True Crime (Season 13, Episode 3)
Premise: The killing of a troubled rock singer draws in a retired NYPD detective writing a book about her husband’s fatal fall, and the gun he takes from a suspect’s apartment nearly sinks the prosecution.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 3
- 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
- Tony Lo Bianco as Det. Mike Foster, Stivi Paskoski as Travis Jones, David Thornton as defense attorney Jeremy Cook, Kellie Overbey as Rain Bridgeman, Susan Blommaert as Judge Rebecca Steinman
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Wendy Battles & Noah Baylin
Summary
The Investigation
“True Crime” starts with a body in a garbage truck: a woman’s corpse tumbles out of a commercial hauler, apparently collected on the Lower East Side. She was shot once in the head with a .38 and had cocaine and heroin in her system. Her breast implants identify her as Jane Hunt, known to fans as Patty Voytek, singer of Pierced Tongue and widow of Krisis frontman Shane Mallory, whose fall from a Brooklyn brownstone was ruled a suicide.
Voytek left a Riverdale rehab center on a Friday night after a phone call, took a town car downtown and got drugs from her guitarist, Rain Bridgeman. That night she also spoke with Mike Foster, a retired detective and best-selling true-crime author who believes Mallory was murdered; he says she threatened to sue him.
Foster steers the detectives to Travis Jones, the original Krisis drummer, who lost both Voytek and his spot in the band when she took up with Mallory. Foster admits picking the lock on Jones’s apartment to retrieve a diary he says he bought, and hands over a .38 he found under the bed. Jones lives two blocks from the dumpster, his old bandmates confirm the grudge, and the lab finds Voytek’s blood on the gun.
The Trial
Branch wants a grand jury to decide on charges. Before any indictment, defense lawyer Jeremy Cook asks Judge Rebecca Steinman to keep the gun and Foster out of the grand jury room. After Foster concedes the break-in was illegal and Cook ties him to Briscoe through an old case, Steinman bars both. Acting on Foster’s description of drug gear in Jones’s nightstand, police get a warrant and find Voytek’s prints on a baggie and a syringe. With no case pending, McCoy questions Jones without his lawyer; Jones admits Voytek came to him for help but denies killing her.
Caught lying about the diary, Foster refuses to share his research, citing press freedom. McCoy tells a Daily News reporter that Voytek’s death shields Foster’s book from challenge, angering Briscoe. Foster gives in; his files include illegal wiretap transcripts and a letter in which Jones threatened to shoot Voytek. Steinman then admits the gun as evidence police would inevitably have found, and a Washington lab has already confirmed it fired the fatal shot.
Spoiler, the ending: Cook brings Jones in to accept a first-degree manslaughter plea that requires a full account. As Jones talks, McCoy asks how he got Mallory’s guitar, which he could only have taken the night Mallory died, and accuses him of pushing Mallory off the roof; Voytek, McCoy says, saw the guitar and knew. Jones erupts that the couple threw him away, and Cook ends the session. No plea or sentence is shown.
Why it stands out
- Tony Lo Bianco guest stars as Mike Foster, a former NYPD detective who now solves cold cases for his books.
- The murder weapon is excluded before any indictment because a private citizen found it in an illegal break-in, then admitted under the inevitable-discovery rule.
- McCoy uses a newspaper to pressure a writer who invokes press freedom to protect his notes.