridiculous story line of last year's Shaft remake, in which a wealthy, white supremacist blithely murders a young black man in Midtown Manhattan.
Dick Wolf has been down this road before. He once presented prosecutor Kenneth Starr as a deranged Torquemada, who in the pursuit of power, peeps through people's bedroom key holes. And in another story, Wolf turned a band of young, black thrill murderers (in the real case that he "ripped from the headlines") into white killers.
Political types in Hollywood have long understood, that the easiest way to short- circuit political debate, is to present "realistic" dramas with cartoon-like images that support their prejudices. For Aaron Sorkin, Steven Bochco, and Dick Wolf, I have two words: You're busted!