Wedded Bliss (Season 3, Episode 5)
Premise: Two Mexican teenagers found in the city’s rivers in handcuffs lead detectives to a sweatshop where immigrant workers were chained to their beds.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 5
- Detectives
- Sgt. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino), 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
- José Zúñiga as Rudy Amendariz, Patti D’Arbanville as Betty Drake, Bill Raymond as Ellis Drake, Lisa Vidal as Lena Armendariz
- Director
- Vern Gillum
- Writers
- Robert Nathan & Edward Pomerantz
Summary
The Investigation
“Wedded Bliss” opens with the body of a teenage girl pulled from the Hudson River, strangled with a lamp cord, handcuffed and weighted with concrete blocks. Cerreta and Logan link her to an unsolved case of a teenage boy found in the East River in the same state, and forensic anthropologist Dr. Sacks rebuilds faces from both skulls. Cuts on their fingers suggest garment work, and the detectives connect them to Ira Bender, a city sweatshop inspector found strangled in the Hudson whose last stop was in the Bronx.
At a Bronx pool hall run by Rudy Armendariz, no one admits knowing the teens, but a street vendor names them as cousins Eduardo and María Carranza. In a vacant workshop on East Tremont Avenue, the detectives find beds fitted with handcuffs. A wedding-gown label leads to Wedded Bliss Fashions and then to contractors Ellis and Betty Drake, who bought Rudy a liquor license. Rudy has a juvenile record for stabbing an inspector, and a New Jersey police-supply dealer sold him a dozen pairs of cuffs. The workers are gone when police raid the Drakes’ shop, and Rudy is arrested.
The Trial
Rudy and the Drakes are charged with murder and kidnapping. The Drakes refuse a plea, but Ellis’s brother reveals that Betty was sleeping with Rudy. Rudy’s wife, Lena, tells investigators that Rudy killed the cousins after they tried to escape, and a judge rules she may testify against him, but she recants under oath. A DNA match tying María to a mattress at the workshop is weakened on cross-examination.
Stone puts Rudy and the Drakes in one room, and the affair spills out. Ellis takes a nine-year manslaughter deal and testifies that Rudy strangled Bender when he opened the back room and killed the cousins in front of the other workers. Rudy’s lawyer, Charles Meadow, suggests Ellis is blaming his wife’s lover for his own crimes. Then Lena’s grandmother reveals Rudy asked her to leave her Brooklyn house, and police find seven bodies buried there.
Spoiler, the ending: Facing new murder counts, Rudy Armendariz and Betty Drake each agree to plead guilty to one count of second-degree murder and serve 25 years.
Why it stands out
- A judge rules that spousal privilege does not stop a wife from testifying about a crime she saw being planned.
- A forensic anthropologist reconstructs the victims’ faces from their skulls so they can be identified.
- The bridal-wear label that gives the episode its title is the clue that leads police to the sweatshop owners.