Illegitimate (Season 19, Episode 12)
Premise: After a debt-ridden police sergeant dies in a hostage standoff, a body hidden in his spare apartment leads to a failed memorabilia theft and a businessman convinced that he is John F. Kennedy’s secret son.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 12
- Detectives
- Det. Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto), Det. Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Christopher McDonald as John Jay McIntyre, Rue McClanahan as Lois McIntyre, Peter Friedman as defense attorney Nolan Farber, Kathleen Chalfant as Arraignment Judge Lisa Cutler, Chloe Whiteford as Trisha Waylon
- Director
- Josh Marston
- Writers
- Stephanie Sengupta & Keith Eisner
Summary
The Investigation
“Illegitimate” opens with a bar hostage standoff that ends when police shoot Sgt. Scott Waylon, who drew an unloaded gun. His keys lead Lupo and Bernard to a rent-controlled Alphabet City apartment he was about to lose, where a well-dressed older man lies dead in a closet with a fractured skull. Waylon’s widow, Trisha, says she lost their $62,000 savings to a Nigerian email scam, and Waylon took a second job as a strip-club bouncer. Presidential documents hidden in their home identify the dead man as collector Norman Lukovitch, a retired radiologist whose most valuable pieces sat untouched in a safe.
The club’s owner says Waylon was guarding a customer, business manager Ian Dryden, who is found on his yacht with a broken neck, killed hours before the standoff. Dryden’s datebook holds Lukovitch’s auction-house client number, and the house reports an inquiry from Dryden client John Jay McIntyre, an airplane-toilet heir who lost to Lukovitch at a recent sale. Dryden withdrew $6,000 from McIntyre’s account the day Waylon paid bills in cash, and McIntyre took his speedboat out briefly the morning Dryden died. He is arrested for Dryden’s murder while leaving for Morocco.
The Trial
McIntyre waives his rights, but Rubirosa halts the interview when the detectives raise Lukovitch. At the arraignment, defense attorney Nolan Farber forces an immediate Molineux hearing. Judge Lisa Cutler bars any mention of Lukovitch, dismisses the Dryden count for lack of motive, and then dismisses it with prejudice after finding that Rubirosa was not candid with the court. The office turns to the Lukovitch killing instead.
McIntyre’s endocrinologist says he is fixated on having Addison’s disease and brought in hair, supposedly his father’s, that proved to be dyed; a barber recalls Waylon taking brown clippings off his floor. Lukovitch’s safe held a lock of Kennedy’s hair, said to have been clipped at Parkland Hospital in 1963. Kennedy had Addison’s, McIntyre was born in 1960, and his mother, Lois, hints at a fling with Kennedy during his campaign. A judge refuses to compel a private bank, apparently the Kennedy family’s, to reveal McIntyre’s 260 calls, and a Justice Department lawyer serves McCoy with an order to surrender the hair after the case, plus a gag order.
Spoiler, the ending: Cutter tells McIntyre that the family’s claim proves the hair is real and that a DNA test confirms he is Kennedy’s son, but that the result will be sealed once the case closes. To keep it open, McIntyre urges them to pursue Waylon’s widow over the Nigerian scam, a detail police never made public, and admits Dryden told him. He orders Farber to negotiate a plea. The DNA test was a bluff, and the prosecutors decide not to tell him yet.
Why it stands out
- Rue McClanahan, Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls, guest stars as McIntyre’s mother, a woman who hints at an affair with John F. Kennedy.
- Rubirosa’s evasive answer to a judge at a Molineux hearing costs the prosecution its first murder charge, which is dismissed with prejudice.
- Cutter wins the admission with an invented DNA result, telling McIntyre he is Kennedy’s son on the strength of a test that was never run.