Obsession (Season 15, Episode 15)
Premise: A conservative TV host accused of sexual harassment is shot dead outside his book signing, and the woman who pulled the trigger claims his wife talked her into it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 15
- Detectives
- Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Paula Devicq as Miranda Shea, Dana Eskelson as Karen Nix, Gerry Becker as defense attorney Gerard Wills, Joseph Cross as Will Shea, Timothy Adams as Tom McGrath
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Wendy Battles & Alfredo Barrios Jr.
Summary
The Investigation
“Obsession” opens with the murder of Larry Shea, a conservative talk show host preaching family values despite a sexual harassment suit, who is shot in the back of the head outside a book signing in Union Square. His driver saw someone in a red ski cap with a white patch flee into the subway, and police recover the weapon nearby, a World War II Luger with no serial number but a usable print.
Shea’s much younger wife, Miranda, was shopping at Barney’s with her son, Will, whom Shea adopted at 10. A documentary filmmaker who sent Shea angry letters was on a flight home from Houston. Former staffer Melinda Phelps, whose suit the network settled for $3.5 million, lied about her alibi, but she was actually at dinner with a man who has a Daily News contact, then gave him her tapes of Shea’s advances.
A witness recalls a woman in the red cap boarding a train, and the cap itself turns up in a subway station with a bleached blond hair inside. Its “Serenity 2004” logo traces to a wilderness retreat for a drug rehab center, where Miranda was treated for a painkiller addiction and shared a tent with Karen Nix. Nix has a history: a woman she pursued took out a restraining order. DNA from Nix’s letters matches the hair and a print matches the gun, and her arrest turns up a closet shrine to Miranda.
The Trial
Nix’s lawyer says she killed Shea to protect Miranda, her lover of more than a year, from an emotionally abusive husband. Miranda denies both the affair and the abuse and says Nix is unstable. Hotel bills instead expose Miranda’s affair with her trainer, Tom McGrath, who recalls her daydreams of Shea dying and leaving her his money; her prenup would pay her $500,000 in a divorce, against $20 million as his widow. Shown that Miranda was seeing McGrath, Nix says Miranda planned the shooting and told her to use a gun from her grandfather’s antique collection. In exchange for a first-degree manslaughter plea and ten years, she testifies against Miranda.
Defense attorney Gerard Wills uses Nix’s mental illness and the restraining order to paint her as a stalker, and attacks McGrath as a spurned ex whom Miranda refused a loan. Miranda testifies that her marriage was strong and denies ever being with a woman. Will is missing from the defense witness list, and Borgia persuades him to talk. Testifying under subpoena, Will says he once came home at Thanksgiving and found his mother in bed with Nix, though the defense points out he inherits the fortune if she is convicted.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Miranda Shea guilty of second-degree murder.
Why it stands out
- In Annie Parisse’s second episode as Borgia, it is Borgia who persuades the victim’s stepson to take the stand against his mother.
- The shooter first seeks a lesser plea by claiming she killed to rescue her lover from abuse, then becomes the prosecution’s star witness once she learns the lover was seeing someone else.
- Will’s testimony carries a built-in conflict, since he becomes sole heir to the $20 million estate if his mother is convicted.