Corpus Delicti (Season 6, Episode 11)
Premise: A dead show horse leads detectives to a horse dealer who preys on wealthy widows, and McCoy tries to convict him of killing a woman whose body has never been found.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 11
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jacqueline Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Frank Converse as Lyle Christopher, Byron Jennings as Richard Brandson, Dan Moran as Tibor Nichols, Joe Grifasi as defense attorney James Linde
- Ripped from the headlines
- Based on the Helen Brach case.
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman & Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Corpus Delicti” begins with Briscoe and Curtis answering a homicide call that turns out to involve Mr. Wickets, a show horse valued at about half a million dollars, found dead in a Manhattan stable. Assistant trainer Susan Bauer saw a man in a green jacket leaving. Owner Richard Brandson, whose daughter rode the horse, had booked a board meeting on the day he promised to attend her show, and once questioned he drops his insurance claim, so no necropsy is done.
Insurance records tie several dead horses to dealer Lyle Christopher, who has faced fraud indictments in New Jersey and Virginia. Phone records show him calling a man registered under color names before the horse died, and a bartender recalls a friend in green outdoor clothes joining him that night. A widow, Mrs. Fairchild, describes buying a falsely tattooed horse from Christopher and being talked into a partnership before he dropped her for another rich widow, Ruth Thomas.
Ruth was supposedly on a three-month world cruise, but she never boarded; a man posing as her nephew called the cruise line, and she has no nephew. Her friend Judith Grayson says Ruth had demanded her money back and threatened to go to the police. A marina worker recalls Christopher driving onto the dock and sailing alone into a storm that day with something heavy. With no body, McCoy charges him with a scheme to defraud, and searches find blood in his Mercedes and on his boat. Pressed, Brandson helps set up the horse killer, Tibor Nichols, who says Christopher asked him to make Ruth disappear. A preliminary DNA match brings a murder charge.
The Trial
A DNA expert ties the blood to Ruth but cannot say when it was shed. Defense attorney Linde gets Nichols to concede Christopher never spelled out a request to kill, and the judge bars testimony about the horse killings. Linde also brings out that Ruth once vanished to Bermuda for two weeks and hated boats, suggesting she backed out of the trip and hid from her humiliation.
Schiff doubts the woman is even dead. Christopher testifies that Ruth cut her hand on his boat months earlier, backed by a hospital form, and that a bloody towel explains the stain in his trunk. On cross-examination McCoy keeps referring to Christopher’s other victims after repeated warnings, and the judge declares a mistrial.
Spoiler, the ending: Soon after, a fisherman pulls Ruth Thomas’s body from Long Island Sound. Schiff warns that if McCoy caused the mistrial on purpose to get another shot at Christopher, the case will be thrown out; McCoy insists he simply got carried away. The episode ends before any retrial.
Why it stands out
- Jill Hennessy’s twin sister, Jacqueline Hennessy, filled in as Claire Kincaid in this episode because of a scheduling conflict.
- The story is based on the Helen Brach case.
- McCoy has to try a murder with no body, and the episode closes on whether his conduct in forcing a mistrial will bar a second trial.