Disappeared (Season 8, Episode 19)
Premise: A couple and their building’s developer vanish amid letters attacking gentrification, and the man who turns in his mentally ill brother watches him face the death penalty after refusing any psychiatric defense.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 19
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt), Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Michael Medeiros as Matthew O’Dell, Kenneth Welsh as Ben O’Dell, Tovah Feldshuh as defense attorney Danielle Melnick, Lee Sellars as Nathan Faber, Donna Hanover as Judge Deborah Burke, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Ripped from the headlines
- Based on the Ted Kaczynski case.
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Disappeared” starts when a family friend brings eight-year-old Jack Ericson home from a weekend away and finds his parents, Paul and Donna, missing, with a torn tote bag outside and dinner left in the oven. The couple had been feuding with their developer, Nathan Faber, over a coffee bar he opened instead of a promised gallery, and their pollution complaint threatened his shaky finances. Before Briscoe and Curtis can bring him in, Faber vanishes outside a Queens coffee wholesaler as a blue van pulls away. An evicted tenant has a leaflet railing against “property mongers,” and the Daily News then receives a letter threatening the seized “carpetbaggers.”
Lawyer Mr. Fetzer offers to arrange a surrender for an unnamed client, and his phone messages lead to Ben O’Dell, a civil engineer who once sued developers over a neighborhood garden. Ben blames a mentally ill man called Matt and leads the police to an empty trailer, then admits Matthew is his brother. In return for his help, Ross agrees to weigh Matthew’s mental condition. Arrested, Matthew admits writing the letters but denies the abductions. Ben then talks with him alone at the police’s request, and Matthew names a Red Hook warehouse, where the bodies of Faber and the Ericsons are found.
The Trial
McCoy says Ross’s understanding does not bind him and moves toward the death penalty. Matthew fires his lawyer for raising a psychiatric defense and refuses any examination, and Danielle Melnick agrees to defend him on his terms. Schiff will not be seen indulging him, and Ben accuses Ross of lying. Ben then testifies that Matthew asked for a lawyer before revealing the warehouse, and Judge Burke, ruling that Ben acted as a police agent, suppresses the statement and everything found there. The prosecutors rebuild around the letters, the van and a false alibi: Matthew described a piano concert at the Metropolitan Museum on a night when a string quartet played.
After Ben leaks Matthew’s old psychiatric records to the Daily News, McCoy persuades the judge to sequester the jury. Matthew is convicted on three counts of first-degree murder and again bars any mental-health evidence at sentencing. While McCoy is away at an appellate hearing, Ross cross-examines Ben, who describes his brother’s repeated hospitalizations as Matthew shouts that he is sane and calls Ben a Judas before being taken out.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury sentences Matthew O’Dell to life rather than death. Ross wonders whether she still has a job, McCoy says Schiff got to look tough, and Ross thanks McCoy for the well-timed court date that left the sentencing hearing to her.
Why it stands out
- The episode is based on the Ted Kaczynski case.
- Tovah Feldshuh guest-stars as defense attorney Danielle Melnick, who argues that ethics oblige her to follow her client’s wish to avoid any insanity defense.
- The key evidence is suppressed because the brother who questioned the defendant alone is ruled to have acted as a police agent.