Mayhem (Season 4, Episode 17)
Premise: In a single shift, Briscoe and Logan catch several unrelated killings, and the one that looks solved may have the wrong man in custody.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 17
- 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
- Tom Riis Farrell as Scott Hexter, Kathrine Narducci as Louisa Catherine D’Angelo, Alice Drummond as Zelda, Shae D’lyn as Dory, Jason Duchin as Julian, Robin Tunney as Jill Templeton
- Director
- James Quinn
- Writers
- Story: Walon Green; Teleplay: René Balcer; Story & teleplay: Michael S. Chernuchin
Summary
The Investigation
“Mayhem” follows Briscoe and Logan through one long day of homicides. It starts in Battery Park, where Ken Scofield, a model from Amarillo hoping for acting work, is found in his car with a .44 bullet in the head. His date, Jill Templeton, fled half-dressed and describes a stranger in thick black glasses who stared at the couple and then fired. A homeless woman, Zelda, says the same man had been watching couples there for weeks, and a deli owner remembers him tearing up a parking ticket and thinks he drove a tan Chevy.
Before that lead goes anywhere, Louisa D’Angelo cuts off her sleeping husband Bruno’s penis over his affairs, and Bruno suffers a fatal cardiac arrest before reaching the hospital. Her lawyer, Mildred Kaskel, argues battered wife syndrome. Next, a grocery store owner is shot dead in a robbery. Security video points to Drew Washington, a crack user, but the detectives find him shot through the heart, and his killer, Omar Cabezas, is caught with the matching .38.
Meanwhile Scott Hexter, a florist who wears thick glasses, drives a brown Chevy and has 12 unpaid parking tickets, is picked up at a red light and refuses to say where he was. Jill does not pick him out of a lineup, and his mother pays his fines to free him. When a Queens detective links him to an earlier .44 shooting of a couple in a car parked in Forest Park, and a parking ticket puts his car near the scene, he is arrested and charged with two murders.
The Trial
At arraignment, Cabezas is held without bail after attacking officers in custody, and Hexter is remanded. Louisa D’Angelo insists on pleading guilty over her lawyer’s objection; Kincaid later offers manslaughter one, 4 to 12 years, if the police report holds up. Schiff wants to offer Hexter a plea, but Kincaid doubts his guilt after a hit-and-run report places his car in Riverdale ten minutes after Scofield was killed.
Hexter’s mother then admits she was driving the car when the Queens ticket was issued, and says her son has a friend in the city. That friend, Julian, says he and Hexter spent the evening of Scofield’s murder together and that Hexter, worried about his late father’s disapproval, drove him home to Riverdale. Shown Hexter’s photo, Zelda says he is not the gunman.
Spoiler, the ending: A release order comes through for Hexter, but when the detectives arrive at Rikers he has been stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush by another inmate. The real gunman remains at large.
Why it stands out
- The episode juggles several unrelated cases in one shift instead of following a single crime.
- A detective’s line ties the D’Angelo case to the Bobbitt case.
- The 2000 two-part crossover “Entitled,” which starts on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, returns to one of its cases, and Law & Order: UK later remade the episode as “Dawn till Dusk.”