Crimebusters (Season 19, Episode 13)
Premise: A firebomb at an Army recruiting center kills a sleeping baby, and while a band of internet crime-solvers chases the case on its own, the evidence points both to a grieving soldier’s brother and to the baby’s mother.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 13
- 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
- Mackenzie Mauzy as Carly Di Gravia, Brian J. Smith as Derek Sherman, Lisa Emery as defense attorney Weller, Amelia Campbell as Operation Molly Founder, Jennifer Cody as Vicki Sandusky
- Director
- Alex Chapple
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & Gina Gionfriddo
Summary
The Investigation
“Crimebusters” starts with a firebombing at an Army recruiting center in Manhattan, where a brick shattered the window and a butane can fitted with a blasting cap set the office ablaze. Bystanders rescue Carly Di Gravia, but her nine-month-old son, Mikey, dies. Sgt. Rodney Jakes (called James in the episode), the recruiter, had let her stay the night after she rode a bus from Pennsylvania to press the Army about her husband, Mike, missing in Afghanistan for four months. A weekly antiwar protester known as Megaphone Bob, once a suspect in a Seattle arson, was at a Rangers game.
A tourist’s video shows a cyclist in a Panthers Football shirt holding a brick. Operation Molly, a web-sleuthing group the Chief of Detectives sends to assist Van Buren, traces the shirt to Derek Sherman, a deli delivery rider whose sister was killed in Iraq, and its members dig through his trash and find bricks. Carly’s father, meanwhile, sets off explosives in a coal mine, and the Army, which had ignored Carly, is suddenly attentive. When volunteers knock Sherman off his bike and seize his backpack, the detectives arrest them, but the lab finds butane in the bag and Sherman is charged with arson and murder.
The Trial
A judge suppresses the bricks but admits the backpack, since the volunteers had been warned off and were not police agents. Sherman rejects 12 years, admitting only that he drunkenly threw a brick in anger over his sister. Pennsylvania police confirm that Carly’s father uses the bomb’s brand of blasting cap, and her father-in-law, Hank, says Mike lost fingers at 12 rigging a blasting cap to a butane can. A salon assistant who befriended Carly records her saying she never wanted the baby. When Carly checks out of her hotel, Cutter has her arrested without consulting McCoy, who orders the charges against Sherman dropped and a quiet deal for Carly.
Carly’s lawyer, Ms. Weller, refuses a deal and plans to blame Sherman, until the Operation Molly founder who took his backpack admits she sprayed butane inside it. At trial, Weller paints Hank as vengeful and the salon assistant as a manipulator who got Carly drunk. Operation Molly then learns that Sherman once dealt hash oil, which is extracted with butane; McCoy says it is Brady material the defense must get, and the judge lets Weller argue that Sherman threw the bomb.
Spoiler, the ending: Unable to prove either suspect guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, McCoy declines to prosecute both Carly and Sherman and announces the decision in a press release, accepting the political cost in the middle of his campaign. No one is convicted of Mikey’s death.
Why it stands out
- McCoy takes a call of support from former DA Adam Schiff, played by Steven Hill from 1990 to 2000, who is said to be in Africa with Jimmy Carter, waiting to enter Zimbabwe.
- The case ends with no conviction at all, as McCoy drops charges against both suspects rather than risk convicting the wrong one.
- A judge admits the backpack seized by the vigilantes because they were not acting for the police, but their own tampering later sinks its value.