Ego (Season 11, Episode 17)
Premise: The murder of a young state Attorney General’s investigator leads to her former lover and supervisor, a rising prosecutor who quietly kept the search for her pointed at Albany.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 17
- 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 Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest)
- Guest stars
- Nestor Serrano as Alec Conroy, Alexandra Neil as Alice Marner, Gerry Bamman as defense attorney Stan Gillum, Thomas James O’Leary as Dr. Karl Breitel, Jane Elliot as Isabel Shore
- Director
- James Quinn
- Writers
- William N. Fordes & Wendy Battles
Summary
The Investigation
“Ego” begins when a father and son fishing in the Hudson haul up the body of a woman shot once in the temple with a .22 and left in the water for weeks. Her stainless-steel dental crowns suggest German dental work, and a handmade belt buckle leads only to a dead-end mailing list. A missing-persons check finally identifies her as Karen Hall, an investigator in the state Attorney General’s Criminal Division in Albany who grew up on Army bases in Germany. Her brother says she phoned from Manhattan saying she was catching a train home.
Hall’s supervisor, Alec Conroy, had promoted her, and state troopers relied on a newsstand vendor who placed her at the Albany station, though he turns out to be shaky. The troopers privately believe the Attorney General’s office steered them away from work-related leads. A reluctant witness Hall had been sent to support in a nursing-home fraud case says Hall planned a late meeting in the city and had ended an affair with an older, married man. Train stubs and restaurant charges lead to a waiter who names her companion: Conroy.
The Trial
Lewin hesitates to target the man in line to run the Criminal Division. Conroy admits the affair but says he ended it, and his longtime lover Alice Marner backs his alibi. His wife, Deanne, urged on by his boss, Isabel Shore, reveals a joint therapy session in which Conroy blamed Hall for wrecking his family. His psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Breitel, had sent Hall a Tarasoff warning letter. Facing an accessory charge, Marner admits Conroy borrowed her boat that night and arrived with a large duffel bag. Traces of blood turn up in the bathroom of his separate apartment, and he is arrested.
Judge Callahan excludes the letter and the psychiatrist, reasoning that the wife’s presence brings spousal privilege into play. At trial, defense attorney Stan Gillum suggests Marner killed Hall out of jealousy using her late husband’s .22. McCoy then shows the Conroys had filed a legal separation agreement, so the wife counted as a third party who broke the privilege. Breitel testifies that Conroy said he wanted to kill Hall.
Spoiler, the ending: Conroy pleads guilty to second-degree murder for 20 years to life. In his allocution he says he lured Hall to his apartment with talk of a case and shot her with Marner’s gun after she said their relationship was finished.
Why it stands out
- The case turns on a Tarasoff letter, the warning a psychiatrist may send when a patient poses a danger to someone, named for a California court ruling.
- McCoy defeats the privilege by proving the Conroys were legally separated, making the wife a third party in the therapy room.
- The killer is a senior state prosecutor who supervised the original search for his own victim.