Vaya Con Dios (Season 10, Episode 24)
Premise: An old man who spent decades hunting the people behind his son’s 1973 murder in Chile dies in a Manhattan stairwell, and McCoy goes after a retired Chilean colonel receiving medical care in New York.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 24
- 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
- Tomas Milian as Colonel Emilio Pantoya, Joe Morton as Defense Attorney Leon Chiles, Rebecca Schull as Mrs. Whitman, Armand Schultz as Kevin Morse, George Morfogen as Mr. Reyes
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- René Balcer & Richard Sweren
Summary
The Investigation
“Vaya Con Dios” opens with the body of an elderly man at the foot of a stairwell in an East 63rd Street apartment building, battered and without ID. A monogram on his secondhand shirt and a bounced check lead to Samuel Whitman, a drifter who claimed the CIA and the Navy had killed his son. His hotel room holds clippings on the 1973 coup in Chile and on his son Jason, an American student tortured and shot there, while his mailbox holds a returned letter to retired Navy Captain Edwin Albrecht, who died of lung cancer weeks earlier.
A call from the building to Chilean Army headquarters leads to Colonel Emilio Pantoya, Pinochet’s former intelligence chief, now a senator being treated at a Manhattan hospital. Records reveal that tenant Kevin Morse is Albrecht’s son under his stepfather’s name. Morse admits Whitman confronted him, they struggled and Whitman fell down the stairs, and says his father once drunkenly bragged about helping the Chileans kill an American. He pleads to second-degree manslaughter, one to three years.
Federal officials decline to reopen the 1973 killing, so McCoy and Carmichael find Jason’s girlfriend, Carrie Benson, and Elena Calderon, whose husband was seized along with Jason from their home outside Santiago. Navy logs place Albrecht in New York during the coup, and his former aide recalls sending a telex for him to Pantoya with an address and the initials J.W. Hours later soldiers raided the Calderon house. Schiff approves the case, and Pantoya is arrested for conspiracy to commit murder.
The Trial
Despite State Department pressure, the judge rules that the Midtown telex gives New York jurisdiction and refuses to dismiss. Defense attorney Leon Chiles paints Jason as a violent radical, while Mrs. Whitman describes how her son’s body came home and former prisoner Mr. Reyes recounts torture by Pantoya’s men and confronts him. Pantoya defends the coup, calls Jason’s death a mistake, then refuses to answer McCoy’s questions, and his testimony is struck.
The jury finds Pantoya guilty of first-degree conspiracy. With federal help he wins an expedited hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Chiles offers to accept the verdict in exchange for probation, which McCoy rejects. In Washington, Chiles warns that the conviction would cripple American foreign policy, and McCoy argues that the law against murder recognizes no borders.
Spoiler, the ending: The episode ends as the prosecutors wait in Washington and a clerk approaches with the Supreme Court’s ruling; the decision is never revealed.
Why it stands out
- This is Steven Hill’s last appearance as DA Adam Schiff; he was the last remaining member of the series’ original cast.
- Schiff, who was an assistant district attorney when Jason Whitman was killed, signs off on prosecuting a foreign official who holds immunity at home.
- The season closes on a cliffhanger, with the Supreme Court’s ruling on Pantoya’s conviction left unannounced.