The Ledger

12.6 Formerly Famous

Gary Busey and Joe Piscopo guest star in this episode (12.6) that is somewhat of a take on the actor Robert Blake's apparent killing of his wife. Briscoe and Green investigate the crime, and McCoy and Southerlyn prosecute.

The episode begins with Busey's character, Tommy Vega, entering a restaurant, all out of sorts. He says he need help because his wife, Beth Ann, has been shot. Briscoe and Green arrive, and Briscoe says that Vega was a famous singer with a Vegas act (think Tom Jones) until "he took up with a guy named Jack Daniels."

They interview Vega and he says he and his wife had dinner at the restaurant, they walked to the car, and he went back to the restaurant to place a bet with his bookie. When he went back to his wife, she was shot dead. As they talk, in comes Art Cahill (Joe Piscopo), his manager. His sons, Peter and Jason, also arrive. One son, Peter, has already hired an attorney for his father. Van Buren talks to the victim's sister, who says that a divorce had been planned. Green looks at the bet Vega was making, and says it was a sucker's bet. (We know from previous episodes that Green is/was a heavy gambler.)

Vega's attorney, Mr Feldman, begins to play a prominent role in the handling of the case. The detectives run into him at the crime scene, where he's accumulating his own evidence. He tells them for clues to the murder, they should look into Beth Ann's past. They talk to Cahill, who is very close to Vega and his family, and says he's been Vega's manager for 25 years. He says that Beth Ann got pregnant, and Vega married her just so the baby could have a father. Cahill and Green get a call at the same moment: the murder weapon has been found. When they get to where the gun is, Feldman is already holding a small press conference, and he says that the New York Ledger, the tabloid newspaper that is the namesake of this website, received the first call that Feldman's investigators had found the gun. He says of the newspaper, "The Ledger has a track record in the field of investigative journalism." Feldman turns to a journalist after talking to the detectives and says, "What would you like me to say?" It's clear he wants this case tried in the media.

The location of where the gun was found messes up the detectives' theory of the crime: if Vega really was the trigger man, he couldn't have gotten the gun to this far away location in time. They look into Vega's financial records and find that he wrote a check for $60,000 to someone named Rick Jordan. The memo said "re: Beth Ann." They track down Beth Ann's mailbox at a mailbox store, and learn that Cahill has already cleaned it out. Cahill tells them that Beth Ann wrote letters to lonely men all over the country, trying to wrangle money out of them. One such letter points them to Davey Reynolds, a hall of fame pitcher who used to be called "Psycho." They talk to Reynolds at a baseball camp, and he says Beth Ann was like a stalker, but he didn't kill her.

They trace the gun to Dwayne Hawthorne, who they learn is dead. They learn that his grandson works for Cahill, however, and the grandson, Mr Jackson, admits he sold the gun to Cahill. Looks like Cahill is the new suspect.

They take Cahill into custody while he's in the middle of a meeting with "the next N'Sync." Cahill has no alibi, and says the gun was in an unlocked drawer in his office where anybody could've gotten it. His secretary tell them that Cahill paid Beth Ann $750,000.

Beth Ann's attorney seems to have more information than is immediately apparent, and McCoy wants to know what the attorney knows. They file a motion with a judge, who decides partially in McCoy's favor, saying, "I wouldn't be Solomon if I didn't occasionally split the baby." He orders Beth Ann's attorney to break privilege and testify.

A grandy jury is called to seek an indictment against Cahill. At the grand jury, Beth Ann's attorney testifies that Vega paid Beth Ann all that money for custody of their child, but then Cahill testifies the baby wasn't even biologically Vega's. Beth Ann's cell phone records show that Vega's son, Peter, received a call after the murder. All the Vegas get together in the family conference room to talk things over. Back at the grand jury, Vega testifies about his love for his daughter, even though she wasn't really his, and he couldn't imagine parting with her, and Beth Ann used the custody issue to extort things from him. At this point, the episode becomes rather tedious. Eventually, Vega jumps out of the witness box while testifying, and gets all emotional. He pleads to killing his wife.

The episode is notable because of it's two formerly-big-time celebrity guest stars, and because it "rips from the headlines" the story of another washed-up celeb, Robert Blake, who apparently killed his wife under similar circumstances.

Posted by adm at June 19, 2004 07:32 PM

Comments

Post a comment

validate