Tabula Rasa (Season 9, Episode 19)
Premise: A philosophy professor goes under a subway train after recognizing a Cincinnati money manager as the man who disappeared with his two young daughters 15 years earlier.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 19
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Jay O. Sanders as Bill Fallon / Nick Taska, Tracy Spindler as Alexis Fallon / Cynthia Taska, Maggie Low as Eleanor Taska, Anne Bobby as Sylvia Fallon, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Kathy McCormick & William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Tabula Rasa” opens with philosophy professor Marian Hollis, 39, dying under a train at a Manhattan subway station after being seen on the platform with a well-dressed man. She had rushed out of a diner without paying and hunted through a nearby bookstore for a customer who left a list of freshman textbooks. The list leads to Bill Fallon, a Cincinnati money manager in town to enroll his daughter Susan at college. He denies knowing Hollis, and an elderly witness picks him out of a lineup, but the evidence is too thin to hold him.
A credit card charge at Grimaldi’s pizzeria in Brooklyn brings a counterman’s recollection that Fallon was a regular there years ago, though his record claims a UCLA degree. Every trace of William K. Fallon begins in 1985. Hollis’s former landlady points the detectives to her old friend Eleanor Taska, who, at Hollis’s funeral, identifies the photo as her ex-husband, Nick Taska. After losing a custody fight, he took their daughters from school in 1984 and was never found. His younger daughter, Alexis, is really Cynthia.
The Trial
Arrested, Fallon admits meeting Hollis but says they parted at the subway entrance; then Alexis claims she was with him the whole time, a story that store clerks undercut. McCoy wins custody of Alexis for Eleanor, and the girl then insists she pushed Hollis herself. Dr. Emil Skoda believes she is protecting her father. Because only first-degree kidnapping has no statute of limitations, McCoy charges kidnapping with intent to terrorize, arguing Fallon controlled his daughters through fear for 15 years.
Eleanor describes how he ruled every detail of family life, but the defense brings out her arrest for impaired driving with Susan in the car. Susan calls her father strict but fair, and Fallon testifies that his discipline produced high-achieving girls. McCoy then calls Fallon’s second wife, Sylvia, who after describing how he makes every decision admits that he terrorized the girls; Fallon insults her from the defense table and says he married her only to give the girls a mother.
Spoiler, the ending: Fallon threatens to drag out the custody fight unless his sentence is cut. He pleads guilty to second-degree kidnapping for 10 to 20 years in minimum security and gives up any claim to Alexis. As the girls cry for him, he lashes out at Eleanor, and the prosecutors note that Fallon will now learn what it is to be controlled.
Why it stands out
- The case centers on a father who rebuilt his life under a different name after his divorce and took his daughters with him.
- No one is charged with Hollis’s death; the case turns on a first-degree kidnapping theory that relies on psychological terror, not ransom or violence.
- Fallon’s own wife becomes the prosecution’s decisive rebuttal witness.