Benevolence (Season 3, Episode 22)
Premise: A young deaf woman is murdered, and the suspects include a possessive former boyfriend and the mentor who expected her to stay.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 22
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- George Bamford as Mr. McKenna, Leon Russom as Gordon Bryce, John F. Cleary as Paul Crandall, Camille L. Jeter as Marcia Hendricks, George Grizzard as defense attorney Arthur Gold
- Director
- Ed Sherin
- Writers
- Teleplay: René Balcer; Story & teleplay: Doug Palau
Summary
The Investigation
“Benevolence” opens with the discovery of Kathy McKenna, a deaf university student, beaten against a wall and strangled with a scarf in the alley beside her building. Shortly before, a neighbor noticed a man and a woman using sign language near the alley’s end. Kathy’s boyfriend, Ben Freed, a hearing student, says she broke their date that night to see someone.
Friends describe Paul Crandall, a deaf mechanic Kathy knew from the Bryce Institute for the Deaf, as possessive. He opposes cochlear implants, which Kathy was considering. Crandall’s card-game alibi falls apart, and phone records show he called Kathy constantly. Printouts recovered from her TDD phone include a caller threatening to kill her on the day she died, and Crandall is arrested. He then admits he saw Kathy that night but says she was alive when he left.
The Trial
A sign-language expert concludes the threat was typed by a hearing person. Freed reveals that Kathy planned to move to California with him for graduate school and was waiting on a recommendation from institute founder Gordon Bryce, who had told police she would run his new preschool program. Bryce’s alibi slips, fibers matching Kathy’s scarf and blood of her type turn up on his gloves, and the charges against Crandall are dropped.
Bryce now says he was with his assistant, Marcia Hendricks, until after midnight. A $200,000 donation routed to a new foundation, with Hendricks made vice-president after Kathy’s death, lets Stone threaten her with a grand jury. Offered immunity, she admits she lied and produces transcripts she secretly kept of Bryce’s calls to Kathy, including the threats. The judge refuses to suppress them.
Spoiler, the ending: To shield the institute, Bryce accepts a plea to first-degree manslaughter, 8 1/3 to 25 years, and admits he grabbed Kathy’s scarf when she chose to leave. His lawyer, Arthur Gold, plans to seek an early release.
Why it stands out
- Dann Florek (Capt. Don Cragen) and Richard Brooks (ADA Paul Robinette) appear as series regulars for the final time.
- The case turns on printouts from TDD phones, and a sign-language expert uses grammar to show a hearing person wrote the threat.
- The judge refuses to suppress the transcripts because an employee, not the state, secretly kept them.