108 Identity Crisis

 It’s not math, it’s logic …

Summary: The murder of a stock fraud suspect has Don questioning a previous arrest.

Original air date
: April 1, 2005 (US)

Written by: Wendy West

Directed by
:  Martha Mitchell

Opening numbers:
23,360,309: Accused
1,541,809: Convictions
10,160: Exonerated
2: Same M.O.

Family Concepts: (character development)
  • Don went to college on a baseball scholarship
  • Don played minor league (Class A) baseball for the Stockton Rangers;* he played second base and bats right handed
  • While playing baseball, Don decided he would never be more than mediocre and signed up for the FBI entrance exam
  • Don couldn’t lay off of low, outside pitches
  • Charlie has only played poker once before, with his father, for bottle caps (and the pink slip to the car)
  • Charlie is working in classroom 17
*There really is a Class A baseball team called the Stockton Ports based out of Stockton, CA. They are a farm team for the American League Oakland A’s


Episode Synopsis:

An investment advisor is murdered in a similar fashion as a woman 18 months previous.  In the first murder Don was the lead investigator and he jailed a man based on an eye-witness, a fingerprint found on the woman’s body and a confession.  With this new case, Don is wondering if he put the wrong man in jail a year and a half ago.

While clearing out the dead man’s apartment, the FBI runs across a stash of bills,  As they investigate further, more and more money turns up to the tune of more than $500,000.  It looks like the man was involved in some sort of fraud.  Charlie looks over the man’s records and finds he was running a pyramid scheme with an investment firms client base, and was also blackmailing people. 

An interview with one of the dead man’s neighbors, Mark Andric, leads David to an electrician the neighbor says was in the man’s apartment the morning he died, and they had a serious argument, the voices could be heard over the his music.  David interviews the electrician, Jose Salazar who says he had done some work for the dead man, but that was over; and even a dispute over what was owed had been resolved.  As for the morning of the murder, Jose was at an area batting cage.  When the eye witness in the Lisa Bale case also points out Salazar, he is arrested.

Don wants to know if the two murders are related and he goes back to Lisa Bale’s widower to ask more questions. He also interviews the man he put in jail, Cliff Howard, who again states he killed Bale.  Charlie has been looking into the old case and points out several flaws in the methodology used in the witness identification.  He also shows how the finger print could be incorrectly identified as well.

Don and David interview the manager of the batting cage Salazar sad he frequented and they find out he was at the batting cage the morning of the murder,  With that in mind, Don and David go looking for Mark Anric only to find he’s disappeared.  However, he teaches at the same school Lisa Bale’s daughter attends.  A check of his apartment shows he’s gone, but his fingerprints also match the one found on Bales’ body. An interview with Bale’s widower reveals Bale and Andric probably had an affair and the baby Bale was going to have was probably Andric’s.

Knowing Andric enjoys the opera, the FBI stakes out the opera house and arrest him there.  Don goes back to Cliff Howard to explain how the error occurred, and Howard is released from jail.