Matrimony (Season 7, Episode 13)
Premise: A wealthy philanthropist is strangled in his townhouse, and suspicion falls on his 22-year-old wife, a former stripper whose marriage was arranged by his lawyer.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 13
- 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
- Arija Bareikis as Kim Triandos, Anna Holbrook as Velma Darcy, Boyd Gaines as Oliver Shain, Michael Lombard as Robert Mallors, Maya McLaughlin as Cassie Jordan
- Director
- Lewis H. Gould
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman & Richard Sweren
Summary
The Investigation
“Matrimony” begins when a neighbor with a telescope spots a body, and police find Peter Triandos, a 74-year-old heating-oil millionaire, strangled with Christmas lights in his townhouse. His young wife, Kim, says she spent the night at the Snowflake Ball at the Metropolitan Museum and then at nightclubs, while Triandos hosted a party for students he had promised, as first-graders, to put through college. His assistant and executor, Robert Mallors, slept through it drunk upstairs.
Kim’s mother, Velma Darcy, who lives in a hotel suite on Triandos’s allowance, steers the detectives toward Luis Polanco, a guest who argued with Triandos over a stolen laptop. Polanco’s son Ronnie explains that his father grabbed a fur jacket from the house and that he threw it back inside, which means Kim, who wore it home, returned during the evening. Her friend Cassie Jordan reveals that Kim danced at a club called Foxes, and Mallors says lawyer Oliver Shain introduced her to Triandos as an interior decorator. Kim says she went back to check on her mother and husband, then admits Shain arranged the marriage for half her inheritance. She is arrested for murder.
The Trial
Defense lawyer Arthur Gold gets that statement suppressed because police kept Shain, who came to the station, from seeing his client. At trial the judge bars any mention of Kim’s stripping, and Gold suggests Mallors killed Triandos to protect a $1.5 million executor’s fee. Shain supports that theory, testifying that Triandos planned to replace Mallors. McCoy is convinced Shain is lying but cannot use the suppressed statement to impeach him, and the jury acquits Kim.
Helping the estate prepare a wrongful-death suit against Kim, McCoy finds that the scholarship fund was paying for eight students who had left the program, with Shain writing the checks, and that Triandos learned of it two days before he died. A waiter recalls Shain lunching on the day of the murder with a woman who looked like Kim, only older.
Spoiler, the ending: Wearing a wire, Kim tells her mother she plans to give up the money, and Velma admits she killed Triandos after Shain told her he was about to divorce Kim. Velma is arrested, Shain faces embezzlement charges and a murder case as her accomplice, and the estate drops its suit against Kim.
Why it stands out
- Kim’s confession is suppressed because the lawyer kept from her was himself a suspect, and the judge refuses to create an exception for that situation.
- The first defendant is acquitted, and the actual killer is caught only after the acquitted widow wears a wire to talk with her own mother.