Survivor (Season 7, Episode 4)
Premise: A rare-coin dealer is killed in his gallery, and the hunt for a missing collection leads from a flamboyant tycoon to the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 4
- 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
- Karen Allen as Judith Sandler, Michael Willis as Richard Peterson, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, Tovah Feldshuh as defense attorney Danielle Melnick
- Director
- Vincent Misiano
- Writers
- Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Survivor” begins in the gallery of coin dealer Stephen Campbell, found dead from a blow to the head. Only a few cheap coins are gone, but 40 rare Greek and Roman pieces consigned by financier Richard Peterson are missing from the safe. Peterson, who is launching New Jersey Air, calls Campbell a close friend, and a magazine profile had described the collection in detail.
Collectors say Campbell kept making excuses not to show Peterson’s coins and had a recent auction flop, and his accountant reveals a $2 million investor syndicate, including Peterson, that was about to take legal action. Peterson left a dinner after calling the gallery and did not get home until near midnight. His prints are on the safe and stolen coins turn up in his apartment, so he is arrested. His phone log then shows a woman who called claiming his Cleopatra coins belonged to her family.
The Trial
Ross traces the Cleopatras to Isidor Schoenberg, a Munich collector who survived Auschwitz but was turned away by the Swiss bank holding his coins. His daughter, art restorer Judith Sandler, left work early the night of the murder. Pressed at her door by Ross and the detectives, the claustrophobic Sandler agrees to a search, and glass from Campbell’s broken lamp is found in her shoe. She is arrested.
Her lawyer, Danielle Melnick, argues the consent was coerced because of Sandler’s fears as a survivors’ child. Dr. Olivet finds her capable of consent, but the evidence is suppressed, and the DA’s office drops the charge against Peterson. McCoy learns that Peterson’s bank never saw the coins pledged on a $20 million loan, and that his list mirrors a 1931 auction catalog. Facing Sandler, Peterson admits he never had the coins; he says he and Campbell planned to pay her off that night and found Campbell dead.
Spoiler, the ending: Sandler admits she killed Campbell over coins that were never there. She is sentenced to eight and a third to 25 years for manslaughter, and Peterson takes a federal fraud deal with five years in prison.
Why it stands out
- Dr. Elizabeth Olivet evaluates a defense claim that being the child of Holocaust survivors left the defendant unable to refuse a police search.
- The prized collection proves to be a fiction: Peterson built his inventory from an old auction catalog to back his loans.
- The case turns on a Swiss bank that refused a camp survivor’s claim to his prewar deposit.