The Great Pretender (Season 21, Episode 9)
Premise: A socialite’s death exposes her as a con artist, and her killer, the heir to an opioid fortune, trades a plea for testimony that lets Price try his uncle for an overdose death.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 9
- Detectives
- Det. Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson), Det. Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Patrick Heusinger as Wyatt Ackman, Ian Blackman as Charles Ackman, Katie Allsup as Ella Whitlock / Mary Costello, Zach Grenier as defense attorney Ed Zanini, Eric Freeman as Matthew Dooley
- Ripped from the headlines
- The drugmaker storyline was inspired by reporting and lawsuits over the Sackler family’s part in making and manipulating the oxycodone market, and the fake heiress reportedly echoes Anna Sorokin, who posed as the wealthy “Anna Delvey” in New York and was convicted of larceny in 2019.
- Director
- Alex Hall
- Writers
- Rick Eid & Pamela Wechsler
Summary
The Investigation
“The Great Pretender” begins with friends toasting their hostess, Ella Whitlock, at a lavish dinner. She is later found dead in the warehouse she was turning into a nightclub, after a fall from a balcony. Her lawyer, David Kornfeld, calls her a driven heiress who was short of money and hoped to borrow from her parents, but Walter Whitlock says he has no daughter and her family photo was faked. Her prints identify her as Mary Costello of Passaic, New Jersey, who has a prior larceny arrest; her real parents thought she worked in fashion in Paris.
She has maxed-out cards and a $2 million credit line, ran up a $7,000 dinner bill the night she died, and wore a $200,000 diamond necklace that is missing from her body. A matchmaker, Tiffany Archer, had introduced her to Wyatt Ackman, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, who says he knew nothing of her past. Phone data saved in his Maybach lead to bartender Matthew Dooley, who lost $48,000 on a trip with her and unmasked her with a reverse image search. A cab driver who dropped her at the warehouse saw a Maybach parked across the street, and Wyatt is arrested.
The Trial
Wyatt, who has an opioid addiction, is remanded, and the judge bars a “settled insanity” defense. His counselor says he was 64 days clean and planned to propose. Wyatt offers to plead to first-degree manslaughter for 15 years and hands over a recording of his uncle, Northwestern Pharma founder Charles Ackman, waving off warnings about oxycodone. After the counselor dies of an overdose, Price persuades McCoy to take the plea and charge Charles with manslaughter in the death of Eric Howe, a doctor who became addicted after a car accident.
The tape is suppressed because Charles was in Massachusetts, which requires both parties’ consent. The prescribing doctor, testifying under immunity, says the company paid him nearly $500,000 for trips and talks. Wyatt admits he relapsed at Rikers, and Maroun picks up pills for him before he testifies; the defense suggests he is high. Charles calls the drug legal and says abuse is not his fault. Defense attorney Ed Zanini seeks a mistrial because Price lost his brother to an oxycodone overdose nine years earlier, but the judge refuses.
Spoiler, the ending: In closing, the prosecution calls Ackman a drug trafficker whose product happens to be legal, and the jury finds Charles Ackman guilty of manslaughter.
Why it stands out
- Price reveals that he lost his brother to oxycodone nine years earlier, a fact the defense uses to seek a mistrial.
- Maroun crosses a line by fetching pills for the addicted star witness so that he can get through his testimony.