The Dead Wives Club (Season 15, Episode 2)
Premise: A passenger who dies when a ferry slams into a Manhattan dock turns out to have been pushed overboard, and suspicion falls on the ex-wife of the firefighter who left her to marry his late best friend’s widow.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 2
- Detectives
- Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), 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
- Amy Carlson as Collette Connolly, Joseph Murphy as Ed McClean, Roma Maffia as defense attorney Vanessa Galiano, Laurence Lau as Special Agent Pancho Diamond, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Ripped from the headlines
- The opening crash reportedly resembles the Staten Island Ferry crash of October 15, 2003, when the Andrew J. Barberi struck a maintenance pier at full speed, killing 11 people; its pilot fled the scene and was later found at home after a suicide attempt.
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Nick Santora
Summary
The Investigation
“The Dead Wives Club” begins with a ferry slamming into a Manhattan dock, injuring about 20 people and killing Donna McClean, 34, pulled from the water with a head wound. The pilot slips away and is found at home badly hurt, and federal agents take over the crash. He was not drunk, and a deckhand recalls hearing someone scream and hit the water just before the collision. The M.E. finds McClean struck the lower railing, drowned, and has bruises at the height of the top rail, as if shoved.
Her husband, Ed McClean, is a retired firefighter. Donna was the widow of his best friend, Joe Mahar, killed on 9/11; Ed, assigned to look after her, left his wife, Collette, and their twin sons to marry her. A neighbor scorns the remarried widows, who call themselves the “Dead Wives Club.” Donna held the settlement money, while Ed paid little support and Collette, now Connolly again, went back to work. She broke her wrist the morning of the crash.
Collette blames a fall on subway stairs, but her timeline doesn’t fit, and an E.R. doctor says her fracture comes from catching a backward fall. Two left palm prints sit on the upper rail: one is Donna’s, and the other yields a stranger’s DNA through low copy number testing, suggesting the killer shoved her and then grabbed the rail as the ferry hit. Her lawyer, Vanessa Galiano, refuses a DNA sample. A widow reveals that a week before the death, Ed told Collette that he and his new wife would seek custody of the boys.
The Trial
A friendly judge signs a DNA warrant, but in his absence another judge quashes it for lack of probable cause. The office then mails Collette a parking-ticket amnesty notice with a return envelope; she seals it, and the DNA on the flap matches the rail. The judge upholds the ruse and, after an expert notes the method helped identify World Trade Center victims, admits the evidence. Galiano rejects murder two and plans an extreme emotional disturbance defense rooted in 9/11 trauma. Southerlyn leans toward a deal, but McCoy and Branch insist on murder.
Ed testifies that Collette raged over the custody plan. Galiano gets him to admit Donna kept her settlement in her own name, and McCoy has him recall standing beside Joe Mahar in a North Tower stairwell when the first tower fell. Collette testifies that she pushed Donna on impulse. McCoy notes that she fled without a word, lied to police repeatedly and never saw a therapist before raising the defense.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Collette Connolly guilty of second-degree murder. Southerlyn calls both women collateral damage of the attacks, and McCoy waves the thought away.
Why it stands out
- This is J. K. Simmons’s last outing as Dr. Emil Skoda before he comes back for three Season 20 episodes.
- After a judge quashes a DNA warrant, prosecutors get the suspect’s DNA by mailing her a parking-ticket amnesty notice with a return envelope, a ruse the court upholds.
- Low copy number DNA from a palm print survives a Frye challenge after an expert notes the method was used to identify World Trade Center victims.