White Rabbit (Season 5, Episode 5)
Premise: Loot from a safe deposit burglary leads police to a 1971 payroll robbery in which a cop was killed, and to a suburban mother who has been a fugitive ever since.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 5
- 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
- Mary-Joan Negro as Susan Forrest aka Rita Levitan, William Kunstler as William Kunstler, Peter Friedman as William Goodwin, Dick Anthony Williams as Sam Burdette, Peggy Roeder as Margaret Pauly
- Ripped from the headlines
- Loosely based on the case of Katherine Ann Power, who took part in a 1970 Boston bank robbery in which a police officer was killed and surrendered in 1993 after 23 years as a fugitive.
- Director
- Steven Robman
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman & Morgan Gendel
Summary
The Investigation
“White Rabbit” begins with a burglary at a private safe deposit company, where thieves use a hydraulic jack to punch up through the vault floor and leave the night watchman, Henry Maybrook, handcuffed inside. Henry soon gives up his cousin Eddie, who leads police to the stolen property. One unclaimed gym bag holds old bills and a .38 revolver with its serial numbers filed off.
The box was rented in 1971 under the name of a man who died in 1969. When the FBI stonewalls, Briscoe and Logan link the cash to a $200,000 payroll robbery at defense contractor Nucon Technologies that year, in which Officer Vincent Perella took a bullet to the back of the head. Ballistics match the gun. Of the four robbers, Tom Rudisill died in a shootout, Sam Burdette is in prison, Margaret Pauly served time, and Susan Forrest vanished.
Old sit-in arrest records match the fingerprints on the box card to Professor William Goodwin, who admits he held the bag and funneled money to the fugitives. A New Jersey accident report leads to Westchester, where Forrest is living as Rita Levitan, wife of an accountant. She confesses she was the lookout.
The Trial
William Kunstler takes over her defense and gets the confession thrown out, because he had represented her in 1971 and police could not question her without him. McCoy, pressed by Officer Perella’s widow, takes the case to trial for murder.
Burdette places Forrest at the scene, but Kunstler attacks his history of deals. Goodwin refuses to testify and is jailed for contempt. FBI wiretaps from 1971 show Forrest had a walkie-talkie and suggest she warned the others about Perella. Arrested for violating parole and told Forrest has blamed Goodwin for buying the guns, Pauly tells McCoy that Forrest radioed “Pig at 3:00,” the warning that led Pauly to honk just before Perella was shot.
Spoiler, the ending: Kunstler offers to take a plea to second-degree manslaughter, but McCoy holds to first-degree manslaughter. Forrest accepts a sentence of eight and a third to 25 years, which keeps her in prison until 2003.
Why it stands out
- Real-life civil rights attorney William Kunstler appears as himself, defending Forrest.
- Kunstler gets the confession suppressed because he was still Forrest’s lawyer from her 1971 questioning, 23 years earlier.
- Inadmissible FBI wiretaps from 1971 give McCoy the clue that undoes Forrest’s claim she was only a frightened lookout.