Menace (Season 7, Episode 11)
Premise: A young woman goes over the side of a Brooklyn Bridge ramp while fleeing a man after a fender-bender, and her death turns out to be tied to a suspicious factory fire.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 11
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- John Ellison Conlee as “Crazy” Mike McDugan, John Cullum as Harold Dorning, Christopher Cousins as Robert Dorning, Rusty De Wees as Dave Randall, Tony Lo Bianco as Sal DiMarco
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Story: Barry M. Schkolnick; Story & teleplay: I.C. Rapoport
Summary
The Investigation
“Menace” begins with a woman going over the side of a Brooklyn Bridge ramp at about 2 a.m. She is Karen Whatney, 28, of Borough Park, who lost her job when the WalkRite shoe factory in the Bronx burned down six months earlier. A torn blouse and bruised arm make the detectives doubt suicide. Her friend Shawna Gates says Karen was hoping her old boss, Harold Dorning, now at his son Robert’s mortgage company, would help her with money.
Witnesses on the bridge are slow to come forward. Curtis loses his temper with a Parks Department driver named Marsh, who was there with a girlfriend, then admits to Briscoe that his wife, Deborah, took the kids and wants him out after he confessed to a one-time affair. Under pressure, the bystanders describe a big man who chased Karen after their cars collided, ripped off her shirt and watched her climb the wall and jump. A security guard who saw an earlier crash supplies part of a plate, leading to “Crazy” Mike McDugan, a man with assault convictions who drives his disabled father’s green LTD.
The Trial
McDugan is charged with depraved-indifference murder, but Ross is barred from raising his record before the grand jury, and Marsh suddenly claims Karen was drunk and the aggressor. The grand jury indicts only for misdemeanor assault. Marsh’s phone records reveal late-night calls from the Riverdale home of a woman whose son’s father is Dave “Randall the Candle” Randall, a convicted arsonist who once shared a prison dorm with McDugan. Fire investigators had suspected the bankrupt WalkRite plant was burned for the insurance, and Karen’s mother recalls her bringing a keepsake album home the night before the fire.
A judge refuses to let McCoy take a murder charge back to a new grand jury. A search of Robert Dorning’s company finds two $5,000 checks to his father, dated the day before and the day after Karen died. In return for protecting his business, Robert says his father confessed to hiring an arsonist and that Karen was demanding $10,000, and Harold Dorning is arrested. In plea talks, McDugan admits that Randall recruited him to scare Karen and that he staged the crash, adding that Randall warned him to flee the day before Robert came forward.
Spoiler, the ending: McCoy confronts both Dornings: a handwriting expert has found the father’s endorsements on the checks forged. Harold reveals that Karen had seen Robert carrying belongings from the plant on the eve of the fire, and that Robert promised to deal with her. The son, not the father, was behind the arson and the payment to Randall. The episode ends with Robert Dorning awaiting sentencing as his father writes asking for leniency.
Why it stands out
- Curtis’s marriage breaks down here: after he confesses his infidelity to his wife, she throws him out.
- The case stalls twice before trial: the grand jury indicts McDugan only for a misdemeanor, and a judge then refuses to let McCoy resubmit a murder charge.
- The suspected mastermind turns out to be the wrong Dorning, as the son proves to be the one who arranged both the fire and the intimidation.