All My Children (Season 11, Episode 20)
Premise: The shooting of a wealthy developer’s estranged son exposes a blackmail plot built on a paternity claim, and suspicion shifts from the young woman behind it to the father himself.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 20
- 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
- Henry Woronicz as Peter Wilder, Julianne Nicholson as Jessie Lucas, Deirdre O’Connell as Joanna Wilder, Kristin Griffith as Brenda Lucas, Chip Zien as defense attorney Steven Cromwell
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Barry Schindel & Noah Baylin
Summary
The Investigation
“All My Children” opens when a father walking his son to the exclusive Wilshire School finds a young man shot dead in the schoolyard with a .38, red dust from the freshly sandblasted facade on his clothes. School officials point to a nearby residence for recovering addicts. An old master key traced to a block of postwar buildings, and a T-shirt from a theater scholarship benefit, lead to the victim’s identity: Scott Wilder, son of real estate developer Peter Wilder and his wife, Joanna, who had put him out two years earlier over drugs.
Scott’s girlfriend says she threw him out after finding $1,000 he would not explain. A resident of the addiction program admits he bummed a cigarette from Scott and later saw him arguing with a tall young woman with short brown hair. A narcotics detective’s informant says Scott had recently returned to selling cocaine and brought the same woman along. An OB/GYN’s appointment card and a lobby sign-in sheet lead to Jessie Lucas of Brooklyn, who says Scott was her brother and asks for a lawyer.
The Trial
The doctor specializes in kinship analysis, a test of whether two people share a parent, but a judge refuses to release the records. Peter Wilder admits an old affair with Jessie’s mother, Brenda, and says he has supported her while refusing a paternity test. Jessie had demanded $250,000 under threat of going to the tabloids. Arrested for extortion, she admits the test showed Wilder was not her father, and says she backed out of a payoff meeting at the school while Scott wanted to go ahead.
Wilder withdrew $250,000 two days before the killing, his registered .38 is missing, and dust on his shoes matches the school’s brick. At a preliminary hearing, Wilder’s lawyer, Steven Cromwell, accuses Jessie of killing Scott to protect her scheme. McCoy then produces records of Wilder’s calls to Brenda Lucas before the shooting, showing he knew the truth. In front of his wife, Wilder says Scott pointed the gun at his own head and it fired twice as they struggled, and that he ran off with it.
Spoiler, the ending: No verdict is reached; McCoy says the murder charge will be dropped if the suicide account is verified. Joanna Wilder tells her husband they gave up the right to call Scott their son long ago.
Why it stands out
- The plot turns on a kinship analysis, a DNA comparison used to establish a shared parent when the parent is not available.
- The case against the father is tested at a preliminary hearing rather than a full trial, and it ends with his account of a suicide struggle.
- An old master key, traced through a hardware order from the early 1970s, helps identify the victim.