Mega (Season 10, Episode 18)
Premise: A helicopter bombing that kills six is traced to a passenger’s wife and to the charismatic couple whose self-improvement circle has collected a fortune from her and her husband.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 18
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Michael McKean as Elias Grace, Annette O’Toole as Valerie Grace, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as Maggie Callister, Peter Hermann as Al Goran, Jay Patterson as defense attorney Charles Heckstrom
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Lynn Mamet & William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Mega” opens with a helicopter bombing: a shuttle bound from Manhattan to Kennedy Airport falls from the sky, killing pilot Frank Naransky and five passengers, among them a five-year-old girl. The bomb squad finds a crude dynamite device in the luggage compartment. Albany businessman Tony Rollins, who carried gun permits and kept changing his reservations, turns out only to be hiding an affair. Naransky draws suspicion next: he was deep in debt, fighting his HMO over a kidney transplant for his wife, heavily insured, and recorded saying he was sorry as the aircraft went down.
A scorched fragment of red cardboard leads to a Madison Avenue gift shop, where an M. Callister bought a small box shortly before the crash. Passenger Joseph Callister, owner of a newly public online bookseller, was headed for Indianapolis; neighbors heard him fighting with his wife, Maggie, who has been staying with friends named Elias and Valerie Grace. After the FBI lifts her fingerprint from the box, Maggie is arrested on six counts of first-degree murder.
The Callisters had signed more than $1 million over to KVG Corporation, a nonprofit run by the Graces, whose seminars promise wealth and power to newly rich clients. Elias has a past assault conviction for hitting Valerie, and an old college friend paid to stay away says they made up the group’s rules as a game. At the Graces’ Rockland County estate, two half-sticks of dynamite are missing from a shed that only Elias and the groundskeeper can open. The Graces are charged with murder.
The Trial
Maggie refuses to turn on the Graces, so McCoy has their followers arrested for conspiracy. One passes on a rumor that Joe was cheating, and a second booking under his name plus an airport hotel security tape show Valerie Grace waiting for him the day he died. Confronted, Valerie says Elias knew of the affair, accuses him in front of his lawyer and begs prosecutors to spare his life.
Elias pleads guilty, saying he learned of the affair when Valerie was out the night he phoned from Seattle, told Maggie that Joe was holding back money and handed her the box to give him. He receives six consecutive life terms without parole, and Maggie also pleads guilty to six life sentences.
Spoiler, the ending: Carmichael then finds that Callister was snowed in at Buffalo on the night of the supposed tryst, so the affair never happened. Valerie admits she deceived her husband, explaining that after his past violence she wanted him locked away knowing she held everything. Because no one can prove she intended any deaths, the prosecutors cannot charge her.
Why it stands out
- Michael McKean and Annette O’Toole guest star as the couple at the center of the self-help group.
- After both bombers plead guilty, the prosecutors discover that the affair behind the bombing was invented.
- McCoy arrests the group’s followers for conspiracy to pressure them into talking.