Catch and Kill (Season 24, Episode 1)
Premise: When a Brooklyn prosecutor is killed in the home she shares with a fashion heir, the case exposes a right-wing media figure who has been paying to hide videos of the heir’s violence, and Maroun takes the loss personally.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 1
- Detectives
- Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Michael Esper as Kenneth Lane, Bill Barrett as Dylan Phipps, Allison Walter as Sarah Harper, Charles Gray as Jimmy Boyd, Ari Blinder as Jeff Sanders
- Ripped from the headlines
- The hotel-hallway beating that Lane buys and buries reportedly mirrors the 2016 surveillance footage of Sean Combs attacking Cassie Ventura, which CNN made public in May 2024, and the title borrows the tabloid term “catch and kill,” which the episode ties to the National Enquirer’s David Pecker.
- Director
- Eriq La Salle
- Writers
- Rick Eid & Art Alamo
Summary
The Investigation
“Catch and Kill” opens with the newly elected Manhattan DA telling a talk-show host that his office will stay out of politics, while Brooklyn prosecutor Macy Harper is beaten and strangled in the Upper East Side brownstone she shares with her fiancé, clothing heir Dylan Phipps. Riley and Shaw find their new lieutenant, Jessica Brady, already on the scene, unable to say what became of Dixon. Phipps says he spent the evening with his friend Kenneth Lane, who runs a right-wing news site, and that his security cameras were smashed days earlier.
Macy’s smartwatch fixes her death at 9:29 p.m. That clears Javier Diaz, a migrant from a nearby hotel shelter who took a discarded sweatshirt, and Jeff Sanders, who hated Macy for prosecuting Senator Maureen Holt and admits protesting outside but was on a train by 9:12. Riley bristles at Brady’s close supervision, and a text from Dixon finally explains that she has moved to Miami with her son.
Lane backs Phipps’s alibi. But Macy never went to the Washington conference she told Phipps about; her phone leads to a domestic violence shelter, where she told a counselor that Phipps had turned violent. With his DNA under her fingernails, he is arrested.
The Trial
Only Lane accounts for a 28-minute gap, and Maroun, who once worked with Macy, loses her temper questioning him. Repeated $100,000 wires from Phipps to Lane’s company, and a text reading “caught and killed,” lead to a raid on Lane’s newsroom and hotel footage of Phipps beating a woman, one of seven such videos that Lane bought and buried. Phipps is charged with second-degree murder, and the judge lets the videos in as proof of motive and intent. Phipps then kills himself.
Maroun goes after Lane. Driver Jimmy Boyd, who picked up Lane and Phipps near the restaurant at 9:20, says Phipps vowed to kill her on the way and Lane rang the bell while Phipps hid. Lane is tried for murder as an accomplice, but after openings Boyd’s lawyer, Frank Cooney, says Boyd was high on an edible and will not testify.
Spoiler, the ending: Without Boyd, the case must be dismissed, and Maroun is told the office has to stay above emotion. It emerges that her own sister was killed in a beating 12 years ago and no one was ever arrested. Maroun heads to Boyd’s home, but Price stops her, warning that she would be disbarred, and she breaks down.
Why it stands out
- Maura Tierney makes her first appearance as Lt. Jessica Brady, who replaces Camryn Manheim’s Lt. Kate Dixon as head of the squad.
- Dixon’s exit is explained by a text she sends Riley: her son has taken a job at a school in Miami, and she has gone with him.
- The episode reveals that Maroun’s sister was killed 12 years earlier and that no one was ever arrested, a thread that returns in the season finale.