Law & Order (1990) s25e12 Episode Script
Never Say Goodbye
1
In the criminal justice system,
the people are represented
by two separate,
yet equally important groups:
the police, who investigate crime,
and the district attorneys,
who prosecute the offenders.
These are their stories.
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
Come on, Mark.
You thought you were
gonna sneak out of here
without anyone noticing?
ALL: Surprise!
No, no, no.
You guys.
Hey, drink up.
Sparkling cider. No need to write us up.
Listen up, everybody.
I'm not gonna belabor this, guys.
I know we got places to be.
Guy's got tickets to Fiji
waiting at home.
[LAUGHTER]
Costa Rica.
Someplace with those little
umbrellas in your drink.
[LAUGHTER]
For keeping our skies safe for 37 years.
[CHEERING]
And just being a mensch.
[CROWD MURMURING AGREEMENT]
To Mark.
ALL: To Mark.
Don't leave me with these people.
[LAUGHTER]
We're gonna miss you, buddy.
Miss you too, Brook.
Any advice for the young bucks?
Enjoy the ride.
There's no shortcuts
to any place worth going.
Cheers, my friends.
ALL: Cheers.
That's when when you realize ♪
That's when you
open your eyes and say ♪
Doesn't get better than this ♪
Ooh, yeah ♪
Doesn't get better,
doesn't get better ♪
Doesn't get better ♪
- [GUNSHOTS]
- [GRUNTS]
♪
Ooh, yeah ♪
[CLATTERING]
Doesn't get better,
doesn't get better ♪
Doesn't get better than this ♪
Hey.
Hey, are you okay?
[GROANS]
[MUMBLES]
911, what's your emergency?
We need an ambulance, please.
[SIREN CHIRPS]
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
What do we got?
Two gunshots to the back.
Small-cal casings.
No witnesses yet. Still canvassing.
Let's make sure we pull that footage.
You got it.
- Hey, partner.
- Hey.
We ID our vic?
Mm-hmm. Mark Turner.
Got this from the Federal
Aviation Administration, 2023.
35 years of service.
Who called 911?
I didn't see it. I didn't hear it.
I thought he just crashed.
- I didn't know he got shot.
- Okay. All right.
Did you see anything else,
anyone leaving the scene?
No.
Did he manage to say anything to you
before he died?
Yeah.
He told me I should wear a helmet.
♪
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
♪
He's really gone?
I'm afraid so.
We can only imagine how much of a shock
this must be for you,
but now we gotta figure out
who did this, okay?
Can you tell us, was your husband
having any problems recently?
Maybe any issues at work?
No, it was quite the opposite.
He just retired.
Today was his last day.
We're we're supposed to go
to Costa Rica in the morning.
We were.
What about money, Ms. Turner?
Any debt, liens, or problems?
No, no.
He he didn't believe in it.
Cut your coat according to your cloth.
If I had a dime for the number of times
he preached that to the kids,
I'd be rich.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
Oh, my God, the kids.
They don't even know yet.
I I have to call them.
We just have one more
question, I promise.
Can you tell us why your husband was
on the Hudson bike path tonight?
He biked to and from
the office every single day.
He said it was the safest way
to travel in the city.
Thank you.
♪
Is that the footage from the scene?
Yeah. Check it out.
Turner takes two in the back,
and then the perp takes off.
We lose him after that.
Facial rec's no good.
Perp's helmet and face
coverings saw to that.
He knew what he was doing.
So much so, I can't even
tell for sure if he's a he.
Yeah.
The shooter's bike is a Merrimac Pro.
Second best-selling bike in New York.
All right, well,
not a lot of help there.
This might be.
TARU got into Mark Turner's cloud.
27 unanswered texts
from a Bodie Walsh day of the murder.
27 seems excessive.
Wait till you read 'em.
"How can you do this to me?
There will be consequences."
Right. Bodie Walsh is the head
of an aviation consultant firm,
SkyGuard Solutions, formed a month ago.
His home in Astoria is
the corporate headquarters.
One employee, the late Mark Turner.
This last text from Bodie,
"Arman Sargsyan doesn't mess around."
If he says so.
No, he's right.
Sargsyan is a legit gangster.
Loansharking, money laundering, drugs.
How's a paper pusher like Mark Turner
get involved with organized crime?
Why don't you pay Mr. Walsh
a visit and find out?
[BANGING]
Bodie Walsh.
NYPD, open up.
Not a great time.
What's this about?
Murder investigation.
[LOCKS CLICKING]
Bodie Walsh?
- That's me.
- Jesus.
What happened to you?
Can I help you?
We need to talk about Mark Turner.
[TENSE MUSIC]
Can we go someplace?
It doesn't feel safe here.
Yeah. Yeah, get your stuff.
Rough week?
You wanna fill me in?
Your face tells me
you owe the Armenians money.
Was Mark Turner in the hole too?
Is that why he's dead?
God, no.
Mark was a saint.
Yeah, see, that's the point.
As far as we can tell, you're not.
You're in a bunch of debt.
You owe money to some violent people.
You threatened Mark with consequences,
and now he's dead. I'm a murder cop,
so you can see
where I'm going with this.
I was in trouble.
I needed Mark's help.
That's why I wrote
those stupid messages.
Explain.
A lot of stuff I invested in
went belly up,
and I doubled down and borrowed
money from the Armenians.
And I don't have it.
No kidding.
Why Mark Turner?
We grew up together.
He went one way, I went the other,
but we were gonna start a new business.
Yeah, an aviation consulting firm.
It was gonna work, too, I swear.
See, guys like Mark, government guys,
a lot of them go into
consulting when they retire.
Well, it sounds ideal. What went wrong?
I booked our first job,
and Mark wouldn't play ball.
Why not?
Job was with an insurance company.
It was a skydiving accident.
They didn't wanna pay up.
Mark found out the person who
packed the parachute was uncertified.
He didn't wanna let
the company off the hook,
which was literally
what they were paying us to do.
Yeah. And you needed the money.
People have killed for less, Bodie.
I didn't. I swear.
Mark was too good for this world.
He was such a goody two-shoes
about safety.
People were always
getting pissed at him.
He even got death threats.
When?
Like, the last few weeks.
From who?
A guy named Eric Savage.
The boxer?
[KNOCKS]
Bodie's alibi checks out.
Okay.
He was right about those threats too.
The warrant just dropped
for Turner's FAA cell.
Eric Savage left
this voicemail last week.
We checked the phone records
and everything.
This is really him.
Turner, you're a dead man. You hear me?
What the hell is
mild-mannered Mark Turner doing
tangled up with
a middleweight boxing champion?
I mean, the dude's like Forrest Gump.
Are you familiar with the Nomad Rocket?
Space tourism for the rich and famous?
Yeah.
The FAA regulates
commercial space flight.
Ten days ago, Mark Turner called off
a launch at the last second.
It caused quite a stir.
Our boy Eric Savage was on that flight.
Or he was supposed to be.
He left that voicemail two days after
Turner canceled the launch.
And it turns out Eric Savage had
a different career before boxing
aggravated assault, armed robbery.
See what he has to say for himself.
[GRUNTS]
I'm gonna let you
take point on this one.
Eric Savage.
'Sup?
Afternoon, guys.
NYPD.
[SIGHS]
What can I do for New York's finest?
Well, we have video of you
walking into the lobby of
Mark Turner's office yesterday.
And?
And two hours later,
somebody shot him dead.
Not a good look, man.
I don't even own a gun.
If I'm killing somebody,
I'm using my hands.
Not exactly doing yourself
any favors there, Eric.
We heard Turner crushed
your dreams of going to space.
And that pissed you off, right?
Yeah.
Why should Katy Perry have all the fun?
You know, I ask myself that
same question all the time.
That flight would have got me triple
the amount of Instagram followers,
and it cost me a huge endorsement deal.
So you threatened Mark Turner's life
and then went down to his office
to make good on those threats.
I went to apologize.
Really?
Really.
Look, man, Turner was right.
I did my research.
If we went up in the air,
my insides could have been vaporized.
All right, let's say
we actually buy this story.
How did Turner respond?
He didn't.
Security guard in the lobby
wouldn't even let me near him.
Said there had been an incident.
No outside visitors allowed.
All right, we'll look into that.
Do you remember this incident
that Eric Savage mentioned?
Hard to forget.
This crazy lady blew up
at a meeting upstairs.
I had to pretty much drag her
out kicking and screaming.
Who was she? You got a name?
No idea.
I was just told by brass
to escort her out.
And when was this?
Last Tuesday, right before
my shift ended, so about 5:00.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
So according to Turner's calendar,
that meeting was regarding
Titan Helicopter Corporation.
Titan. That helicopter crash
out in Bayport last summer.
Yeah, five people died.
The pilot, a family of four,
two kids, both under ten.
That helicopter was a Titan.
The day that bird went down
was the worst day of my life.
That poor family.
And what was this meeting
about at the FAA?
Oh, standard practice.
When the FAA completes an
investigation into an accident,
they offer relevant parties
a preview of their
official determination.
Which was?
Pilot error.
Who was at this meeting?
Mark Turner and a couple others
from the FAA, a few of us from Titan,
relatives of the deceased,
and Kate Leavy,
wife of Brian Leavy, the pilot
who was flying the day of the accident.
What, she was the one
who freaked out at the meeting?
Big time.
Mark Turner headed up
that FAA investigation,
which tells you it was done right.
And Kate Leavy?
Refused to accept that
pilot error caused the crash.
It was ugly.
She called Mark Turner a liar,
said that her husband was ex-Marine,
that they don't make errors.
They had to haul her out of there,
and she was screaming
into Turner's face,
"This isn't over."
[TENSE MUSIC]
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure I buy
Kate Leavy's a cold-blooded killer.
She's got no priors.
She teaches Sunday school
at Saint Catherine's.
She posts on Instagram
about her hyacinths.
Hey, turns out Kate Leavy's
husband, the helicopter pilot,
owned a licensed Sig Sauer.
There he is, Brian Leavy.
And there's his firearm license.
And according to forensics,
the slugs removed
from Mark Turner's body had
distinctive pin markings
indicating they were
fired from a Sig Sauer.
It's not enough for an arrest.
It's enough for a chat.
Okay.
[BANGING]
Kate Leavy, police.
NYPD. Open up.
NYPD.
Oh, God.
I don't know what to do.
Yeah?
Yeah, somebody's definitely home.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[KNOCKING]
♪
Hey. [WHISTLES SOFTLY]
Gun. Go.
Kate Leavy, NYPD.
Kate Leavy.
Hey.
Drop that weapon, Kate.
Drop that weapon.
It's okay.
Kate, take your hand off that gun.
All right?
Come on.
Come on. I need you to
take your hand off the gun.
Kate, stop right there.
Okay? Hey.
It's okay.
Stay right where you are.
Slowly.
Keep your hands at your side.
Keep your hands at your side, Kate.
- Stay right there.
- It's okay.
It's all right. Look at me. Face me.
I'm gonna step to you. Okay?
Here we go.
I got it. I got it.
- [SHOUTS]
- Okay. You're okay.
Turn around.
Please, please, please.
Please, please!
Easy.
Kate?
What's happening?
Is everything okay?
Who else is in this house?
No one.
Don't lie to me.
How many people are in here?
Talk to me, Kate. Say something.
Anything.
You're really scaring me now.
Sir, I'm coming toward you.
I have a weapon.
- Are you armed?
- What? No.
Kate, what is happening? Are you okay?
Please tell me you're okay.
It's the police.
I'm okay.
The police? Oh, my God.
Please don't hurt her.
Sir, I'm stepping inside.
My weapon is drawn,
and I will shoot you.
Raise your hands and keep them
where I can see them.
Do you understand?
♪
Please be gentle with her.
Who the hell are you?
I'm Brian.
Brian Leavy, Kate's husband.
But you died in a helicopter
crash two months ago.
♪
I haven't seen you in
those earrings in a while.
Oh, yeah.
Remember when you got them for me
at that place up in Ithaca?
Oh, my God, remember that place?
[LAUGHS] Oh.
That guy who rented it to us?
Kate Leavy is not talking.
The only hard evidence we have
is the murder weapon, maybe.
And forensics won't be back
for 48 hours.
We can only hold her for 42.
What have we got?
We just got the warrant for her devices,
but it turns out
Theo didn't see a ghost there.
Say hello to the late Brian Leavy.
This place has rustic charm.
And here I was thinking
death was a fairly permanent condition.
Used to be, right?
This Brian Leavy is
known as a grief bot.
He's a hyper-realistic, AI-powered
simulation of a dead guy.
After he died, Kate Leavy got
a subscription to a thing
called Memory Branch $49.99 a month.
She talks to her husband all the time.
There's, like, 500 hours of recorded
conversations between these two.
They talk about what
they want for dinner.
They talk about movies they've seen.
That sounds terrible.
I mean, kinda, but I don't know.
Part of me also gets it, you know?
My brother's in a coma.
If I could talk to an avatar of him
about, you know,
the Yankees or something,
I don't know, maybe that would help.
How are we supposed to get through
500 hours of this in the next 42 hours?
We might not need to.
I've been working my way
backwards from the murder.
Kate, these people are trying
to destroy my reputation.
I did nothing wrong.
That helicopter was doomed.
If it weren't for them,
I'd still be alive.
I can't fight back,
but you can.
What does this thing know,
like, about the real world?
I mean, is there any truth
to any of this?
We don't know yet.
Run it down.
I mean, if dead Brian Leavy's
telling the truth,
then we're talking
about motive revenge.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
Look, I want answers here
as much as you do.
Everybody here thought
the world of Mark Turner.
That's not the question, is it?
We found those in a trove of documents
that Titan handed over
when the FAA investigated
the crash on Long Island.
It says the tail rotor
that was used on the helicopter
had been dinged
in a previous inspection.
Was that tail rotor still on
the helicopter when it crashed?
No.
Is there some kind
of cover-up going on here?
Was Mark Turner crooked?
Would somebody pay him off
to pin this all
on Brian Leavy, a dead guy?
No. For God's sake, no.
It's true.
The helicopter that crashed
once used a rotor
- that had some bearing wear.
- Uh-huh.
Basically, the rotor and drive shaft
were misaligned,
but that's not why it crashed.
♪
What is this?
Titan swapped out
that wonky rotor for a new one
a month before the crash.
We've got video of them doing
the work in their hangar.
You're welcome to see it.
It brings me no joy to tell you
this was textbook pilot error.
♪
We're testing the gun
that we seized at your home
to confirm it's the gun that
was used to kill Mark Turner.
But we already know the answer,
don't we?
A friend of mine was killed
a couple of months ago.
He was a cop.
I'm sorry.
I didn't know Walker knew that guy.
No.
No, he doesn't. He's making this up.
This is what he does.
He's a storyteller.
I'm still fighting through it.
You know the part I can't shake?
It's not being sad.
I can handle that.
I'm angry, Kate,
angry at my dead friend
and myself and God.
And I think you're angry too.
It hurts.
It's not fair.
It's not.
I read this thing the other day
that said grief is
just another form of love,
love that's got no place to go.
And there was a lot of love, right?
Your husband was a great man.
But the reality is, he made a mistake.
No.
Yes.
I know he told you there was
a bad part on the helicopter.
We've seen the recordings
of your conversation.
But your husband is only privy
to what's on the internet,
because he's a computer program, Kate.
Yes.
This is what Brian showed me, the rotor.
He found it online because it's part of
the public records connected
to the FAA investigation.
But he didn't know about this
Because the FAA's
internal work documents
are not part of the public record yet.
That rotor got changed out.
There was nothing wrong
with that helicopter.
[SOFT SOMBER MUSIC]
♪
You will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.
John 8:32.
That's right.
Pray with me?
We don't really do
that kind of thing in here.
Please.
I can see that you want to pray with me.
♪
Heavenly father,
bless this man, your servant,
who seeks the truth.
And forgive me for what I've done.
Okay.
I practiced for a few days
riding my bike with one hand
so I'd be ready to shoot
my gun with the other.
And on the day it happened,
did you follow Mark Turner
from his office?
No.
I memorized his schedule.
I knew when he left work,
how he rode home each day,
so I knew where he'd be.
I waited, and there he was.
It was so fast.
I rode up behind him
and shot him in the back.
It's textbook premeditated murder.
Sometimes they come with a bow on top.
[KNOCKING]
Sig Sauer handgun we recovered
from Kate Leavy's home
is not the murder weapon.
That's weird.
Maybe not.
About a week before the murder,
she went online
and got herself a barrel kit.
She swapped out
the barrel of the Sig Sauer
so when forensics tested the gun
The marks on the test slugs
were different
from the slugs we pulled
from Mark Turner's body.
We'd certainly be in a stronger position
if we had the murder weapon,
but this is pretty
compelling evidence that
she tried to cover her tracks.
We'll still need to get ahead of this.
The defense will make a meal of it.
But in the meantime,
Kate Leavy confessed
she shot Mark Turner with a gun.
A confession's a confession.
Your Honor, Detective Walker's decision
to join hands and pray with Kate Leavy
while she was in police custody
is clearly grounds
to quash this confession.
That is not true, Your Honor.
I mean, that prayer may
have been unusual,
but it's not illegal.
And it was Kate Leavy who asked to pray
with Detective Walker,
not the other way around.
But that doesn't matter, Your Honor.
This goes back
to Miranda case law itself.
Confessions must be voluntary.
And it was, and there was no threat,
no no promise, no inducement.
Which is immaterial as well,
because prayer all on its own
has been seen by the courts routinely
as a form of psychological
coercion by the police.
Coercion renders
a confession involuntary
and therefore inadmissible.
- Your Honor
- Save your breath, Mr. Price.
I agree with Ms. Hogan.
The confession is out.
[TENSE MUSIC]
We're still good on motive.
I've watched hours of Kate Leavy's
conversations with her "husband."
I mean, if I'm being honest,
I can't stop watching them.
It's unsettling.
It's creepy is what it is.
She was consumed by her husband's death,
craved retribution.
The more technology tries to help,
the worse things seem to get.
Everything has a shortcut these days.
Overweight? Try Ozempic.
Lonely? Swipe right.
Can't handle the death of a loved one?
Create a grief bot.
Grief is supposed to be hard.
Pretty sure that's the point.
If you can believe it,
I've got a voicemail
from my father that he left
a couple of days before he died,
which, for all I know,
he was trying to get me
to smuggle scotch
into the hospital, but
I can't even listen.
Grief is obviously
a universal experience,
which means everyone on that jury
has experienced it in some capacity.
So lean into the anger
and confusion of that journey.
That's what drove Kate Leavy to kill.
Ms. Leavy's cell phone
pinged off a tower
on West 61st Street at 6:12 p.m.,
putting her roughly within
150 yards of the murder.
Can you explain these images,
Detective Walker?
On the left is an image
from security footage,
the killer on
a 2023 Merrimac Pro bicycle.
On the right is that same
make and model bicycle
recovered from the basement
of Ms. Leavy's home.
Lastly, Detective, when
you went to Ms. Leavy's home
to question her, how would you
describe her demeanor?
Rattled.
Panicked, maybe.
When we arrived, we knocked.
We announced ourselves
as police several times,
but she refused to open up.
We went inside because we were
concerned for her safety.
We could see her pacing frantically.
She had a firearm next to her.
Nothing further, Your Honor.
Ms. Hogan.
Detective, how many other phones
pinged off of that cell phone tower
around the time of the murder?
About 3,000.
So what you're saying is
2,999 other people
could have committed this murder.
Respectfully, we're here because
we believe the defendant
committed this murder.
The gravest allegation one can face.
So, surely, you cleared
those other people
by interviewing them, obtaining alibis.
We didn't think that was necessary.
I'm sure you didn't.
Now, based on this image,
it's impossible to know
if the killer was a man or a woman.
[TENSE MUSIC]
Based on that image, maybe.
But we have more evidence.
Have police ever banged on your door?
No.
But if they did,
it would make you frantic, correct?
Especially if you were innocent.
One last thing.
There were 6,000 Merrimac Pro bicycles
sold in 2023.
Surely, you interviewed these
people who own these bikes.
That wasn't necessary.
You had your suspect, so damn the facts.
Objection, Your Honor.
Sustained.
Nothing else, Your Honor.
A gun barrel imparts marks
on the projectile that fires,
marks that we in the ballistics
field call lands and grooves.
They are specific to that firearm,
kind of like how fingerprints
are specific to each of us.
And a firearm can be taken apart
and put back together again,
including the barrel, correct?
Yes.
It's common among firearm enthusiasts.
You can buy barrel kits
to swap out that piece.
And then those markings,
those lands and grooves?
Would be new, different.
Which would explain how
a weapon could be used to kill,
but a forensics investigation
would conclude that it wasn't.
Correct.
Nothing further.
Kate Leavy was never found
in possession of the gun barrel
that was used in this murder.
So this theory that Ms. Leavy,
a literal Sunday school teacher
without so much as a jaywalking ticket,
is such a criminal mastermind
that she swapped out
these gun barrels to cover
her tracks is just that
a theory, correct?
Objection. Counsel is testifying.
Sustained.
It's impossible to determine
whether the gun found
in Ms. Leavy's apartment was the gun
used to kill Mark Turner.
- Correct?
- Correct.
But the barrel she purchased
Nothing else, Your Honor.
Grief is more than missing someone.
The loss of a parent, a spouse,
a child, it's so powerful,
it can disrupt our very sense
of meaning, identity.
Recovery means rebuilding our story,
incorporating that loss
into a new narrative.
And these grief bots?
At Memory Branch, we refer
to them as legacy avatars.
Forgive me.
These legacy avatars help
those who are mourning
do all of that?
Yes.
Articulate memories, clarify emotions,
say the stuff that was left unsaid.
It's a form of therapy.
It's not quite that simple,
though, is it, Ms. Matthews?
Kate Leavy paid your company
$49.99 a month
to speak with her deceased husband.
- Yes.
- But if she woke up one day
and decided that she was cured
of her grief,
she might discontinue
her subscription, correct?
Yes. Some people do.
Which means your
revenue stream is maximized
by keeping your clients,
people who are mourning, hooked.
I wouldn't put it that way.
Your company programs
legacy avatars like Brian Leavy
to be echo chambers, correct?
Isn't it true that
they are built specifically
to amplify whatever
sentiment is expressed
by your grieving clients?
Yes, basically, the client
So then wasn't it true
that when Kate Leavy insisted
to her husband that someone
must be to blame for his death,
he was happy to oblige?
Your legacy avatar eagerly
coughed up a cockamamie story
about a sinister cover-up.
Objection. Leading.
Sustained.
He was trying to help her.
♪
Your Honor, the people would
like to introduce the video
of the relevant conversations
between Kate Leavy
and Brian Leavy's avatar,
what has been marked as exhibit 11A.
We object to the introduction
of that video
and any other recordings
of conversations
between my client and her husband.
On what grounds?
These videos are protected
by marital privilege.
You cannot be serious.
Chambers, now.
Your Honor, this avatar
is not Brian Leavy.
It's a computer program.
Communications between
the defendant and this thing
is clearly fair game.
Your Honor, it is true
that this legacy avatar
is powered by AI, but he possesses
and has mastered the real Brian Leavy's
entire digital footprint
Brian Leavy's likeness,
voice, mannerisms,
every social media post,
his past, his life.
When Kate Leavy interacted with him,
she firmly believed she was
speaking with her husband.
Therefore, she had
a reasonable expectation
of marital privilege.
The concept of privilege
was designed to protect
relationships that society
places a special value on,
to promote candor
in those relationships.
It dates back to common law,
and we're talking about
extending it to a machine?
Where does this end?
I don't know, Mr. Price,
and I think that's the point.
The genius of the law
does not rest in a world
that's dead and gone.
But in its adaptability to
a world that is ever-changing.
State versus Hunt.
Five years ago, the prosecution
wins this debate.
But now, in 2026, I believe
the spirit of marital privilege
was alive in these conversations.
They were meant to be private.
They'll stay that way today.
The jury is not going to see
Kate Leavy's communications
with the grief bot.
- None of it?
- None of it.
Which dramatically hampers
our ability to argue motive.
Unless we can turn up
new evidence on this thing
before court resumes in the morning,
meaningful evidence,
we're gonna have to offer
Kate Leavy a deal.
A plea?
What are you talking, manslaughter here?
What? Manslaughter?
At this point,
we'd be lucky if she says yes.
But we know she did this.
She looked me straight in the eye
and confessed in detail.
And the jury will never
know that either.
You have till tomorrow morning.
You know, I was really hoping
to make the Ranger game tonight.
Would manslaughter really be that bad?
I just got off the phone
with the warden of Rikers.
Turns out, every single day
since her arrest,
Kate Leavy has signed up
to access the internet
on DOC-issued tablets.
And the only thing
she's interested in is
Talking to her dead husband.
Bingo.
But she can't, because
Memory Branch turned him off.
That's the end of that, then.
Unless we got him turned back on.
What if we brought Brian Leavy
back from the dead
one more time?
Okay, I'll talk to him.
[PHONE BEEPS]
Hey.
Just spoke with Detective Walker.
Says they're on to something.
[NOTIFICATION CHIMES]
What is it?
Apparently Kate Leavy is
pleading guilty to murder?
What?
- That doesn't make any sense.
- Yeah.
Our case is falling apart,
and her lawyer knows that.
She knows that.
What the hell happened?
Kate, I was wrong.
I'm so sorry.
There was no cover-up?
No.
No, there was nothing wrong
with that helicopter.
It was pilot error,
my error, like the FAA said.
That poor man, Mark Turner,
he was just doing his job, honey.
[TENSE MUSIC]
I did this, not you.
I love you, Brian,
and nothing can ever change that.
But the fact is,
I killed a man for nothing.
What the hell have you done?
I helped Kate Leavy see
the error of her ways.
What, am I supposed to be
apologizing right now?
You went to the CEO of Memory Branch
and persuaded her
to turn Brian Leavy back on,
and you manipulated the algorithm
by feeding it the FAA report?
Yeah, and it worked.
Not the point.
We have no choice.
We have to disclose
Detective Walker's actions
- to the defense.
- Do we?
Let's just take a look
at the fuse on this bomb
before we light it, okay?
Kate Leavy attempted to speak
with her dead husband
every day since her arrest.
Couldn't you argue that Detective Walker
just gave her what she wanted?
Or handed her the shovel
to dig her own grave.
[SIGHS]
Walker facilitated this without
her attorney's knowledge.
It's essentially ex parte communication.
Right.
And he tampered
with the machine's algorithm.
He fed the thing new information
with the express intent or hope
of soliciting a new confession.
Which you have to applaud on some level.
I'm not so sure about that.
Detective Walker had no way of knowing
that Kate Leavy was going to
initiate communication
with this grief bot.
He merely made the thing
available to her.
Nick, come on.
I don't like this
any more than you do, but
The high road is a lonely place.
Notify the defense.
This information warrants
an immediate dismissal of charges.
Dismissal is extreme,
but there is no clear
constitutional violation.
Mr. Price, give her the floor, please.
Given what's happened here,
it's clearly her serve.
Your Honor, this calls for a mistrial.
The Sixth Amendment,
not to mention Massiah,
tells us that the police
cannot deliberately prompt
a represented defendant
to incriminate herself
without her lawyer present.
- That is not what happened.
- Of course it is.
This grief bot is still a private app.
It's not like
Detective Walker controlled it
with some magical joystick.
He turned the damn thing
into an agent of the state.
The connection is too indirect
to be a Massiah violation.
Stop.
Stop, stop.
Just please stop.
My husband has shown me
the error of my ways.
I killed an innocent man.
[TENSE MUSIC]
I must take responsibility.
Kate, don't do this.
Ms. Leavy, it's not
my place to weigh in here,
but you should listen to your attorney.
Your husband is dead.
You weren't talking to him.
It doesn't matter.
I
I felt like I was.
That was enough.
I must atone.
This is the only way.
Ms. Leavy, did you kill Mark Turner?
Yes, I did.
Are you guilty of murder?
♪
Yes.
I am.
[BREATHES DEEPLY]
Remind me never to subscribe
to a grief bot.
First it convinces Kate Leavy
to commit murder.
Then it gives her the worst
legal advice in history.
[SIGHS]
Well, I'm gonna go read a book.
[CHUCKLES]
[SOFT MUSIC]
♪
Hi, Nolan.
It's Dad.
Ah, jeez.
I guess with these damn
computers in our pocket,
I don't really have to say
who it is, do I?
[CHUCKLES]
Anyway, I I just called
to hear your voice
and really to tell you
how proud I am, son.
Well, when you get a chance,
give the old man a call.
Love you, son.
Bye.
♪
In the criminal justice system,
the people are represented
by two separate,
yet equally important groups:
the police, who investigate crime,
and the district attorneys,
who prosecute the offenders.
These are their stories.
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
Come on, Mark.
You thought you were
gonna sneak out of here
without anyone noticing?
ALL: Surprise!
No, no, no.
You guys.
Hey, drink up.
Sparkling cider. No need to write us up.
Listen up, everybody.
I'm not gonna belabor this, guys.
I know we got places to be.
Guy's got tickets to Fiji
waiting at home.
[LAUGHTER]
Costa Rica.
Someplace with those little
umbrellas in your drink.
[LAUGHTER]
For keeping our skies safe for 37 years.
[CHEERING]
And just being a mensch.
[CROWD MURMURING AGREEMENT]
To Mark.
ALL: To Mark.
Don't leave me with these people.
[LAUGHTER]
We're gonna miss you, buddy.
Miss you too, Brook.
Any advice for the young bucks?
Enjoy the ride.
There's no shortcuts
to any place worth going.
Cheers, my friends.
ALL: Cheers.
That's when when you realize ♪
That's when you
open your eyes and say ♪
Doesn't get better than this ♪
Ooh, yeah ♪
Doesn't get better,
doesn't get better ♪
Doesn't get better ♪
- [GUNSHOTS]
- [GRUNTS]
♪
Ooh, yeah ♪
[CLATTERING]
Doesn't get better,
doesn't get better ♪
Doesn't get better than this ♪
Hey.
Hey, are you okay?
[GROANS]
[MUMBLES]
911, what's your emergency?
We need an ambulance, please.
[SIREN CHIRPS]
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
What do we got?
Two gunshots to the back.
Small-cal casings.
No witnesses yet. Still canvassing.
Let's make sure we pull that footage.
You got it.
- Hey, partner.
- Hey.
We ID our vic?
Mm-hmm. Mark Turner.
Got this from the Federal
Aviation Administration, 2023.
35 years of service.
Who called 911?
I didn't see it. I didn't hear it.
I thought he just crashed.
- I didn't know he got shot.
- Okay. All right.
Did you see anything else,
anyone leaving the scene?
No.
Did he manage to say anything to you
before he died?
Yeah.
He told me I should wear a helmet.
♪
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
♪
He's really gone?
I'm afraid so.
We can only imagine how much of a shock
this must be for you,
but now we gotta figure out
who did this, okay?
Can you tell us, was your husband
having any problems recently?
Maybe any issues at work?
No, it was quite the opposite.
He just retired.
Today was his last day.
We're we're supposed to go
to Costa Rica in the morning.
We were.
What about money, Ms. Turner?
Any debt, liens, or problems?
No, no.
He he didn't believe in it.
Cut your coat according to your cloth.
If I had a dime for the number of times
he preached that to the kids,
I'd be rich.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
Oh, my God, the kids.
They don't even know yet.
I I have to call them.
We just have one more
question, I promise.
Can you tell us why your husband was
on the Hudson bike path tonight?
He biked to and from
the office every single day.
He said it was the safest way
to travel in the city.
Thank you.
♪
Is that the footage from the scene?
Yeah. Check it out.
Turner takes two in the back,
and then the perp takes off.
We lose him after that.
Facial rec's no good.
Perp's helmet and face
coverings saw to that.
He knew what he was doing.
So much so, I can't even
tell for sure if he's a he.
Yeah.
The shooter's bike is a Merrimac Pro.
Second best-selling bike in New York.
All right, well,
not a lot of help there.
This might be.
TARU got into Mark Turner's cloud.
27 unanswered texts
from a Bodie Walsh day of the murder.
27 seems excessive.
Wait till you read 'em.
"How can you do this to me?
There will be consequences."
Right. Bodie Walsh is the head
of an aviation consultant firm,
SkyGuard Solutions, formed a month ago.
His home in Astoria is
the corporate headquarters.
One employee, the late Mark Turner.
This last text from Bodie,
"Arman Sargsyan doesn't mess around."
If he says so.
No, he's right.
Sargsyan is a legit gangster.
Loansharking, money laundering, drugs.
How's a paper pusher like Mark Turner
get involved with organized crime?
Why don't you pay Mr. Walsh
a visit and find out?
[BANGING]
Bodie Walsh.
NYPD, open up.
Not a great time.
What's this about?
Murder investigation.
[LOCKS CLICKING]
Bodie Walsh?
- That's me.
- Jesus.
What happened to you?
Can I help you?
We need to talk about Mark Turner.
[TENSE MUSIC]
Can we go someplace?
It doesn't feel safe here.
Yeah. Yeah, get your stuff.
Rough week?
You wanna fill me in?
Your face tells me
you owe the Armenians money.
Was Mark Turner in the hole too?
Is that why he's dead?
God, no.
Mark was a saint.
Yeah, see, that's the point.
As far as we can tell, you're not.
You're in a bunch of debt.
You owe money to some violent people.
You threatened Mark with consequences,
and now he's dead. I'm a murder cop,
so you can see
where I'm going with this.
I was in trouble.
I needed Mark's help.
That's why I wrote
those stupid messages.
Explain.
A lot of stuff I invested in
went belly up,
and I doubled down and borrowed
money from the Armenians.
And I don't have it.
No kidding.
Why Mark Turner?
We grew up together.
He went one way, I went the other,
but we were gonna start a new business.
Yeah, an aviation consulting firm.
It was gonna work, too, I swear.
See, guys like Mark, government guys,
a lot of them go into
consulting when they retire.
Well, it sounds ideal. What went wrong?
I booked our first job,
and Mark wouldn't play ball.
Why not?
Job was with an insurance company.
It was a skydiving accident.
They didn't wanna pay up.
Mark found out the person who
packed the parachute was uncertified.
He didn't wanna let
the company off the hook,
which was literally
what they were paying us to do.
Yeah. And you needed the money.
People have killed for less, Bodie.
I didn't. I swear.
Mark was too good for this world.
He was such a goody two-shoes
about safety.
People were always
getting pissed at him.
He even got death threats.
When?
Like, the last few weeks.
From who?
A guy named Eric Savage.
The boxer?
[KNOCKS]
Bodie's alibi checks out.
Okay.
He was right about those threats too.
The warrant just dropped
for Turner's FAA cell.
Eric Savage left
this voicemail last week.
We checked the phone records
and everything.
This is really him.
Turner, you're a dead man. You hear me?
What the hell is
mild-mannered Mark Turner doing
tangled up with
a middleweight boxing champion?
I mean, the dude's like Forrest Gump.
Are you familiar with the Nomad Rocket?
Space tourism for the rich and famous?
Yeah.
The FAA regulates
commercial space flight.
Ten days ago, Mark Turner called off
a launch at the last second.
It caused quite a stir.
Our boy Eric Savage was on that flight.
Or he was supposed to be.
He left that voicemail two days after
Turner canceled the launch.
And it turns out Eric Savage had
a different career before boxing
aggravated assault, armed robbery.
See what he has to say for himself.
[GRUNTS]
I'm gonna let you
take point on this one.
Eric Savage.
'Sup?
Afternoon, guys.
NYPD.
[SIGHS]
What can I do for New York's finest?
Well, we have video of you
walking into the lobby of
Mark Turner's office yesterday.
And?
And two hours later,
somebody shot him dead.
Not a good look, man.
I don't even own a gun.
If I'm killing somebody,
I'm using my hands.
Not exactly doing yourself
any favors there, Eric.
We heard Turner crushed
your dreams of going to space.
And that pissed you off, right?
Yeah.
Why should Katy Perry have all the fun?
You know, I ask myself that
same question all the time.
That flight would have got me triple
the amount of Instagram followers,
and it cost me a huge endorsement deal.
So you threatened Mark Turner's life
and then went down to his office
to make good on those threats.
I went to apologize.
Really?
Really.
Look, man, Turner was right.
I did my research.
If we went up in the air,
my insides could have been vaporized.
All right, let's say
we actually buy this story.
How did Turner respond?
He didn't.
Security guard in the lobby
wouldn't even let me near him.
Said there had been an incident.
No outside visitors allowed.
All right, we'll look into that.
Do you remember this incident
that Eric Savage mentioned?
Hard to forget.
This crazy lady blew up
at a meeting upstairs.
I had to pretty much drag her
out kicking and screaming.
Who was she? You got a name?
No idea.
I was just told by brass
to escort her out.
And when was this?
Last Tuesday, right before
my shift ended, so about 5:00.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
So according to Turner's calendar,
that meeting was regarding
Titan Helicopter Corporation.
Titan. That helicopter crash
out in Bayport last summer.
Yeah, five people died.
The pilot, a family of four,
two kids, both under ten.
That helicopter was a Titan.
The day that bird went down
was the worst day of my life.
That poor family.
And what was this meeting
about at the FAA?
Oh, standard practice.
When the FAA completes an
investigation into an accident,
they offer relevant parties
a preview of their
official determination.
Which was?
Pilot error.
Who was at this meeting?
Mark Turner and a couple others
from the FAA, a few of us from Titan,
relatives of the deceased,
and Kate Leavy,
wife of Brian Leavy, the pilot
who was flying the day of the accident.
What, she was the one
who freaked out at the meeting?
Big time.
Mark Turner headed up
that FAA investigation,
which tells you it was done right.
And Kate Leavy?
Refused to accept that
pilot error caused the crash.
It was ugly.
She called Mark Turner a liar,
said that her husband was ex-Marine,
that they don't make errors.
They had to haul her out of there,
and she was screaming
into Turner's face,
"This isn't over."
[TENSE MUSIC]
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure I buy
Kate Leavy's a cold-blooded killer.
She's got no priors.
She teaches Sunday school
at Saint Catherine's.
She posts on Instagram
about her hyacinths.
Hey, turns out Kate Leavy's
husband, the helicopter pilot,
owned a licensed Sig Sauer.
There he is, Brian Leavy.
And there's his firearm license.
And according to forensics,
the slugs removed
from Mark Turner's body had
distinctive pin markings
indicating they were
fired from a Sig Sauer.
It's not enough for an arrest.
It's enough for a chat.
Okay.
[BANGING]
Kate Leavy, police.
NYPD. Open up.
NYPD.
Oh, God.
I don't know what to do.
Yeah?
Yeah, somebody's definitely home.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[KNOCKING]
♪
Hey. [WHISTLES SOFTLY]
Gun. Go.
Kate Leavy, NYPD.
Kate Leavy.
Hey.
Drop that weapon, Kate.
Drop that weapon.
It's okay.
Kate, take your hand off that gun.
All right?
Come on.
Come on. I need you to
take your hand off the gun.
Kate, stop right there.
Okay? Hey.
It's okay.
Stay right where you are.
Slowly.
Keep your hands at your side.
Keep your hands at your side, Kate.
- Stay right there.
- It's okay.
It's all right. Look at me. Face me.
I'm gonna step to you. Okay?
Here we go.
I got it. I got it.
- [SHOUTS]
- Okay. You're okay.
Turn around.
Please, please, please.
Please, please!
Easy.
Kate?
What's happening?
Is everything okay?
Who else is in this house?
No one.
Don't lie to me.
How many people are in here?
Talk to me, Kate. Say something.
Anything.
You're really scaring me now.
Sir, I'm coming toward you.
I have a weapon.
- Are you armed?
- What? No.
Kate, what is happening? Are you okay?
Please tell me you're okay.
It's the police.
I'm okay.
The police? Oh, my God.
Please don't hurt her.
Sir, I'm stepping inside.
My weapon is drawn,
and I will shoot you.
Raise your hands and keep them
where I can see them.
Do you understand?
♪
Please be gentle with her.
Who the hell are you?
I'm Brian.
Brian Leavy, Kate's husband.
But you died in a helicopter
crash two months ago.
♪
I haven't seen you in
those earrings in a while.
Oh, yeah.
Remember when you got them for me
at that place up in Ithaca?
Oh, my God, remember that place?
[LAUGHS] Oh.
That guy who rented it to us?
Kate Leavy is not talking.
The only hard evidence we have
is the murder weapon, maybe.
And forensics won't be back
for 48 hours.
We can only hold her for 42.
What have we got?
We just got the warrant for her devices,
but it turns out
Theo didn't see a ghost there.
Say hello to the late Brian Leavy.
This place has rustic charm.
And here I was thinking
death was a fairly permanent condition.
Used to be, right?
This Brian Leavy is
known as a grief bot.
He's a hyper-realistic, AI-powered
simulation of a dead guy.
After he died, Kate Leavy got
a subscription to a thing
called Memory Branch $49.99 a month.
She talks to her husband all the time.
There's, like, 500 hours of recorded
conversations between these two.
They talk about what
they want for dinner.
They talk about movies they've seen.
That sounds terrible.
I mean, kinda, but I don't know.
Part of me also gets it, you know?
My brother's in a coma.
If I could talk to an avatar of him
about, you know,
the Yankees or something,
I don't know, maybe that would help.
How are we supposed to get through
500 hours of this in the next 42 hours?
We might not need to.
I've been working my way
backwards from the murder.
Kate, these people are trying
to destroy my reputation.
I did nothing wrong.
That helicopter was doomed.
If it weren't for them,
I'd still be alive.
I can't fight back,
but you can.
What does this thing know,
like, about the real world?
I mean, is there any truth
to any of this?
We don't know yet.
Run it down.
I mean, if dead Brian Leavy's
telling the truth,
then we're talking
about motive revenge.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
Look, I want answers here
as much as you do.
Everybody here thought
the world of Mark Turner.
That's not the question, is it?
We found those in a trove of documents
that Titan handed over
when the FAA investigated
the crash on Long Island.
It says the tail rotor
that was used on the helicopter
had been dinged
in a previous inspection.
Was that tail rotor still on
the helicopter when it crashed?
No.
Is there some kind
of cover-up going on here?
Was Mark Turner crooked?
Would somebody pay him off
to pin this all
on Brian Leavy, a dead guy?
No. For God's sake, no.
It's true.
The helicopter that crashed
once used a rotor
- that had some bearing wear.
- Uh-huh.
Basically, the rotor and drive shaft
were misaligned,
but that's not why it crashed.
♪
What is this?
Titan swapped out
that wonky rotor for a new one
a month before the crash.
We've got video of them doing
the work in their hangar.
You're welcome to see it.
It brings me no joy to tell you
this was textbook pilot error.
♪
We're testing the gun
that we seized at your home
to confirm it's the gun that
was used to kill Mark Turner.
But we already know the answer,
don't we?
A friend of mine was killed
a couple of months ago.
He was a cop.
I'm sorry.
I didn't know Walker knew that guy.
No.
No, he doesn't. He's making this up.
This is what he does.
He's a storyteller.
I'm still fighting through it.
You know the part I can't shake?
It's not being sad.
I can handle that.
I'm angry, Kate,
angry at my dead friend
and myself and God.
And I think you're angry too.
It hurts.
It's not fair.
It's not.
I read this thing the other day
that said grief is
just another form of love,
love that's got no place to go.
And there was a lot of love, right?
Your husband was a great man.
But the reality is, he made a mistake.
No.
Yes.
I know he told you there was
a bad part on the helicopter.
We've seen the recordings
of your conversation.
But your husband is only privy
to what's on the internet,
because he's a computer program, Kate.
Yes.
This is what Brian showed me, the rotor.
He found it online because it's part of
the public records connected
to the FAA investigation.
But he didn't know about this
Because the FAA's
internal work documents
are not part of the public record yet.
That rotor got changed out.
There was nothing wrong
with that helicopter.
[SOFT SOMBER MUSIC]
♪
You will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.
John 8:32.
That's right.
Pray with me?
We don't really do
that kind of thing in here.
Please.
I can see that you want to pray with me.
♪
Heavenly father,
bless this man, your servant,
who seeks the truth.
And forgive me for what I've done.
Okay.
I practiced for a few days
riding my bike with one hand
so I'd be ready to shoot
my gun with the other.
And on the day it happened,
did you follow Mark Turner
from his office?
No.
I memorized his schedule.
I knew when he left work,
how he rode home each day,
so I knew where he'd be.
I waited, and there he was.
It was so fast.
I rode up behind him
and shot him in the back.
It's textbook premeditated murder.
Sometimes they come with a bow on top.
[KNOCKING]
Sig Sauer handgun we recovered
from Kate Leavy's home
is not the murder weapon.
That's weird.
Maybe not.
About a week before the murder,
she went online
and got herself a barrel kit.
She swapped out
the barrel of the Sig Sauer
so when forensics tested the gun
The marks on the test slugs
were different
from the slugs we pulled
from Mark Turner's body.
We'd certainly be in a stronger position
if we had the murder weapon,
but this is pretty
compelling evidence that
she tried to cover her tracks.
We'll still need to get ahead of this.
The defense will make a meal of it.
But in the meantime,
Kate Leavy confessed
she shot Mark Turner with a gun.
A confession's a confession.
Your Honor, Detective Walker's decision
to join hands and pray with Kate Leavy
while she was in police custody
is clearly grounds
to quash this confession.
That is not true, Your Honor.
I mean, that prayer may
have been unusual,
but it's not illegal.
And it was Kate Leavy who asked to pray
with Detective Walker,
not the other way around.
But that doesn't matter, Your Honor.
This goes back
to Miranda case law itself.
Confessions must be voluntary.
And it was, and there was no threat,
no no promise, no inducement.
Which is immaterial as well,
because prayer all on its own
has been seen by the courts routinely
as a form of psychological
coercion by the police.
Coercion renders
a confession involuntary
and therefore inadmissible.
- Your Honor
- Save your breath, Mr. Price.
I agree with Ms. Hogan.
The confession is out.
[TENSE MUSIC]
We're still good on motive.
I've watched hours of Kate Leavy's
conversations with her "husband."
I mean, if I'm being honest,
I can't stop watching them.
It's unsettling.
It's creepy is what it is.
She was consumed by her husband's death,
craved retribution.
The more technology tries to help,
the worse things seem to get.
Everything has a shortcut these days.
Overweight? Try Ozempic.
Lonely? Swipe right.
Can't handle the death of a loved one?
Create a grief bot.
Grief is supposed to be hard.
Pretty sure that's the point.
If you can believe it,
I've got a voicemail
from my father that he left
a couple of days before he died,
which, for all I know,
he was trying to get me
to smuggle scotch
into the hospital, but
I can't even listen.
Grief is obviously
a universal experience,
which means everyone on that jury
has experienced it in some capacity.
So lean into the anger
and confusion of that journey.
That's what drove Kate Leavy to kill.
Ms. Leavy's cell phone
pinged off a tower
on West 61st Street at 6:12 p.m.,
putting her roughly within
150 yards of the murder.
Can you explain these images,
Detective Walker?
On the left is an image
from security footage,
the killer on
a 2023 Merrimac Pro bicycle.
On the right is that same
make and model bicycle
recovered from the basement
of Ms. Leavy's home.
Lastly, Detective, when
you went to Ms. Leavy's home
to question her, how would you
describe her demeanor?
Rattled.
Panicked, maybe.
When we arrived, we knocked.
We announced ourselves
as police several times,
but she refused to open up.
We went inside because we were
concerned for her safety.
We could see her pacing frantically.
She had a firearm next to her.
Nothing further, Your Honor.
Ms. Hogan.
Detective, how many other phones
pinged off of that cell phone tower
around the time of the murder?
About 3,000.
So what you're saying is
2,999 other people
could have committed this murder.
Respectfully, we're here because
we believe the defendant
committed this murder.
The gravest allegation one can face.
So, surely, you cleared
those other people
by interviewing them, obtaining alibis.
We didn't think that was necessary.
I'm sure you didn't.
Now, based on this image,
it's impossible to know
if the killer was a man or a woman.
[TENSE MUSIC]
Based on that image, maybe.
But we have more evidence.
Have police ever banged on your door?
No.
But if they did,
it would make you frantic, correct?
Especially if you were innocent.
One last thing.
There were 6,000 Merrimac Pro bicycles
sold in 2023.
Surely, you interviewed these
people who own these bikes.
That wasn't necessary.
You had your suspect, so damn the facts.
Objection, Your Honor.
Sustained.
Nothing else, Your Honor.
A gun barrel imparts marks
on the projectile that fires,
marks that we in the ballistics
field call lands and grooves.
They are specific to that firearm,
kind of like how fingerprints
are specific to each of us.
And a firearm can be taken apart
and put back together again,
including the barrel, correct?
Yes.
It's common among firearm enthusiasts.
You can buy barrel kits
to swap out that piece.
And then those markings,
those lands and grooves?
Would be new, different.
Which would explain how
a weapon could be used to kill,
but a forensics investigation
would conclude that it wasn't.
Correct.
Nothing further.
Kate Leavy was never found
in possession of the gun barrel
that was used in this murder.
So this theory that Ms. Leavy,
a literal Sunday school teacher
without so much as a jaywalking ticket,
is such a criminal mastermind
that she swapped out
these gun barrels to cover
her tracks is just that
a theory, correct?
Objection. Counsel is testifying.
Sustained.
It's impossible to determine
whether the gun found
in Ms. Leavy's apartment was the gun
used to kill Mark Turner.
- Correct?
- Correct.
But the barrel she purchased
Nothing else, Your Honor.
Grief is more than missing someone.
The loss of a parent, a spouse,
a child, it's so powerful,
it can disrupt our very sense
of meaning, identity.
Recovery means rebuilding our story,
incorporating that loss
into a new narrative.
And these grief bots?
At Memory Branch, we refer
to them as legacy avatars.
Forgive me.
These legacy avatars help
those who are mourning
do all of that?
Yes.
Articulate memories, clarify emotions,
say the stuff that was left unsaid.
It's a form of therapy.
It's not quite that simple,
though, is it, Ms. Matthews?
Kate Leavy paid your company
$49.99 a month
to speak with her deceased husband.
- Yes.
- But if she woke up one day
and decided that she was cured
of her grief,
she might discontinue
her subscription, correct?
Yes. Some people do.
Which means your
revenue stream is maximized
by keeping your clients,
people who are mourning, hooked.
I wouldn't put it that way.
Your company programs
legacy avatars like Brian Leavy
to be echo chambers, correct?
Isn't it true that
they are built specifically
to amplify whatever
sentiment is expressed
by your grieving clients?
Yes, basically, the client
So then wasn't it true
that when Kate Leavy insisted
to her husband that someone
must be to blame for his death,
he was happy to oblige?
Your legacy avatar eagerly
coughed up a cockamamie story
about a sinister cover-up.
Objection. Leading.
Sustained.
He was trying to help her.
♪
Your Honor, the people would
like to introduce the video
of the relevant conversations
between Kate Leavy
and Brian Leavy's avatar,
what has been marked as exhibit 11A.
We object to the introduction
of that video
and any other recordings
of conversations
between my client and her husband.
On what grounds?
These videos are protected
by marital privilege.
You cannot be serious.
Chambers, now.
Your Honor, this avatar
is not Brian Leavy.
It's a computer program.
Communications between
the defendant and this thing
is clearly fair game.
Your Honor, it is true
that this legacy avatar
is powered by AI, but he possesses
and has mastered the real Brian Leavy's
entire digital footprint
Brian Leavy's likeness,
voice, mannerisms,
every social media post,
his past, his life.
When Kate Leavy interacted with him,
she firmly believed she was
speaking with her husband.
Therefore, she had
a reasonable expectation
of marital privilege.
The concept of privilege
was designed to protect
relationships that society
places a special value on,
to promote candor
in those relationships.
It dates back to common law,
and we're talking about
extending it to a machine?
Where does this end?
I don't know, Mr. Price,
and I think that's the point.
The genius of the law
does not rest in a world
that's dead and gone.
But in its adaptability to
a world that is ever-changing.
State versus Hunt.
Five years ago, the prosecution
wins this debate.
But now, in 2026, I believe
the spirit of marital privilege
was alive in these conversations.
They were meant to be private.
They'll stay that way today.
The jury is not going to see
Kate Leavy's communications
with the grief bot.
- None of it?
- None of it.
Which dramatically hampers
our ability to argue motive.
Unless we can turn up
new evidence on this thing
before court resumes in the morning,
meaningful evidence,
we're gonna have to offer
Kate Leavy a deal.
A plea?
What are you talking, manslaughter here?
What? Manslaughter?
At this point,
we'd be lucky if she says yes.
But we know she did this.
She looked me straight in the eye
and confessed in detail.
And the jury will never
know that either.
You have till tomorrow morning.
You know, I was really hoping
to make the Ranger game tonight.
Would manslaughter really be that bad?
I just got off the phone
with the warden of Rikers.
Turns out, every single day
since her arrest,
Kate Leavy has signed up
to access the internet
on DOC-issued tablets.
And the only thing
she's interested in is
Talking to her dead husband.
Bingo.
But she can't, because
Memory Branch turned him off.
That's the end of that, then.
Unless we got him turned back on.
What if we brought Brian Leavy
back from the dead
one more time?
Okay, I'll talk to him.
[PHONE BEEPS]
Hey.
Just spoke with Detective Walker.
Says they're on to something.
[NOTIFICATION CHIMES]
What is it?
Apparently Kate Leavy is
pleading guilty to murder?
What?
- That doesn't make any sense.
- Yeah.
Our case is falling apart,
and her lawyer knows that.
She knows that.
What the hell happened?
Kate, I was wrong.
I'm so sorry.
There was no cover-up?
No.
No, there was nothing wrong
with that helicopter.
It was pilot error,
my error, like the FAA said.
That poor man, Mark Turner,
he was just doing his job, honey.
[TENSE MUSIC]
I did this, not you.
I love you, Brian,
and nothing can ever change that.
But the fact is,
I killed a man for nothing.
What the hell have you done?
I helped Kate Leavy see
the error of her ways.
What, am I supposed to be
apologizing right now?
You went to the CEO of Memory Branch
and persuaded her
to turn Brian Leavy back on,
and you manipulated the algorithm
by feeding it the FAA report?
Yeah, and it worked.
Not the point.
We have no choice.
We have to disclose
Detective Walker's actions
- to the defense.
- Do we?
Let's just take a look
at the fuse on this bomb
before we light it, okay?
Kate Leavy attempted to speak
with her dead husband
every day since her arrest.
Couldn't you argue that Detective Walker
just gave her what she wanted?
Or handed her the shovel
to dig her own grave.
[SIGHS]
Walker facilitated this without
her attorney's knowledge.
It's essentially ex parte communication.
Right.
And he tampered
with the machine's algorithm.
He fed the thing new information
with the express intent or hope
of soliciting a new confession.
Which you have to applaud on some level.
I'm not so sure about that.
Detective Walker had no way of knowing
that Kate Leavy was going to
initiate communication
with this grief bot.
He merely made the thing
available to her.
Nick, come on.
I don't like this
any more than you do, but
The high road is a lonely place.
Notify the defense.
This information warrants
an immediate dismissal of charges.
Dismissal is extreme,
but there is no clear
constitutional violation.
Mr. Price, give her the floor, please.
Given what's happened here,
it's clearly her serve.
Your Honor, this calls for a mistrial.
The Sixth Amendment,
not to mention Massiah,
tells us that the police
cannot deliberately prompt
a represented defendant
to incriminate herself
without her lawyer present.
- That is not what happened.
- Of course it is.
This grief bot is still a private app.
It's not like
Detective Walker controlled it
with some magical joystick.
He turned the damn thing
into an agent of the state.
The connection is too indirect
to be a Massiah violation.
Stop.
Stop, stop.
Just please stop.
My husband has shown me
the error of my ways.
I killed an innocent man.
[TENSE MUSIC]
I must take responsibility.
Kate, don't do this.
Ms. Leavy, it's not
my place to weigh in here,
but you should listen to your attorney.
Your husband is dead.
You weren't talking to him.
It doesn't matter.
I
I felt like I was.
That was enough.
I must atone.
This is the only way.
Ms. Leavy, did you kill Mark Turner?
Yes, I did.
Are you guilty of murder?
♪
Yes.
I am.
[BREATHES DEEPLY]
Remind me never to subscribe
to a grief bot.
First it convinces Kate Leavy
to commit murder.
Then it gives her the worst
legal advice in history.
[SIGHS]
Well, I'm gonna go read a book.
[CHUCKLES]
[SOFT MUSIC]
♪
Hi, Nolan.
It's Dad.
Ah, jeez.
I guess with these damn
computers in our pocket,
I don't really have to say
who it is, do I?
[CHUCKLES]
Anyway, I I just called
to hear your voice
and really to tell you
how proud I am, son.
Well, when you get a chance,
give the old man a call.
Love you, son.
Bye.
♪