Guardian (Season 5, Episode 11)
Premise: A young heroin addict from a wealthy family is found dead outside a daycare center, and the trail leads to the man who manages her family’s money.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 11
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Jon Cypher as Jerome Kamen, Dallas Roberts as Matthew Blanchard, Gerry Bamman as Dean Pollard, Peter McRobbie as Herbert Fowler, Holter Graham as Erik Hanson
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- Story: Brad Markowitz; Teleplay: William N. Fordes; Story & teleplay: René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Guardian” opens when nuns at a Lower East Side daycare center find a young woman dead in their playground, apparently one more victim of an unusually pure batch of heroin. Briscoe and Logan doubt she simply wandered there: her arms are crossed, her teeth carry costly porcelain caps and she wears designer clothes. A street informant points them to her ex-boyfriend, Erik, a club doorman, who names her as Katie Blanchard, daughter of a late Senate candidate.
Her mother, Meryl, had cut her off and sends the detectives to the family’s business adviser, Jerome Kamen, a college friend of Katie’s father. The autopsy confirms an overdose, shows a recent miscarriage or abortion and finds Peking duck in her stomach. A restaurant delivery ticket leads to an empty West 81st Street apartment owned by Kamen’s clients, where Katie had been living with his permission. Kamen says he was only helping her, but his fingerprints are all over the place.
With no grounds for a warrant, the police wait to arrest Kamen for hindering prosecution while he is in his car, then search it as an inventory. The lab finds Katie’s vomit and blood inside, and Kamen is charged with first-degree manslaughter.
The Trial
Judge Rodriguez throws out the car evidence as a bad search and dismisses the case. Katie’s friend Teena Varga says Katie always needed help injecting and that Kamen handed her thousands of dollars every few days. A bank officer reveals Katie tried to draw on her father’s trust for his children with a forged slip and accused Kamen of looting it. Records show Kamen took about $346,000 from the trust, McCoy concludes Katie was blackmailing him, and Kamen is arrested for larceny.
Facing a drug charge, Erik says he passed heroin to Katie’s brother, Matthew, a Yale law student, the night she died. Matthew admits injecting his sister, then calling Kamen when she began convulsing; Kamen sent him away and said he would handle it. At trial the defense attacks Matthew’s own drug use, and Kamen testifies he never saw Katie that night. McCoy asks about the vomit in his car, and the judge allows the suppressed evidence only to test Kamen’s credibility.
Spoiler, the ending: Exposed as a liar before the jury, Kamen accepts a plea to first-degree manslaughter with a sentence of 8⅓ to 25 years, plus time for larceny. He first claims he was driving Katie to a hospital, then insists she wanted to die and that he was entitled to the money.
Why it stands out
- Police time Kamen’s arrest so they can search his car without a warrant; the judge suppresses the evidence, but McCoy later uses it to impeach Kamen on the stand.
- McCoy weighs holding a drug supplier liable for an overdose, citing a recent New Jersey ruling, before the brother’s confession reshapes the case.
- The detectives learn Katie was receiving Social Security disability checks as an addict, and her rehab director was cashing them after she left.