Possession (Season 12, Episode 5)
Premise: An eccentric rent-control tenant is stabbed outside her Madison Avenue penthouse, and suspicion moves from the janitor she helped to her feuding landlady, the landlady’s estranged brother and finally the building’s agent.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 5
- 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
- Linda Thorson as Martha Taylor, John Schuck as Stefan Havel, George Demas as Charles Braden, Glynnis O’Connor as defense attorney Anne Paulsen, Gary Perez as Roberto Ramos
- Director
- James Quinn
- Writers
- Robert Palm
Summary
The Investigation
“Possession” opens with the murder of Virginia Boone, a retired school cafeteria worker found stabbed outside her cluttered penthouse at 832 Madison Avenue, her purse untouched and her shopping bags full of junk. The guarded superintendent, Stefan Havel, says little, and the owner, Martha Taylor, who runs a dress shop on the ground floor, heard nothing. Boone’s old co-workers say she was fiery, always had money to lend, and gave $5,000 to the building’s janitor, Roberto Ramos, who had told police he did not know her.
Ramos runs, and when caught he explains he is undocumented and was told not to talk to tenants. His knife is clean, and Rodgers says the fatal wound came from a thicker, blunter blade, which leads to the pinking shears in Taylor’s shop. The detectives catch Taylor searching Boone’s apartment for nine months of unpaid rent, and learn that Boone was the building’s last tenant, paying about $362 a month in a property agent Charles Braden values at $10 million. Housing Court files show 30 years of complaints between the women, including Boone’s claim that Taylor pushed her down the stairs.
During a search, a woman who collects day-old papers hands over pinking shears she found wrapped in a newspaper Taylor threw away. Taylor’s prints are on them, and she is arrested for murder.
The Trial
Defense attorney Anne Paulsen has Taylor testify before the grand jury, where she says a stroke left her right hand too weak to stab anyone. Southerlyn chooses not to call medical witnesses, and the grand jury refuses to indict. Taylor had not made bail because the building’s co-owner is Havel, her brother, who has not spoken to her in decades. His apartment yields a note from Taylor telling him to take care of Boone, and the judge lets the People present the case again.
Taylor now says Havel fathered Boone’s son and would never let her be evicted. She admits removing the shears from beside the body to protect him, and mentions that Braden once spoke of a buyer ready to pay Boone $50,000 to move out. Havel denies the killing but points the prosecutors to Boone’s safe-deposit box, which holds $45,000 in cash. Ramos identifies Braden as the man waiting outside that night.
Spoiler, the ending: Braden pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter on an offer of 12½ to 25 years. He says he paid Boone $50,000 from a prospective buyer to leave, and when she refused to move or return the money, he grabbed the shears she pulled from her cart and stabbed her. Taylor and Havel can finally sell, unless Boone’s son in Europe claims her lease.
Why it stands out
- The grand jury returns a “no true bill” after Taylor testifies that a stroke left her unable to grip the weapon.
- The judge allows the case to be presented again because Havel had hidden his ownership stake, so the new evidence could not have been found earlier.
- The killer turns out to be the managing agent, who stood to earn a commission on a sale worth about $12 million.