Turn the Page (Season 23, Episode 3)
Premise: A woman strangled after a night at a sex club turns out to be the fourth victim killed the same way, and the trial puts Riley’s handling of an old missing-person case, and his own past, on display.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 3
- Detectives
- Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks), Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), Det. Violet Yee (Connie Shi)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Paul Scanlan as Bruce Elliot, Zabryna Guevara as defense attorney Amanda Stanley, Jeff Woods Garlin as Raymond Potter, Anthony Chatmon II as Mason Smith, Allison Thomas Lee as Rachel Horn
- Director
- Michael Smith
- Writers
- Rick Eid
Summary
The Investigation
“Turn the Page” opens with Celeste Clark, 27, a newly promoted vice president at a wealth management firm, seized on the street by a man demanding that she say she loves him, then strangled; her hyoid bone and a neck vertebra are broken. A witness saw a man in a red jacket run off. An angry text leads to her ex-boyfriend Mason Smith, caught on camera near the scene shortly after the killing.
Det. Violet Yee finds three earlier killings done the same way, all young Black women from Brooklyn. One, Olivia Washington, went missing in 2020 in a case Riley led; he never learned that her body was found in Long Island City in 2021, after he left the 34th Precinct. DNA under Celeste’s nails rules out Smith, who says she frequented sex clubs. Shaw suggests poor Black women get less attention than rich white ones, and Riley insists he worked Washington’s case hard.
Under subpoena, club manager Rachel Horn’s video shows Celeste talking briefly with a white man who follows her out 41 seconds later. He is investment executive Bruce Elliot, whose building video shows him in a red jacket that night. After searching his condo, Riley and Shaw chase him into a business, where he holds a woman at gunpoint; Riley offers himself in her place, and Elliot is arrested.
The Trial
Elliot is remanded, with Celeste’s necklace found in his condo and kidnapping charges to come. Raymond Potter, whose daughter Theresa is one of the other victims, accuses the prosecutors of not caring about poor Black people. Links to the other killings are thin beyond jewelry in Elliot’s condo that police take for trophies, and after debating a joint trial the office tries Celeste’s case alone, partly to keep the other women’s drug arrests and sex work out of focus. Defense attorney Amanda Stanley is allowed to explore the club’s fetish rooms, so Price moves to admit the other three killings as a distinctive pattern under the Molineux rule, and the judge agrees.
Dixon testifies about the matching deaths, and Potter is removed after shouting at Elliot in court. Stanley calls Riley, whose notes from questioning Elliot about Washington’s disappearance called his alibi credible. Price gets the background from Dixon: while caring for his dying father, Riley was drinking and was suspended for six months for punching a captain who insulted her. On the stand Riley admits drinking on duty in that period. Afterward he brings the prosecutors photos turned up by his own digging into the other three cases.
Spoiler, the ending: In closing, the prosecution cites Celeste’s necklace and a ring and two other necklaces from Elliot’s condo as trophies from all four women. The jury finds Elliot guilty.
Why it stands out
- Riley’s past is laid out in court: a six-month suspension for punching a captain who insulted Dixon, during a stretch when he was drinking on the job, paying for his dying father’s care and living apart from his wife and children.
- Riley had questioned the killer years earlier in one of the unsolved cases and written that his alibi was credible.
- Three killings that were never charged reach the jury anyway, admitted as evidence of a unique pattern under New York’s Molineux rule.