Apocrypha (Season 4, Episode 7)
Premise: A car bomb in a Wall Street-area parking garage kills the young woman who planted it, and the prosecutors set out to prove that the leader of her apocalyptic church is responsible.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 7
- 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
- Sam Robards as Daniel Hendricks, Bibi Besch as Margaret Berman, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- Gabrielle Beaumont
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin
Summary
The Investigation
“Apocrypha” begins with a car bomb exploding in the garage of the Calloway building, a downtown tower full of brokerages, law firms and banks. The bomb, made from fertilizer and diesel fuel with an acid-and-latex timer, kills one young woman. The car turns out to belong to the Egyptian Embassy, but the diplomat using it has a solid alibi. The dead woman had ammonium nitrate under her fingernails, and dental records identify her as Wendy Berman, who ran away from home at 14.
A letter Wendy sent her mother, filled with Bible verses, leads Briscoe and Logan to the Acherusian Temple on Avenue C, led by Daniel Hendricks. He says he knew her as Ruth and had not seen her for months, but his own mother says the two came to dinner recently. The detectives learn that his old Lutheran congregation expelled him and that he was a demolitions specialist in the Army before a psychiatric discharge. A gas station attendant remembers Hendricks and Wendy buying diesel in the stolen car, and Hendricks is arrested.
The Trial
Schiff doubts the case, since only Wendy is proven to have planted the bomb. Speaking to former members, the prosecutors hear how Hendricks cut followers off from their families, and they build a new theory: the brainwashing amounts to kidnapping, making Wendy’s death a felony murder. Dr. Olivet finds Hendricks mentally ill and not legally responsible, linking his crusade to his brother’s fatal overdose and to a Colombian bank in the targeted building. When his lawyer arranges an insanity plea, Hendricks fires her and insists on a trial.
His new attorney, Nicholas Burke, argues that the case attacks freedom of religion. The judge lets it go ahead but warns against questioning the church’s doctrine. A former member and his 8-year-old daughter describe Hendricks’s threats about a river of fire, while a loyal follower calls her faith blind. On the stand, Hendricks calls the building’s financiers part of a new Babylon and all but claims to be the Messiah.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Hendricks of first-degree kidnapping and second-degree murder, and he displays thumbtacks pushed into his palms. Soon afterward, Briscoe and Logan are called to the Temple, where his followers have died in a mass suicide.
Why it stands out
- Stone wins a murder conviction by treating a cult leader’s psychological control over his followers as the restraint needed for kidnapping.
- The case turns on freedom of religion, with the judge warning that any attack on the church’s beliefs will end in a mistrial.