Cradle to Grave (Season 2, Episode 18)
Premise: A baby left in a box on an emergency-room floor turns out to have frozen to death at home.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 18
- Detectives
- Sgt. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Karen Lynn Gorney as Iris Corman, Victor Argo as Jose Tirado, Rocco Sisto as Joseph Turner, Bruklin Harris as Jackie Ward, Richard Bright as Albert Boxer
- Director
- James Frawley
- Writers
- Robert Nathan & Sally Nemeth
Summary
The Investigation
“Cradle to Grave” begins when a nurse finds a baby boy in a box on a hospital emergency-room floor. The intern on duty believes he froze to death, though he is clean, well dressed and healthy. Cerreta and Logan trace his bunny suit to a Lower East Side store, whose clerk remembers carrying a playpen to a run-down tenement on East 3rd Street. There they meet Joseph Turner, a tenant who says he pays rent-controlled rent, and learn that owner Iris Corman has been paying tenants to leave.
The apartment’s lease is in the name of Adele Loftus, who died a year earlier, and her cemetery records lead to her granddaughters. Jackie Ward admits the baby, Henry, was hers. She went to work expecting a teenage sitter, Serena Price, to come by after school, came home to a freezing apartment and took him to the hospital, then panicked and left. The detectives learn the heat has been off for long stretches, the oil bills don’t change with the weather, and Turner, who has three priors for assault and menacing, is clearing out his sixth building for Corman.
The Trial
The super, Jose Tirado, and Turner are charged in Henry’s death. Tirado takes a plea and testifies that Turner stopped him from turning the furnace on. Stone persuades the judge to admit Turner’s earlier assaults on tenants as a pattern, and the prosecutors learn that Turner co-owns the buildings with Corman and lives with her. The jury convicts Turner of second-degree manslaughter.
It emerges that a juror who speaks Spanish told the others the interpreter mistranslated part of Tirado’s testimony, and the judge declares a mistrial. During plea talks, Corman blames the rent laws and hints that Tirado could change his story. Investigators notice that complaints about her buildings stopped when a new housing inspector, Albert Boxer, took over, and Robinette poses as a building manager to catch Boxer taking a bribe.
Spoiler, the ending: Facing jail, Boxer agrees to plead to a misdemeanor and testify against the landlords who paid him, starting with Corman. The episode closes on Stone’s opening statement at a new trial of both Corman and Turner, with no verdict shown.
Why it stands out
- The story moves from a mother suspected of neglect to the landlord and partner who cut off the heat.
- A single mistranslated word from a court interpreter forces a mistrial.
- Robinette poses as a building manager in a sting on a housing inspector.