Crashers (Season 20, Episode 19)
Premise: A young model who crashed a party at Gracie Mansion is beaten to death and burned, and the investigation leads from her troubled brother to a senator’s office and home.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, Episode 19
- 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
- Kathy Baker as Camille Peterson, Tony Roberts as Senator Bryce Peterson, Ben Schnetzer as Dustin Henry, Lily Rabe as Andrea Wheaton, John Ventimiglia as defense attorney Dibbens, Ernie Hudson as Frank Gibson
- Ripped from the headlines
- The affair at the heart of the case echoes the 2010 Iris Robinson scandal, in which a Northern Ireland politician arranged loans to help her 19-year-old lover start a business.
- Director
- Darnell Martin
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & Christopher Ambrose & Julie Martin
Summary
The Investigation
“Crashers” begins with the burning body of a young woman behind a diner. Rodgers finds a blow to the head and pricey new hair extensions, and the stylist identifies her as Brenna, who wanted to look her best for an event at Gracie Mansion. At that reception for Afghanistan’s U.N. representative, a staffer admits letting Brenna and a young man in without invitations. Brenna Lane, a model, was staying in a friend’s illegal sublet, which proves to be the murder scene; a cat is the only witness. An unused boarding pass leads to airport video of the same young man slipping past security to talk her out of a flight to Washington.
He is Dustin Henry, a florist’s driver, who says Brenna was his sister and that they crashed the party to see famous people. Brenna had approached Senator Bryce Peterson there and called his office several times, but Peterson and his aide Andrea Wheaton deny knowing her. Dustin went into foster care at 14 and once overdosed, and he turns hostile when questioned about his feelings for his sister. A search of his apartment finds blood-stained cat litter and a receipt for fishnet stockings like hers, and he is charged with her murder.
The Trial
Defense attorney Dibbens wins suppression of the search because the warrant application suggested a terrorism angle the FBI had already ruled out, and Van Buren takes the blame for the warrant. With Dustin on suicide watch, the detectives learn he has been storing cases of wine from the Petersons’ Brooklyn Heights home and is opening a wine shop in a storefront leased by the senator’s campaign, funded with $100,000 in federal recovery money routed through the office. Wheaton claims she was Dustin’s lover, but cat hair from Brenna’s pet in a car rented for Wheaton the night of the murder leads to her arrest for murder.
Dustin shows little reaction to her arrest. A $4,000 prepayment for cosmetic vaginal surgery and hormone purchases from the shop’s account point to an older woman: Camille Peterson, the senator’s wife. At a witness meeting before Wheaton’s trial, Cutter presses Dustin for intimate details and confronts Camille with the surgery payment, and Dustin’s defense of her exposes their affair. Dustin reveals that an adult woman in his building seduced him at 14, and Camille confesses that she struck Brenna with an exercise weight to keep her from telling the senator, then called Wheaton, who cleaned up and planted evidence against Dustin.
Spoiler, the ending: Camille Peterson agrees to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter, and Wheaton receives a prison term as an accessory. Senator Peterson refuses to resign and says he is standing by his wife.
Why it stands out
- S. Epatha Merkerson plays Van Buren without a wig for the first time in the series, as the lieutenant’s cancer storyline turns to her recovery and mounting medical bills.
- The case against Dustin collapses when a judge suppresses evidence seized under a warrant that leaned on a terrorism threat the FBI had already dismissed.
- The killer is exposed not at trial but in a witness-preparation meeting, when Cutter’s questions push the senator’s wife into revealing her affair.