Big Bang (Season 4, Episode 16)
Premise: A mail bomb kills a physicist’s estranged wife, and the trail leads through a particle accelerator to a jobless scientist with a grudge against her husband.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 16
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Harris Yulin as Dr. Edward Manning, Randle Mell as Dr. Max Weiss, Jeff Gendelman as Barry Ramsey, Karen Sillas as Cynthia Thomas
- Director
- Dann Florek
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman
Summary
The Investigation
“Big Bang” begins when Florence Manning, a 48-year-old third-grade teacher, opens a package with a letter opener and is fatally wounded by the small bomb inside. Her brother points the detectives to her estranged husband, Edward Manning, a prominent high-energy physicist who runs a nuclear reactor lab at Hudson Polytech. Their divorce was bitter, and Manning wanted to marry a young chemist, Cynthia Thomas. She recalls a bearded man arguing with Manning outside Florence’s building weeks earlier.
A photo of the evidence shows the bomb’s spring is radioactive. Manning explains that its cobalt 56 could not have come from his reactor, and a gamma-ray analysis confirms the isotope was made by a particle accelerator. The detectives go to Manhattan University’s accelerator, run by Manning’s longtime rival Arthur Stedman, where grad student Barry Ramsey mentions Max Weiss. Weiss’s post-doc has run out and he now works as a doorman to support his family. Cynthia picks out Weiss, and a search of his desk drawer at the lab turns up plastic explosive and wire matching the bomb.
The Trial
Weiss once studied under Manning at Wisconsin, called him repeatedly, and recently deposited $3,500. He claims Manning hired him to kill Florence, and Stone floats a manslaughter deal, but DNA from saliva on the stamp ties Weiss to the bomb, and Manning says the check was for research. Kincaid learns from Weiss’s wife that his grant proposal on proton decay was rejected. Stone finds Manning chaired the panel that turned it down and then sought the same data for his own work. An old faculty directory shows the bomb went to Manning’s former address: Weiss meant to hit Manning, not his wife.
Stone withdraws the deal. The judge throws out Cynthia’s identification but lets the bomb materials in, leaving Manning as the only witness who can supply a motive, and he refuses to testify rather than admit stealing the idea. Stone threatens to indict him for grand larceny under a statute on theft of secret scientific material. When Manning calls Weiss’s idea worthless, Weiss explains his theory to the prosecutors, and Stone lines up physicists who find it worth taking seriously. Manning gives in and testifies that he rejected the proposal, promised Weiss co-authorship, gave him some money, reneged, and blocked him from a faculty job, after which Weiss threatened him.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Weiss guilty of second-degree murder. At sentencing he apologizes to Florence Manning’s family, and the judge gives him 25 years to life.
Why it stands out
- A radioactive bomb spring, traced to a particle accelerator rather than a reactor, breaks the case.
- Stone pressures a reluctant witness by threatening to charge him with theft of secret scientific material for taking another scientist’s idea.
- The victim was not the intended target: the bomb was meant for her husband at his old address.