Turnaround (Season 7, Episode 16)
Premise: The murder weapon in the Heidi Ellison case surfaces near a Long Island airport, shifting suspicion to her ex-husband and pulling McCoy and Ross into a hostile California courtroom.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 16
- 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
- Scott Cohen as Eddie Newman, Keith Szarabajka as Neil Gorton, Paul Hecht as Dr. Dan Duvall, Lauren Graham as Lisa Lundquist, Michael Harney as Stu Miller
- Director
- Ed Sherin
- Writers
- René Balcer & Ed Zuckerman & Gardner Stern
Summary
The Investigation
“Turnaround” continues the Heidi Ellison murder case when a small boy in Islip, Long Island, is caught swinging an old blade he dug out of the snow behind his school. The medical examiner identifies it as a Moro barong nearly a century old, with A-negative blood on the grip and nicks matching the cuts on Ellison’s bones; it had hung in her den. The school confirms the boy found it the morning after the killing.
Timing the route against traffic reports, Briscoe and Curtis conclude trainer Evan Grant could not have dumped the blade in Islip and still reached his New Paltz motel by 11:45. A bartender recalls a city cab dropping a fare near MacArthur Airport, and flight plans lead to producer Steven Berger’s private jet, which left for Los Angeles more than an hour late because it waited for director Eddie Newman. Grant tells Ross that Ellison once had Newman arrested for hitting her, and Detective Stu Miller admits he spoke with her and released Newman once she dropped the complaint.
Newman’s apartment holds dozens of pill bottles prescribed by Dr. Dan Duvall, and his car yields beige silk threads stained with A-negative blood plus blood in the trunk. Briscoe and Curtis arrest Newman at a Los Angeles rehab clinic. Studio executive Lisa Lundquist offers Curtis a security job at several times his salary and invites him to bed; he declines her advances.
The Trial
Newman’s lawyers, including Ross’s ex-husband Neil Gorton, fight extradition. At a hearing before California Judge Van Ness, a fiber expert ties the threads to a bloodied blouse Miller took into evidence a year earlier, and Gorton argues Miller planted them after Newman failed to deliver on promised movie work. Van Ness rules the warrant unsupported, refuses extradition and fines McCoy $2,000 for contempt after McCoy tells him he is overriding New York’s authority.
McCoy and Ross press Frank Cooper, an executive aboard Berger’s jet, who recalls Newman pacing and carrying a bag into the lavatory again and again. A search of the plane finds A-negative blood in the sink drain and Ellison’s initialed platinum ring in the toilet tank, and Van Ness orders Newman sent to New York. Gorton shows Ross a lie-detector test Newman passed. Ross withdraws the charges against Grant, and Ellison’s father erupts in court, calling Grant the killer.
Spoiler, the ending: Newman is denied bail and sent to Rikers to await trial, and Miller is suspended. Gorton leaks the polygraph and takes their daughter Katie for the night, and Schiff tells McCoy to win a conviction whatever it takes. The story concludes in “Showtime.”
Why it stands out
- The middle chapter of a three-part story, with McCoy and Ross facing Ross’s former husband, Neil Gorton, as defense counsel.
- A California judge challenges New York’s probable cause in an extradition hearing and holds McCoy in contempt.
- The title echoes a point revealed in “Showtime”: Ellison had put Newman’s long-planned “Madame Bovary” film into turnaround.