By Hooker, by Crook (Season 1, Episode 7)
Premise: An unconscious man in Central Park turns out to have spent his last evening with a high-priced escort, not with a mugger.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 7
- 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
- Patricia Clarkson as Laura Winthrop, Jenny Robertson as Jolene Curtis, Byron Utley as Cookie Molina, Kelle Kerr as Jasmine
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired by Sydney Biddle Barrows, the “Mayflower Madam,” whose upscale New York escort service was shut down in 1984.
- Director
- Martin Davidson
- Writers
- David Black
Summary
The Investigation
“By Hooker, by Crook” starts with a man named Irv Diamond found beaten and unconscious in Central Park. Doctors find he had a heart attack as well as a head injury, raising the question of which came first, and he later dies. Greevey and Logan trace his final hours to a hotel room and a young escort, Jolene Curtis.
After Logan poses as a client and arrests Jolene, the story changes. Diamond collapsed while with her, and the agency’s driver, Cookie Molina, was told by the agency’s manager, Jasmine, to dump Diamond in the park and make it look like a mugging. Police find a bloody baseball bat in the car Molina drives. A lawsuit filed by Jasmine’s lawyer, in turn, points the police higher, to Laura Winthrop, a well-connected socialite whose company, Poppy Catering, is a front for the escort business.
The Trial
Stone charges Winthrop with second-degree murder on the theory that she knowingly ran a business that put clients at risk, a stretch that worries him and Robinette given her social standing. The case sharpens when tests show Jolene is HIV-positive, raising the question of what Winthrop knew about her workers’ health and failed to tell anyone. Stone’s argument is that Winthrop understood her business could kill people, whether through the physical strain on older clients or through disease, and chose to keep it running anyway.
At trial, Molina describes Winthrop’s indifference to the danger, and Stone presses her on the infected women she dropped without helping them or warning clients. The defense counts on Winthrop’s family name and polish to win over the jury, and the prosecutors worry it may work. Winthrop’s confidence begins to slip under Stone’s questioning.
Spoiler, the ending: Winthrop accepts a plea to involuntary manslaughter. Afterward the jury foreman tells a reporter she likely would have voted to convict, and the prosecutors are left questioning the deal.
Why it stands out
- Patricia Clarkson plays Laura Winthrop, a socialite whose business-school polish puts the case’s class divide at the center of the trial.
- The episode pairs a vice case with the AIDS crisis, turning a prostitution prosecution into a public-health question.
- The ending, in which the prosecutors learn they gave away too much, became a recurring Law & Order beat.