 New showrunner Warren Leight said of the incident 's inspiration for this episode , " In this case , I don 't believe we ripped from the headlines . I believe the actual story ripped us off . " While the real life case 's twists and turns made for tantalizing headline news , it wound up being " quite annoying , " Leight said . " We had to do rewrites . Everything we had in our initial draft had to be changed . " He joked that the story was so fast @-@ moving that they worried the final scenes would have to be shot live on the day the episode airs . However , he noted , " It 's still ' SVU ' , the shows are still emotionally driven and loaded . " 
