The Ring (Season 13, Episode 5)
Premise: Remains dumped in a Hell’s Kitchen lot belong to a young woman everyone believed died in the September 11 attacks, and a $40,000 ring ties her to a married man from a powerful political family.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, 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 Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Thomas McCarthy as Donald Housman, Stevie Ray Dallimore as Bradley Hagen, Patrick Breen as defense attorney Kevin Hobart, Greer Goodman as Caitlin Birch, Annie Meisels as Molly
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin
Summary
The Investigation
“The Ring” begins with a skeleton in a duffel bag: a grocer chasing teenage shoplifters into a vacant Hell’s Kitchen lot finds the remains of a young woman, dead for over a year, struck hard on the head and missing her left hand. A mark on a finger bone shows she wore a ring, which two of the teens had pocketed. It is a $40,000 Harry Winston design whose buyers include Bradley Hagen, whose wife still has hers, and Kelly Sommers.
Sommers is listed among the September 11 dead: she worked on the 89th floor of the north tower, and her left hand and purse were recovered from the rubble. Her sister, Caitlin Birch, and fiancé, Donald Housman, never saw her wear such a ring, and no surviving colleague can place her at work that day. Cash deposits covered the ring, and her last card charge was a September 10 dinner at a restaurant frequented by Hagen, scion of a political family.
Recovered e-mails show the two were lovers and that she wanted to talk at that dinner. Hagen admits the affair but says he dropped her at home. DNA confirms the skeleton is Sommers, yet Branch, whose campaign the Hagens supported, wants more before an arrest. Her neighbor Molly says Kelly was ending the affair and saw her get back into Hagen’s Mercedes around 10 p.m., and Hagen once fired a secretary who tried to leave him. He is charged with second-degree murder.
The Trial
Defense lawyer Kevin Hobart seeks to suppress the e-mails; McCoy wins by adopting Branch’s view that the Constitution guarantees no right to privacy, though he admits he does not believe it. Housman testifies that Sommers carried the recovered purse to work daily. Hobart uses the hand from Ground Zero to question the DNA match, and Hagen testifies that they agreed to part and he left her at home near midnight.
Hobart then calls a late witness, a north tower newsstand worker who recalls Sommers, always ready with exact change, in the lobby on September 11. Southerlyn notices that the recovered purse held no coins: it is an evening bag from the dinner, while her work bag is still in her sister’s closet. A search of Housman’s computer, unlocked with Sommers’s pet name for him, shows he had been reading her e-mail and knew about the affair, and the $43,000 victim compensation he said he donated never reached the charity.
Spoiler, the ending: Confronted in front of his new girlfriend, Leah, who wears a ring bought after the payment arrived, Housman breaks down, saying Sommers agreed to marry him, then cheated. His lawyer soon seeks a meeting; the episode shows no verdict for Hagen and no charges against Housman.
Why it stands out
- The story ties a Hell’s Kitchen murder to the September 11 attacks, turning on whether a victim’s hand and purse found at Ground Zero were planted there.
- McCoy wins a suppression fight by arguing Branch’s view that the Constitution contains no right to privacy, a position he privately rejects.