^ I thought it seemed pointless too. Though, perhaps, it was just to show how far some people will go to be famous or get their names out there.
Yeah, but what did it have to do with the story? It was just padding. I mean, sure, it's common enough for an L&O episode to have the cops following a variety of false leads for a while before homing in on the real culprit, but this went too far -- introducing someone who was an old friend of the captain, then having him betray the captain and destroy that relationship for no apparent reason, and then doing nothing to follow up on such a major interpersonal development? I mean, that was something that deserved more exploration than it got. If they weren't going to make it a major part of the episode, they shouldn't have made the guy a friend of the captain. They should've just started with him on the faux Nancy Grace show making his allegations, then had the cops follow up on that and find it was just another false lead. I suppose the serial-killer angle did serve some purpose in that it gave Ricky incentive to confess in hopes of gaining infamy. But the friend-betraying-the-captain angle shouldn't have been included if it wasn't going to go anywhere.