Poison (Law & Order: Criminal Intent)

"Poison" is a first season episode of the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Plot summary

A woman named Trudy Pomeranski (J. Smith-Cameron) kills her husband Lenny by putting cyanide in his painkillers. However, to hide the murder, she tampers with several boxes of the same medication. She plans to use the settlement from a wrongful death lawsuit she initiates against the pharmaceutical manufacturer to purchase a franchise from a trendy baby clothes company.

Detectives Goren and Eames suspect another person, a nurse who happens to be taking care of Trudy's mother Loretta Marlon, (Anita Gillette), the widow of a former photographer shop owner. The scared nurse admits she caused their crises — and 31 others — in order to be a hero for saving them.

Goren realizes the nurse does not fit the profile of the killer. As the investigators widen their investigation, they trace the source to a tainted, over-the-counter painkiller. As the victims continue to pile up, the product-tampering goes public and threatens a panic. They need a motive to find the source of the tampered medication.

When the pharmaceutical company reports one more victim than the cases involved — with a lawsuit involving a large settlement — and the death predated all the others, the detectives begin to zero in. Loretta admitted to tampering, and she was arrested. Eventually, it was discovered that Trudy had tampered with the painkillers, but was having her mother take the fall for it.

It was also revealed, that since her mother had been arrested, the morals clause of her franchise agreement with the baby clothes company kicked in and nullified the agreement. After being caught mailing a cyanide laced letter to the editor of The Ledger, Goren and Eames go into the store and have Trudy arrested for the murder of her husband, and also for tampering with the painkillers.

Cast

Notes

• Guest appearances by Jerry Orbach and Jesse L. Martin, in their roles as detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green from the original Law & Order series.
• The fictional product in this episode is called "Necedrol", a brand suggesting both the Excedrin tampering murders of 1986, carried out by Stella Nickell, and the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders, for which the perpretrator was never caught. Eames cynically jokes about "Necedrol Headache #14," a direct reference to Excedrin commercials.

External links

• IMDb entry
• Official Website