Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (Season 1, Episode 4)
Premise: The death of a young Upper East Side woman leads detectives through her dating life to a polished ex-boyfriend with a history of violence.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 4
- Detectives
- Sgt. Max Greevey (George Dzundza), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Thomas Calabro as Ned Loomis, Marita Geraghty as Rebecca Byrne, Haviland Morris as Polly Norris, Dennis Boutsikaris as defense attorney Dick Berkley
- Ripped from the headlines
- Reportedly based on the 1986 Robert Chambers “Preppy Murder” case.
- Director
- Charles Correll
- Writers
- Story: Dick Wolf; Teleplay: Robert Stuart Nathan
Summary
The Investigation
In “Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die,” Paige Bartlett is found badly beaten in her Upper East Side apartment and dies in the hospital without naming her attacker. Greevey and Logan retrace her last night out and first focus on Steve Feinstein, a boyfriend who ended things with her that evening. His alibi holds, and forensic evidence shows Paige was with someone else later that night. Paige’s friend Polly Norris helps the detectives piece together her love life and the men she had been seeing.
Bar witnesses point the detectives to Ned Loomis, a well-dressed ex-boyfriend who had moved on to a wealthy fiancée. Loomis presents himself as a gentleman, but the prosecutors learn that another woman, Elise Brody, once filed assault charges against him that were later dropped. Testing ties Loomis to Paige on the night she was assaulted. Brody comes forward with an account of an assault that closely resembles what happened to Paige, and the detectives begin to see Loomis as a man who is charming in public and dangerous in private.
The Trial
Loomis’s defense works to make Paige the one on trial, portraying her as reckless in her personal life. Stone’s strongest evidence of Loomis’s pattern is the earlier attack, but the judge rules that the jury can’t hear about it, finding it too prejudicial.
Blocked from showing who Loomis really is, Stone turns to the person closest to him: his fiancée, Rebecca Byrne. He arranges for her to learn what Elise Brody went through, and Rebecca has to decide whether she still believes the man she plans to marry. Rebecca has been loyal to Loomis throughout, and Stone’s case now depends on whether she can be persuaded to see him differently.
Spoiler, the ending: Rebecca testifies that Loomis came to her that night and admitted he had hurt Paige, claiming it was an accident. The jury convicts Loomis of second-degree murder.
Why it stands out
- An early example of the series showing how evidence rules can keep a defendant’s history from a jury.
- The prosecution’s case turns on a reluctant witness from the defendant’s own life rather than forensics.
- The title plays on the nursery rhyme “Georgie Porgie.”