Savior (Season 6, Episode 16)
Premise: After a woman and her young son are shot dead in their beds and her teenage daughter is wounded, suspicion falls on the father, a heavy drinker who cannot account for the night.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 16
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Timothy Landfield as Ron Weber, Ellen Pompeo as Jenna Weber, Brooke Smith as defense attorney Margot Bell, Shawn Hatosy as Chester Manning, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Savior” opens when Laura Cochran finds her sister, Joyce Weber, and 10-year-old nephew Billy shot to death in the family brownstone. Teenage daughter Jenna survives a gunshot wound. There is no forced entry, .22 casings lie on the floor, and an empty jewelry box sits in a closet. Jenna says she locked the door when she came home around 11 and begs the detectives to find her father, Ron Weber.
Weber turns up the next morning badly hungover, saying he drank after work at Cabrini’s and woke up in a diner. Joyce worked for the State Liquor Authority, and a bar owner and two restaurant partners claim she sought payoffs. The detectives learn the family was deep in debt and that Weber’s boss, a college friend, had quietly given him six months to leave after he lost two clients; Joyce found out at a dinner party.
Weber held a $500,000 policy on his wife and filed a claim two days after her death. He left Cabrini’s at 11:30, but no one places him on Second Avenue until about 2 a.m., and the shooting happened around midnight. He is arrested for the two murders and the attempted murder of Jenna.
The Trial
Weber’s lawyer, Margot Bell, Kincaid’s old law school rival, turns down a deal. McCoy calls Dr. Olivet to say Weber fits the “family annihilator” profile described by forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, and Bell invokes Ake v. Oklahoma to win a state-paid expert who attacks Olivet’s method and notes that the killer left a survivor. Jenna now says she may not have locked the door, and Weber admits he had moved the jewelry to his office to sell it.
McCoy’s cross-examination reduces Weber to tears but no confession, and Olivet then tells the prosecutors that a true family annihilator would likely have confessed. Schiff orders a manslaughter offer. Interviewed by Olivet, Weber calls himself a failure but denies the killings and hints at conflict between Joyce and Jenna. Laura says they fought over Jenna’s boyfriend, Chester Manning, who was expelled from private school and has a juvenile armed robbery record.
Believing Chester went to the house for the jewelry with Jenna’s help, Weber agrees to plead to two counts of manslaughter, 30 years, if Jenna serves no time. Jenna halts the plea and says she told Chester where the jewelry was hidden and that he shot everyone while stoned. Bell announces a motion to dismiss.
Spoiler, the ending: McCoy then asks why Jenna needed Chester to steal jewelry she could have taken herself, and accuses her of hiring him to kill her mother, with the jewelry as his fee. Police have picked up Chester, and the episode ends before Jenna’s case is resolved.
Why it stands out
- Dr. Olivet’s “family annihilator” testimony carries the prosecution and then collapses when she qualifies her opinion after Weber’s cross-examination.
- Citing Ake v. Oklahoma, the judge grants the defense a state-funded expert even though Weber is not pleading insanity.
- Kincaid’s opponent is Margot Bell, who replaced her on law review.