Sects (Season 15, Episode 19)
Premise: A survivor of a sect that abused its children kills his former nanny and then shoots himself, and McCoy turns the case against the mother who founded the group.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 19
- 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
- Austin Lysy as Richard “Daniel” Ranson, Deborah Hedwall as Mrs. Shelby, Merritt Wever as Sunshine Porter, David Thornton as defense attorney Lionel Granger, Marisa Ryan as Stacey Ranson
- Ripped from the headlines
- The episode is loosely based on Ricky Rodriguez, who was raised in the Children of God and who in January 2005 killed Angela Smith, one of his former nannies, before taking his own life.
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Frank Pugliese
Summary
The Investigation
“Sects” begins with a murder and a suicide attempt: outside his Manhattan hotel, 28-year-old Richard Ranson shoots himself in the head moments after a phone call and survives with a grazing wound. In his room, detectives find a woman stabbed to death and carrying a fake license. His estranged wife, Stacey, says he grew up in the Children of the Divine, a sect founded in the 1960s and led by his mother, Mrs. Shelby, where adults had sex with children, and that he had talked for months about killing her.
A coworker recalls Ranson turning pale over a call two weeks earlier, and his notes lead to the Empire State Hotel and Sunshine Porter, who flew in from San Francisco on a ticket he sold her. Found hiding with a friend, she reveals that she is his sister and that she had told him their mother was coming to New York. The victim is Dolores Diamond, a nanny in the group who sexually abused them as children and who refused to say where Shelby was. Ranson, called Daniel in the group, confesses.
The Trial
Ranson is allowed to plead to manslaughter, and McCoy targets Shelby, who took him from his grandparents, his court-appointed guardians since he was a toddler. Because a relative has a defense to kidnapping, McCoy must prove she took him for a sexual purpose, a Class A felony with no statute of limitations. Sunshine lures Shelby out through her lawyer, and she is arrested; Borgia argues for remand, and the judge sets $2 million bail. On the stand, Sunshine says her mother encouraged the abuse, but defense attorney Lionel Granger produces her sworn statement to Mexican investigators calling it all invented, and the judge dismisses the charge.
McCoy then charges Shelby with depraved-indifference murder in the death of her younger son, David, a minor who died of a Quaalude overdose in New York the year before while traveling with her; her empty prescription bottle was at the scene. Through federal investigators, the prosecutors obtain a photocopy of the Book of Daniel, Shelby’s handwritten account of how Richard was raised, seized in a raid in Buenos Aires. Ranson testifies that the adults drugged the children before abusing them. Shelby calls the book a forgery and compares herself to persecuted figures from Jesus to Galileo.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Shelby guilty of murder in her son David’s death.
Why it stands out
- When the kidnapping case collapses on a recanted statement, McCoy rebuilds it as a depraved-indifference murder charge over the overdose death of Shelby’s younger son.
- Because New York gives relatives a defense to kidnapping a child to assume control, the first case depends on proving Shelby took her son for sexual purposes, which carries no statute of limitations.