Grief (Season 8, Episode 14)
Premise: An orderly left for dead in Riverside Park was beaten by brothers who say he raped their sister, and the case leads to a pregnant coma patient and a mother who kept a terrible secret.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 14
- 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
- Erik Jensen as George Harding, Cecilia Hart as Greta Singer, Marin Hinkle as Leslie Russo, Edie Falco as defense attorney Sally Bell, Jonathan LaPaglia as Frank Russo
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- Suzanne Oshry
Summary
The Investigation
“Grief” begins when psychiatric orderly George Harding is found nearly beaten to death in Riverside Park, days after being arrested for punching a patrolman while fleeing two men. He insists he fell off his bike. A bar regular identifies one of the pursuers as ex-con Joe Russo, and Joe and his brother Frank, bruised and bloodied, claim Harding raped their sister Leslie, a patient with schizophrenia at York Psychiatric Hospital. The hospital found no evidence, and Leslie’s answers are scattered.
An orderly who was also beaten admits he steered the brothers to Harding and points to the long-term care home where Harding last worked. There, Wendy Singer, in an irreversible coma since a car crash that killed her husband, became pregnant; her parents refused an abortion, and police cleared Harding because he had left six weeks before the June date her mother gave. Leslie then says it was George in the therapy room, and Harding is arrested.
A sonogram shows Wendy is seven months along, and Greta Singer admits she hid a May missed period so the pregnancy would not be ended. Harding’s lawyer, Sally Bell, turns down a plea to both rapes.
The Trial
Before the grand jury, Leslie names a fellow patient, who says Harding rented him the therapy-room key for $10, and the Russo charge collapses. Over the Singers’ objections, a judge orders Wendy’s amniocentesis results released, and DNA shows Harding is the father. Wendy dies during an emergency cesarean; the premature girl survives. McCoy adds a depraved-indifference murder charge, but Greta now claims she cannot recall warning Harding about the risk.
Harding’s purchases of a motorcycle and a big-screen TV line up with the timeline, and he admits Greta paid him to impregnate her daughter. Her husband, told the cash from his stamp collection went to a neurologist, pushes her to confess, and Greta says she felt God owed her a grandchild.
Spoiler, the ending: McCoy drops the murder counts against both and has Greta Singer plead to first-degree rape as an accomplice, four to eight years, while Harding also goes to prison for rape. Harding’s parents then petition for custody of the baby.
Why it stands out
- The case reverses twice: the rape the Russo brothers avenge never happened, while the overlooked one at Park West is real.
- A sonogram date exposes the mother’s lie, which had steered police away from the actual suspect.
- Edie Falco appears as Harding’s defense attorney, Sally Bell.