Absentia (Season 13, Episode 13)
Premise: When the wounded eyewitness to a jewelry store killing skips the trial, the detectives learn he is a fugitive celebrity convicted in absentia of murdering his girlfriend two decades earlier.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 13
- 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 Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Mandy Patinkin as Levi “The Griffin” March / Glenn Fordyce, David Chandler as defense attorney Marvin Silverman, Christina Rouner as Anne-Marie Gautreaux, Andrew McCarthy as attorney Finnerty, Gene Farber as Eddie Travandze
- Ripped from the headlines
- The Levi March storyline echoes the case of Ira Einhorn, who fled before his trial for killing his girlfriend Holly Maddux, was convicted in absentia in 1996 and was extradited from France in 2001.
- Director
- Martha Mitchell & Darnell Martin
- Writers
- Eric Overmyer
Summary
The Investigation
“Absentia” begins with a jewelry store robbery-homicide in the Village at closing time. The owner, Josh Baker, 53, is shot dead, and a customer visiting from Chicago, Glenn Fordyce, is wounded. Stolen pieces surface at a pawnshop run by a man named Krakow, and a print on a bracelet the robber dropped belongs to Eddie Travandze, a burglar from the country of Georgia. Briscoe and Green arrest him at a vodka bar on St. Mark’s, and Krakow and Fordyce both pick him out of a lineup.
Travandze refuses murder two, claiming a stranger sold him the jewelry. At trial his lawyer, Finnerty, questions Krakow’s motives, and then Fordyce fails to appear: he and his wife have left Chicago on a sudden road trip. Told that Travandze has an uncle linked to the Russian mob serving a life term, McCoy accuses Finnerty of tampering, but the judge refuses a delay and the jury acquits on all counts. Prints from Fordyce’s Chicago apartment then match Levi March.
March, who styled himself “The Griffin,” was a media personality in the early 1980s. After his father posted $1 million bail, he fled and was convicted in absentia of killing his girlfriend, Abby Sherman, whose body was found sealed behind the fireplace in his apartment. Retired detective Will Ashman recalls narrowly missing him in Montreal years later. Fordyce’s wife is Anne-Marie Gautreaux of Montreal. Pregnant and tired of hiding, she agrees through a lawyer to reveal where he is in exchange for immunity and a promise that she will not have to testify, and March is caught on a fire escape.
The Trial
McCoy plans to send March straight to prison, but Marvin Silverman, his lawyer at the first trial, now calls it a sham, and the Appellate Division voids the conviction. At the retrial the judge refuses to let McCoy read in the old testimony of Abby’s late mother, since the earlier trial legally never happened. Abby’s sister, Rosalie Carmody, describes March as controlling, and Ashman describes the remains.
March testifies that he was away in Detroit when Abby disappeared and that government agents killed her to discredit him. On cross he claims the CIA was behind John Lennon’s murder and that an unnamed former covert operative phoned him to apologize for Abby’s death.
Spoiler, the ending: Phone records show hundreds of local calls between March and Trish Tippens, the friend Abby once caught in bed with him. Shown the records, Anne-Marie turns on him and says March admitted the murder to her, and since their marriage was never real, no spousal privilege applies. March pleads guilty to second-degree murder and takes the maximum of 25 years to life, sparing himself a consecutive escape charge.
Why it stands out
- Mandy Patinkin guest stars as Levi March, a one-time media gadfly hiding in plain sight as Glenn Fordyce.
- Because the 20-year-old trial is ruled invalid, sworn testimony from the victim’s late mother is treated as though it never existed.
- Andrew McCarthy appears as Finnerty, the defense lawyer for the robbery suspect whose case collapses when the star witness disappears.