New York - Police judiciaire Missing (1990–2010) Online

I just watched this episode yesterday, and here's what I think: I think the defendant did say "take care of it" to his buddy Mickey Bastone. I think Mickey took it upon himself to kill the poor girl. Maybe the defendant meant him to, maybe he didn't. What the wife did TIPPED THE BALANCE towards making him look complicit in soliciting the murder. There was no hard evidence until the wife produced the bank withdrawal slip.

This episode is inspired by the real-life disappearance and murder of Chandra Levy, an intern who was having an affair with a congressman back in the '90s. The congressman was NEVER implicated in Ms. Levy's death.

Don't get me wrong, I love L & O, so I found it quite surprising that they made such an obvious error (admittedly only obvious to me about 5 minutes after it finished :-) ).

Entertainment-wise, the episode is well up to the usual standard, so maybe I'm just nitpicking; but I did wonder if anybody else spotted it. If you want to watch for yourself and see if you can, DON'T read on.

SPOILER:

The twist in the tail suggests that the wife might have conspired to the murder; however, that would require there to have been collusion between her and her husband's biker friend, who actually *did* do it (not in question). Otherwise, how could she have known who to pay?

Not only is that not even suggested in the preamble, but it seems highly unlikely (a) that she would have had such a close relationship with a none-too-kosher chum of her husband, and (b) that she could have found a way to link her husband to the crime at all (the idea we're supposed to buy is that she incriminated him as an act of revenge).

At the very least the writers are guilty of introducing 'facts not in evidence'; at worst, it doesn't really hang together at all.

However, the episode does say that it was inspired by a real-life incident, which makes me wonder what it was.

A girl had been missing for about a week when his coworker asked the super to open up the apartment. The flat was full of packages so the girl might have decided to move on. Her parents told the police she had just lost her job as senator assistant, so she was willing to come home till she managed to find a new job. Briscoe and Green start digging in her personal life, realizing she used to hang out with older men since high school and when her dead body was found buried in the wood, they narrow down the suspects to middle aged men close to her. A state official and family friend is the prime suspect, mainly because he used to cheat on his wife (who lived upstate together with three kids): when it's time to cut off the on side relationships he used to call a bartender (Timothy Wheeler) to clean up the mess. A 10 gran cash withdrawal from a bank account could convict the defendant, but you have to wait till the very end to realize who the real perp was...

Defense attorney refers to McCoy that sometimes public figures could have affairs with their assistants. Everything is clear after this episode, we all were suspicious about his love affair with Claire Kincaid (died years before in a car accident) and that is the "smoking gun".