Blackmail (Season 20, Episode 12)
Premise: The murder of a freelance gossip writer exposes a daytime talk-show host’s affairs with women on her staff and a $3 million extortion scheme run out of the website she wrote for.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, 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
- Samantha Bee as Vanessa Carville, Raúl Esparza as Dennis Di Palma, Tom Lipinski as Derek Fanning, Jason Kravits as Attorney Baron, Alexandra Silber as Sara Bradley
- Ripped from the headlines
- The episode is based on the 2009 scandal in which David Letterman revealed on his late-night show that someone was trying to blackmail him over a sexual relationship with a female employee.
- Director
- Marc Levin
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman & Matthew McGough
Summary
The Investigation
“Blackmail” begins with the strangled body of Megan Kerik hidden behind sheet metal at an abandoned construction site, her purse and phone missing. Pentagon fingerprints from a USO trip to Afghanistan identify her as a freelancer for CitySmear, a celebrity-dirt website, and her apartment has been stripped of its computer and files. The M.E. finds a man’s pubic hair on her body.
A young woman, Sara Bradley, tells Lupo and Bernard that Kerik wanted to interview her about sleeping with a former boss, who turns out to be Vanessa Carville, host of the daytime show The Sisters, where Kerik once worked. The detectives find Carville in McCoy’s office, reporting that someone left a package of her emails, diary pages and photos with female employees on her doorstep and is demanding $3 million to keep them out of a book.
The blackmailer skips the first call, and one photo in the package turns out to come from a backup drive stolen from Bradley’s apartment. When the call comes, a wired Carville meets the extortionist in a park: he is CitySmear editor Dennis Di Palma, who had claimed not to know Kerik’s project. A search turns up Kerik’s notebooks, the originals and Bradley’s drive, and the hair on Kerik’s body matches his.
The Trial
Di Palma is held on $3 million bail for attempted grand larceny. His lawyer, Baron, calls the scheme a journalistic sting and seeks Carville’s tax returns, counseling notes and staff files. The check was bound for a Cayman Islands account Di Palma opened during a beach trip with Kerik, the same weekend Bradley was burgled, which suggests an accomplice. After the judge allows narrower subpoenas of former employees, Carville tells her audience she is dropping her complaint, and Di Palma is released.
The prosecutors leak a phony $500,000 book deal, and recorded calls catch CitySmear staffer Derek Fanning demanding half. Kerik’s laptop is then left anonymously in her lobby with a video seeming to show Di Palma choking her, but a reflection reveals a third person. Di Palma says Fanning forced him at gunpoint to stage it, later killed Kerik after she vowed to go to the police, and used the clip to keep him in line. Fanning is charged with murder, but Di Palma refuses to testify, even with immunity.
Spoiler, the ending: To bring Carville back, the prosecutors charge her with a drug-sale felony for sharing half a Vicodin with Kerik, a charge that could hurt her in a custody fight, and she agrees to testify. Facing ten years for blackmail, Di Palma agrees to testify against Fanning and plead to a two-year term. Fanning’s trial is not shown.
Why it stands out
- Samantha Bee, a correspondent on The Daily Show, guest-stars as talk-show host Vanessa Carville.
- The prosecutors turn coercion back on the victim, using a drug felony over half a Vicodin to make Carville testify and then using her testimony as leverage over Di Palma.
- The case turns on the line between publishing embarrassing material, which is legal, and threatening to publish it for money, which is a felony.