Dazzled (Season 12, Episode 20)
Premise: When a much younger second wife plunges from a rooftop, the suspects include her husband, her former boyfriend and the husband’s embittered ex-wife, but the answer lies inside the family.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 20
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm), DA Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest)
- Guest stars
- William Atherton as Don Snyder, Jayne Atkinson as Dr. Claire Snyder, Kelly Karbacz as Jenny Snyder, Joseph Murphy as Gary Phillips, James Rebhorn as defense attorney Charles Garnett
- Director
- Lewis H. Gould
- Writers
- Eric Overmyer & Matt Witten
Summary
The Investigation
“Dazzled” opens with Kate Snyder, 26, found dead on a lower neighbor’s patio after a fall from the roof of her old building, where a wineglass sits by the railing. She kept her rent-controlled apartment as a painting studio after marrying Don Snyder, a 52-year-old businessman twice her age, and she was six weeks pregnant. The medical examiner finds alcohol and a sedative in her blood, finger-shaped bruises on her arm and skin under her nails.
Don lied about his movements: after learning that Gary Phillips, the contractor renovating the couple’s home, was Kate’s ex-boyfriend, he went to the studio that night, though he says she was not there. Don’s teenage daughter, Jenny, says she saw Kate and Phillips kissing, and that Kate promised to fire him the day she died. Phone records show a long call between the two that evening, and the skin under her nails is his. Phillips says she scratched him earlier when he kept kissing her after she told him to stop.
The Trial
A fuller screen identifies the sedative as midazolam, or “Dazzle,” a drug found only in hospitals. Don’s ex-wife, anesthesiologist Dr. Claire Snyder, knew he had rewritten his will after Kate became pregnant, had been drinking and missing pages, and a search finds midazolam obtained through phony prescriptions. McCoy offers manslaughter if she gives up Phillips, but she denies any role, so the prosecutors take her to a preliminary hearing, where she and Don trade insults in open court.
Jenny testifies for her mother, and Claire says she spent the night hiding in an empty hospital room, high on midazolam she had been taking to cope after the divorce, and that her children once found her unconscious in the bathtub. Grasping what Jenny has lived through, McCoy and Southerlyn call the family together, where Don and Claire turn on each other in front of their daughter.
Spoiler, the ending: Jenny breaks down and confesses. She took the drug from her mother’s supply, visited Kate at the studio, spiked her wine on the roof and steered her, dizzy, toward the railing, insisting someone had to act to save the family. No plea or verdict is shown.
Why it stands out
- The title refers to midazolam, a hospital sedative nicknamed “Dazzle.”
- Guest stars include William Atherton as Don Snyder, Jayne Atkinson as Dr. Claire Snyder and James Rebhorn as defense attorney Charles Garnett.
- Physical evidence points at the ex-boyfriend and the ex-wife, but the case is solved when the prosecutors stage a family confrontation that draws out the true killer.