Thrill (Season 8, Episode 1)
Premise: A young delivery driver is gunned down on a bogus late-night order, and the two young men who killed him for kicks each insist the other one fired.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 1
- 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
- Michael C. Maronna as Dale Kershaw, Rob Mac as Joey Timon, Donna Murphy as defense attorney Carla Tyrell, Jan Munroe as Father Galva, Ellen Muth as Adele Green
- Ripped from the headlines
- The story is drawn from the April 1997 case of Thomas Koskovich and Jayson Vreeland.
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Thrill” opens with the murder of Matthew Wheeler, a 20-year-old delivery driver for DeLuca’s, shot in the head while bringing four buckets of chicken to an address that turns out to be a vacant store. His cash and watch are untouched. Thumbprints on the shell casings match coins in a Central Park payphone, where someone rang a string of take-out places until one agreed to deliver that late. Witnesses recall two young men there, one wearing in-line skates with lime-green wheels.
A park regular, Mr. Shuster, connects the pair to Adele Green, a prep-school student whose thumbprint is also on a casing. She admits she showed two acquaintances, Joey and “Tagger,” how to load the .25 automatic they had bought, and says they talked about killing someone just to know the feeling. A stakeout at a park fountain nets Joey Timon. The vacant store leads to a crew of teens who once wrecked it, and Dale Kershaw, the so-called Tagger, is arrested at his brother’s apartment with the gun in a closet. Meanwhile Curtis learns that his wife, Deborah, has multiple sclerosis.
The Trial
Defense lawyers Carla Tyrell and Stan Shatenstein plan to have each client blame the other, betting that no jury can convict two men for one bullet. Ross gets the pair moved into isolation so their visits can be taped, and Timon admits the shooting to his uncle, Father Galva, a Jesuit priest. The Archdiocese sues to protect the confession, and a federal judge bars its use against Timon but then lets Kershaw use it in his own defense.
Kershaw wins separate trials. McCoy counters by planning to try both men at the same time before two juries, arguing to one that Timon fired and to the other that Kershaw did, and the judge allows it. Timon gives in, accepts 20 years to life, and testifies that he fired first after winning a round of odds and evens, that Kershaw then chased the van shooting, and that the two stood over Wheeler until he died.
Spoiler, the ending: A jury convicts Kershaw of second-degree murder and weapon possession, and he is sentenced to 30 years to life. At sentencing, Wheeler’s mother tells Kershaw she has tried and failed to hate him and that she will pray for him, echoing the church’s position that even killers deserve God’s protection.
Why it stands out
- McCoy, a Catholic, must decide whether to fight the Archdiocese for a taped confession made to a priest, and Curtis tells him he sides with the church.
- Curtis’s wife, Deborah, is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis during the investigation.