John Munch

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“	Taught him a major life lesson. Always question authority. He’ll thank me when he’s a fully functioning anti-dogmatic atheist.	„
	~ Munch after finished babysitting Olivia Benson's adopted son, Noah Porter-Benson.

DA Investigator John Munch is one of the main protagonists of Homicide: Life on the Street, and one of the deuteragonists of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

He is portrayed by the late Richard Belzer.

Personality

Munch was a sarcastic, comical, and cynical individual who often tell his colleagues jokes and conspiracy theories.

While he did not expressed much emotion, he barely held his tears while telling Benson about the history of the physically abused little girl who lived near him and how much it impacted him with her eventual death.

Early Life

Very little is known about Munch's early history, but over the years, he has tried to keep it that way. What is known is that his childhood was not a happy one. Munch's father, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, physically abused him and his brother. One night, after getting a beating "for being a wiseass", John told his father that he hated his guts. That was the last thing he ever said to his father; the elder Munch killed himself with a gunshot to the head shortly after.

Another tragedy happened when he was in high school. Munch saw a bruised little girl who lived across the street from him watching him from the porch, always looking at him with an expression that he didn't recognize because of his typical teenage habits. He became accustomed to seeing her every afternoon without actually talking to each other when he got home from school, but then, one afternoon, she stopped appearing; the girl's mother had remorselessly killed her by shoving her through a plate-glass window. Munch went to the funeral and saw her father mourning for his loss while the authorities sent her mother to a sanitarium where all she complained about was having to pay for the window she threw her own daughter through. Munch expressed guilt for not being able to do anything after finally realizing the girl's true intention behind her facial expression towards him: she was silently begging Munch to save her. Months after her death, Munch visualized the girl, still watching him from the porch with the same expression, as he felt like if he almost let her down again.

In HLOST

As an adult, Munch became a homicide detective in Baltimore. During his time, he met his first wife, Gwen, who was mentally unstable. Munch loved her, but she refused to take medication and wouldn't see a therapist, and finally, her mental illness became too much of a strain and they divorced. Little is known about the second and third marriage, but he eventually married a final time, to Billie Lou, a bartender at the Waterfront Bar, which Munch owned with fellow detectives Tim Bayliss and Meldrick Lewis. However, by late 1999, the couple had broken up after Billie Lou (supposedly) slept with another officer from the Baltimore P.D. and was in the process of getting divorced. Sometime before his fourth marriage, he and his fellow officers met Lennie Briscoe and Reynaldo Curtis, who had come to investigate a murder that had happened in New York, but whose roots appeared to trace back to Baltimore. Munch disliked Briscoe at first because Briscoe had slept with Gwen. However, in time, they became good friends and would team up several more times.

During a raid on a suspected child molester and murderer, he witnesses three of his fellow detectives - Stanley Bolander, Beau Felton, and Kay Howard - get shot while the criminal escaped without a scratch. It was originally assumed the child molester shot them, but he was eventually cleared. The real shooter, Gordon Pratt, was eventually found and Munch's colleagues interrogated him but were forced to let him go. When Pratt was murdered, Tim Bayliss was assigned to find his killer, much to the chagrin of his colleagues. Everyone gave alibis for the time of the murder, including Munch, but Munch's alibi was later proven to be false. Munch dared Bayliss to check his service weapon for ballistics, but Bayliss covered for Munch and let the case go unsolved. It is left ambiguous whether Munch had anything to do with Pratt's death.

While in the Baltimore Homicide Unit, on three Law and Order crossover episodes with Homicide, he and Briscoe got along well. He also had many partners in the unit, that include Bolander, Bayliss, Megan Russert, and Mike Kellerman. Russert quit because she moved in with a French diplomat because she was carrying his baby. Kellerman killed a drug lord out of revenge and he quit so other officers involved could keep their jobs. Bayliss killed a serial killer and took a leave of absence; it was implied he killed himself in Homicide: The Movie. In that film, Munch's former boss, Lt. Al Giardello, got shot and killed, so Munch comes back to aid in the investigation.

Notable SVU storylines

Munch moved to Manhattan, New York City after retiring from the Baltimore Police Department in 1999, vowing to never return to the city. There, he joined the New York Police Department's Special Victims Unit where he partnered with Monique Jefferies, Brian Cassidy, Odafin Tutuola, and occasionally, Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler. He is especially close to Tutuola, frequently engaging him in good-natured banter over the years.

Munch bonded with a TV news reporter named Sarah Logan, who was the victim of rape. He accepts to go out and eat dinner with her at her insistence, after she spreads the news of her situation and similar events using her reporting skills with the reluctant detective, whom she sees as more unique than his other colleagues. When she was tragically murdered by an obsessive man who planted a bomb inside a soup can, Munch becomes even more determined to get justice for Logan by capturing her killer along with her rapists. 

Munch had run himself to the point of exhaustion while investigating such a case regarding an elusive serial killer who he previously searched for because of a survivor approaching him. He felt guilty and traumatized that he could not save the kidnapped woman on time, and Munch grew increasingly angry that the killer was always one step ahead of him as he continued to kidnap and kill innocent people. He nearly attacked the remorseless perp after the authorities captured him in the Canadian Border. After Alexandra Cabot ensured the extradition, Munch took the time to taunt the serial killer with a sarcastic welcome home and thanked Cabot for her actions. That night, Munch visited the surviving victim and told her she could turn her lights off, as they finally caught her abductor. She took some peace from that and went back into her apartment.

Munch met Amy Solwey, a convicted proxy murderer who was suffering from the rare genetic disorder called Alport syndrome. Munch was somewhat sympathetic to her views about suicide despite her crime, and the two became close; though Munch had never spoken much about it, he grew very fond of her. Munch talks about his own guilt over his own father's suicide, having realized she feels guilty over Christina's suicide. As Solwey wanted to end her own life, he suggested they try to work through their guilt together. Munch convinces Solwey to plead out for the retrial so that she can live and get a kidney transplant. Sometime later, while Munch and his colleagues were investigating illegal black market organ dealing, he found out that not only Solwey was on the top list of getting a kidney donation, but she was assisting with the ring to gain organs. Despite this, Munch ultimately risked his badge and freedom by trying to save Solwey illegally when he learned she was potentially going to be removed from the kidney donor list.

One day, Munch was working on a case of a double rape-homicide with Stabler and Detective Dani Beck. Soon enough, he reunited with his uncle Andrew Munch (who was locked in a cell as a suspect) after several years, who had fallen into a dissociative fugue. Since Andrew could not remember everything, Munch suspected Beck and Stabler of using brutal methods against his uncle, though George Huang made a psychological evaluation on him and determined that Andrew already had a mental illness prior to the events. Andrew was treated with medicine and days later it is assumed that he had gone back to normal, though that was not completely the case. Following Andrew's mental breakdown in court, Munch questioned Beck whether she told Andrew regarding Brent's anticipated fate, though she stated that while she admitted she wanted Brent dead, she only told that to his original victim. Andrew shoved Brent right before the incoming train, killing him. Munch and Stabler try to assure Andrew that, given his psychotic break started by his medicine, he was not responsible for his actions. Andrew bid goodbye to his nephew and Stabler as he walked away, much to the sadness of the latter two. However, it is eventually acknowledged that Andrew was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remained institutionalized anyway rather than being imprisoned, given his mental fragility and Brent's heinous criminal record.

From seasons 9 to 12, he was promoted to the sergeant rank after passing an exam, and afterwards Munch worked at the precinct acting as SVU's second-in-command. The law enforcement temporarily appointed him as an acting captain, as it reassigned Cragen to the Chief of D's office. Munch, however, did not take his supervisory responsibilities completely seriously during a case involving a female con artist who pretended to have a psychiatric disorder, and once the woman got released on his watch, she went on a murder spree and to Stabler's residence and hold his wife Kathy hostage with a knife. Once hearing about this, Cragen soon re-arrived and relieved Munch of the command duties, much to the latter's satisfaction.

From seasons 13 to 15, following Stabler's resignation from the NYPD, Munch's role in SVU was reduced to a small capacity. In Season 13, Munch was seen mostly in the precinct helping with interrogations and research, as Tutuola is partnered with Detective Amanda Rollins. He continues to act as squad commander when Captain Donald Cragen is absent. In Season 14, Munch was temporarily reassigned to the Cold Case Unit, after solving a decade-old cold child abduction case in the episode, "Manhattan Vigil". He returned to SVU in the episode "Secrets Exhumed", in which he brings back a 1980's rape-homicide cold case for the squad to look into.

In Other Media

Canon in HLOST/LO/SVU

• The Beat
• Law & Order: Trial by Jury
• The Wire

Non-canon in HLOST/LO/SVU

• The X-Files
• Arrested Development
• 30 Rock

Retirement

Munch retires the police force after a racist murderer he had helped to arrest goes free; the injustice he witnessed in the legal system shook him and decides he can no longer be a part of it. Not to mention that he had reached the mandatory retirement age.

Munch filed his retirement papers as the SVU squad hosted a party in his honor, and many people appeared to celebrate with them, including two of his ex-wives, some of his Baltimore colleagues, and his brother in attendance. After the party concluded, he finished packing his belongings and made a personal farewell to Cragen, who praised him for his 20+ years work as Munch recalled on what where it all went. A call came in at his former desk, and Munch responded it for a final time as he mistakenly answered "Homicide" instead of SVU.

As a DA investigator, he soon returned to helping the SVU on occasions. When Nick Amaro got arrested for a violent assault against a suspected pedophile, he paid off Amaro's bail and offered him advice on the case. Munch later paid a visit to SVU where he shared a good laugh with Benson in some circumstances. He even later helped in a case when the detectives were struggling, as he and Tutuola interviewed one of the employees but she gave them very little info. That moment was also the final time he ever worked with Tutuola.

After the case is complete, he babysat Noah Porter-Benson for Benson. The two spoke about their views of SVU, before they part on good terms.

Sometime between 2016 and the present day, despite promising not to go back to Baltimore decades earlier, Munch went back to the city, regained his old bar, and got married again, this time to a divorced Rabbi. Unfortunately, Munch passed away sometime in 2024 from an unexplained cause. Benson, Tutuola, and Assistant District Attorney Dominick Carisi Jr. toasted in honor of his memory after celebrating the baptism of Rollins' and Carisi's child. 

Trivia

• Richard Belzer is the maternal first cousin of actor and comedian Henry Winkler, who portrayed Edward Crandall, the main antagonist of the SVU season 3 episode "Greed". However, neither Belzer nor Winkler shared a scene together.
• Munch is the first cop in the Law and Order series or any police procedural show to move up the ranks as a sergeant before Benson and Tutuola, as the former had become one following Munch's retirement, before eventually moving up the ranks to become the lieutenant and captain of SVU. Munch occasionally served as the acting captain or supervisor of SVU while Cragen was absent, though he admitted that the temporary job "sucked".
• Munch had stated that the person he had missed the most following his retirement was Benson, even though neither of them worked on many cases together as partners.
• Munch is fluent in French. He also has some conversational ability in Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, Greek, and Hungarian.
• In the episode "Dutch Tears", Tutuola mentioned Munch married to a rabbi and has moved back to Baltimore to reclaim his bar, showing that Munch would visit the squad, or vice versa, when the time is right.
  • Unfortunately, Munch will not be likely to come back for certain appearances in the series as Richard Belzer passed away at France on February 19, 2023, even days shortly after the mentioned episode aired.
  • In the SVU season 25 that premiered in 2024, it is confirmed that Munch will never return to SVU, given Belzer's death and Munch's death that occurred offscreen.

Gallery

External Links

• John Munch on the Law and Order Wiki
• John Munch on the X-Files Wiki