In New York City's war on crime,
the worst criminal offenders are pursued
by the detectives of the Major Case Squad.
These are their stories.
Taking the photographs made me understand
how my mother helped these people.
I was always afraid of hospitals,
but now I want to be a trauma doctor.
Very good, Nichelle.
Photography can make us more sensitive to our fears.
That's how we heal the scars of the past.
Mr. Heltman, considering your photos exploit women,
do you believe you're the best role model for young people?
Nichelle, this is what you say to critics.
Art demands no explanation.
Gretta, I need you to stop feeling so much.
Somebody powder her off. Five minutes!
Martin, can I get some...
I found this on top of your bag.
Play one of the best new FPS shooters, search Steam for PROJECT WARLOCK
Please call my wife.
Tell her I can't be at Pavel's opening tonight.
Now let's get this shot before we all die of old age!
Everyone else, get out!
I'm fine!
Just give me a moment!
You look tired.
Haven't you slept?
You want some breakfast?
Hannah, I want to go home.
Home? This is our home.
You mean to Germany?
When? Now.
Today. It's finished for me here.
But I was looking... Hannah, please. Please.
Why do you put up with him?
Your father is an artist.
That's just his pretext.
He owes us an explanation.
And I'll get one.
Absolutely not! I refuse to become involved with...
Ugh! You wouldn't do that.
Okay, yes. I'll come.
Are you sure you want to give these to the museum?
It's time to let them go.
I have to pick up something from the studio. I'll be back.
Central, we got a vehicle accident with a 10-54,
southbound on the West Side Highway.
At 23rd Street. This guy flew right past me
weaving all over the place.
I saw the whole thing. He never even hit his brakes.
We estimate his rate of speed at 60 miles per hour.
No skid marks.
One of my guys said that Mr. Heltman was some kind of shutterbug?
Famous one. Fashion magazines.
Women in leather bikinis and stilettos.
He should've been able to steer, even in handcuffs,
if he wasn't drunk or stoned.
I don't smell alcohol.
He didn't get that from hitting the door.
There's blood on the headrest.
He might have been injured before the accident.
There's some kind of foam residue on this.
Piece of wood was wedged against the accelerator.
His engine was racing.
Popped the emergency brake and off he went.
With that head wound, he might have been barely conscious.
As murders go, it's pretty flashy.
Could be the point.
Did your husband do that often, go out at night to his studio?
Yes, he went out maybe two or three times
a week to work in the darkroom.
What difference does it make? He had a car accident.
We think that there was another party involved.
He was handcuffed.
And someone had tampered with the car.
Handcuffed?
Who would do that? Who would hurt Gerhardt?
We're sorry to ask, but could he have been involved with someone?
My father lived like he had no family.
Daniel, that's not true.
I understood my husband's needs,
but his work was his only mistress.
His photography celebrates strong women.
He wasn't tolerant of weakness,
of people who let themselves be victimized.
You're moving?
My father was taking my mother back to Germany.
This decision was recent?
Two nights ago.
He came home late and said he was finished here.
With what, his work?
He didn't explain.
Maybe it was the city. He was never comfortable.
These uniforms...
They're from concentration camps?
Gerhardt's parents were survivors.
When he talked about people who let themselves be victimized,
he didn't include his parents, did he?
He was very angry that people would let such a thing happen to them.
This box, it's marked "Holocaust Museum. "
He was giving these away?
I'm keeping them now.
I want to hold onto as much of him as I can.
I'm pretty sure he wasn't here that night. He usually leaves a mess.
What about this cot?
It was like that when I came in.
Did it get much use?
Gerhardt had his flings, but he was not a romantic.
That's my desk. When can I get my stuff out of here?
We'll be done by tomorrow.
He told his wife he wanted to move back to Germany.
Did he talk to you about that?
Briefly.
You expected it. Your résumé?
Gerhardt was losing his edge.
His work had become mechanical.
Sounds like he got bored, maybe needed a little jolt.
Two nights ago, when he decided to move, do you know where he was?
They were supposed to go to an opening, but he got a note and bailed.
We were doing a shoot in Cooper Square.
Somebody left a note on his shooting bag.
What was in the note?
I don't know. He never let me see them.
Them? It happened before?
Three times over the last five months.
I've never seen who leaves them.
No note.
Looks like ash from a fire.
Any chance you picked this up on the shoot?
No. The bag was on his chair. It never touched the ground.
There's drive-in access to his studio
all the way up to the 11th floor.
Heltman always drove his car up,
but there's no record he used his keycard that night.
There's a lot of leather in Mr. Heltman's photos.
He into anything rough? Not according to his wife.
And there were no marks on his body,
just the wounds from the accident.
And this, on the left side of his head.
This cross-hatching, he got whacked
by somebody swinging a piece of rebar.
You check any other angles? Money problems?
Maybe somebody got offended by his photos?
His finances are spotless.
And the last angry letter he got was five years ago.
That was the problem. He stopped being provocative.
He came to a creative dead end, started making life-changing decisions.
The foam on the two-by-four is fire-suppression foam
used by the fire department.
The two-by-four came from the scene of a fire,
same as the ash on the bag he had the night before.
He might've been at the same place both nights.
The ash was found to contain cobalt.
Now, cobalt is used as a drying catalyst in printing.
Printing company?
Check with the fire department.
Start with fires this year in all five boroughs.
Detective, we've got tire prints.
Same make and model as on Mr. Heltman's SUV over here.
We got some blood mixed with ash here.
Someone made an effort to cover it up. And there's this.
There's blood and hair on this end.
All right, good work.
We're going to need a work-up in here.
Somebody got sick in the bathroom.
They found a piece of rebar with blood and hair on it.
He was attacked
and put back in his car.
And they drove him to the city for the big finale.
Whatever the attraction was here,
I hope he thought it was worth it.
Makeup.
Putrane.
Decomp. We need a cadaver dog.
There was definitely a body on this couch.
Homer gave a strong alert, so I'd say the decomp was well underway.
Twelve hours, at least.
How recently was the body here?
The fact that you picked up the smell off the scarf,
I'd say pretty recent.
Thank you. You, too, Homer.
A body. No wonder Gerhardt wanted to get out of Dodge.
The scarf was worn by the victim, probably a woman.
Maybe she died partying with Gerhardt and one of his buddies.
He came back the next night to get rid of the body,
they got into an argument...
The note that Gerhardt received, it was the fourth one.
Other parties?
Let's hope with happier endings. Somebody bake a potato?
It's residue, I don't know what it is.
A smell you can't identify.
Flash powder? No, no, no, Gerhardt used electronic flash, strobe lights.
He was a technophile.
We found this tinfoil with residue of magnesium and potassium chlorate.
Maybe he was experimenting with it to get a special lighting effect.
It was found in an abandoned building in Brooklyn,
along with evidence that your husband was there before he was killed.
We also found a woman's scarf, photographic makeup.
There might've been a model, you know, a photo shoot.
No, no, no, Gerhardt would have told me if he was working on something new.
Well, there might have been other sessions.
We'll need to look at his negatives and prints.
What about the refrigerator?
I mean, don't photographers keep film in the refrigerator?
Unexposed film, not negatives.
Well, your father was using unusual lighting techniques,
maybe he used unusual film.
Does this look unusual to you?
Um... Made in Germany. You recognize these?
I never saw them. It's not even a format Gerhardt used.
Well, I don't know the manufacturer.
Have you ever seen them before?
They went out of business.
They made photographic supplies for the Nazis.
They used Jewish slaves in their factories.
To make this film.
Well, sometimes artists use materials with symbolic value, isn't that true?
Yeah, it's true.
Well, your father, he shot in a burned-out building,
he used old lighting techniques, maybe this film.
You can't think of what he photographed?
I have no idea.
Could it have something to do with his parents in the concentration camps?
No! I never heard of such a project.
I don't want to think about this. You talk to them.
We don't know what my father was doing. He kept so many secrets.
Excuse me, I'm going to make sure she's all right.
And whatever he shot, he'd keep it in a safe place.
This is old film, it's probably very unstable.
The negative would be kept in a climate-controlled environment.
Mmm. An archival storage vault.
Got to be at least one in the city that meets Gerhardt's exacting standards.
It's the wrong size film.
Whose photos are these?
That's Kissel. Andreas Kissel.
I think I found them.
The couch from the printing company and the scarf.
Gerhardt hid them under another name for a reason.
We're just not seeing why.
The assignment is to find an exhibit of an artist
whose work you think will be important 100 years from now.
Go. Have a nice weekend.
Excuse me? You're Gerhardt Heltman's son, aren't you?
I just want to tell you how sorry I am.
Thank you.
I was wondering,
do you know when we can expect
his latest work to be exhibited?
I hear it's controversial.
I don't know anything about it. Excuse me.
But you would be involved in any exhibition.
I mean, you would have an obligation
as an art historian, as his son...
I told you, I don't know what you're talking about.
The girl on the couch is Marla Kelly.
Her parents reported her missing the same day Gerhardt died.
It's a close match.
She's a pretty girl.
None of these girls look like professional models,
but Gerhardt knew how to photograph them.
Unlike the women in his other work,
here we have a sense of vulnerability.
What's the matter? You okay?
The eyes.
At first I thought it was a lighting trick.
Discoloration.
Tache noire.
That's the whites of their eyes turning brown from exposure to the air.
And they all have it.
They're all dead.
He killed them and then took photos of them.
Can hold a pose for hours and not complain.
The perfect models.
No. I don't know any of these girls.
Gerhardt had nothing to do with these photos.
The photos were stored under the name Andreas Kissel.
Wasn't that his grandfather?
But these poor women are all wrong.
They're insubstantial. This is not Gerhardt's work.
Maybe they're different because the person who killed him
helped him take these pictures.
They might have left a mark. It might help us find him.
These marbles in each photo.
The ones on the tile floor here and in her hand,
you ever seen anything like this in his work before?
Keep looking at the photos.
You're remembering something?
People were always sending Gerhardt samples of their work for his comments,
and there was a letter he received last fall
with some sketches and a proposal for a photo essay.
Uh... Just set them down on the desk, please.
I don't see a letter.
It should be with the sketches.
I don't understand.
Do you remember a name or where the letter came from?
No. I would just show Gerhardt the letters
and then he'd tell me if he wanted to make contact.
That's how it was with us.
You find them inspiring?
No, no, not inspiring.
Familiar.
Detective magazines.
I remember my old man having these when I was a kid.
Damsels in distress. Popular theme.
And most men want to rescue the damsel.
And then there are those who don't want her rescued at all.
Sexual sadists who enjoy depictions of captive women.
Somewhere in there,
Heltman and this other guy had a meeting of the minds.
Except there's nothing to suggest Heltman was a sexual sadist.
And in his photos,
he portrays women sympathetically.
You feel for them.
In this guy's sketches,
the victims are objects of pleasure.
And judging by his style, he's young.
He's still forging his identity.
Any idea of where his victims might have intersected with him?
Bars? Clubs?
All we know is all four women were new in town, lived alone,
and all were reported missing by a parent.
She was a shy girl.
But she didn't mind doing things on her own.
Like going to the opera?
She went to Lincoln Center two days before she disappeared.
A Sunday matinee.
She loved it.
She was always telling me about the different museums she'd been to,
the plays...
She was happy here.
She loved the arts.
Did she know any artists or photographers?
No.
Excuse me.
One of the other victims went to dance classes
two blocks from Lincoln Center.
Here. Ellen Welpton, she took a class Saturday afternoon,
three days before she disappeared.
Well, Melissa Wiley, the weekend before she disappeared,
she bought CDs from a store on Columbus.
And Janet McBride.
She bought a movie ticket at Lincoln Plaza on a Sunday afternoon.
So four victims were in the same area of Columbus Avenue
on a weekend afternoon before they disappeared.
No restaurant or bar charges.
They might have met him on the street.
Well, he would have needed time to talk to them,
to gain their trust.
Columbus Avenue, there are street vendors.
Mrs. Kelly.
Um...
What's in that tube?
A sketch of Marla.
I found it on her desk.
Two of the victims sent similar sketches to their parents.
Another one had hers out to be framed.
These portraits, they take up to an half hour.
That's plenty of time to chat up the victims,
find out if they're single, live alone.
And once he had one on the hook, he what?
Got in touch with Heltman, set up a play date?
Two days later, the women disappeared.
Latent and Forensics have a look at these yet?
Still looking, but they're all done by the same guy.
You can tell by the eyes, the pie-shaped slices of light,
same size and placement in all the sketches.
Well, then I know where to find the two of you this weekend.
Tomorrow night? I might be able to fit you in.
A photo exhibit? Sure.
You're pulling my leg, all the way to the roof?
No. No, it sounds like fun. I'll dress up.
Bye.
Guess what? You're eating alone tomorrow night.
Hi. Are you busy?
No. Hey, have a seat.
Hi, I'm Jerry.
And because you're my first customer after lunch, you get a discount.
Really? That's the first nice thing
that's happened since I've been in the city.
So you're visiting?
I just moved here two weeks ago.
Is this for a husband or a boyfriend?
No, no. No husband, no boyfriend.
It's for my mom back in Boston.
So we make it nice for Mom, then.
Hey, I hope your friends don't mind waiting.
No one's waiting.
I just went to the movies by myself.
So hard to meet people, everybody's rushing around.
What?
Do I remind you of somebody or something?
Somebody nice.
This portrait's off to a great start.
Hey, do you mind if I hang on to this
and take a photo of it for my portfolio?
I could, you know, send it to you later or just drop it by, or...
Hi. I really like what you're doing.
It's very nice. It's your eyes.
You know, it's like he has these,
you know, like, slices of light.
Hey... Um...
It's almost as pretty as the real thing.
I like that work over there.
It's like those detective magazines, you know?
The hand-drawn covers.
There's an illustrator, Rudolph Belarski.
Yeah, I wouldn't know.
He wouldn't know, but he's actually having an exhibit
at the museum in Brooklyn.
That sounds interesting.
It's worth seeing.
You know, actually, your stuff reminds me of another artist.
Margaret Brundage.
I always found it strange, because
this woman would depict other women as being
weak and defenseless.
That wasn't her style at all. Her women were all vicious man-haters.
She never captured them with the delicacy of a Belarski or a de Soto.
They portrayed the female as she should be.
You mean dead?
Is that how you wanted to portray me, Jerry?
So what is this? My license expire or something?
We hope so.
We're going to need to see some ID.
The license is issued to a Jerry Summers.
I've got a Spencer Farnell.
And guess what? You're both under arrest.
Jerry Summers is a street artist I knew from art school.
He moved to Santa Fe last year.
He already paid for his license, so he gave it to me.
So now can he just get arraigned and pay his fine?
You know how slowly things move on the weekend.
We found these in your wallet.
The McNab Institute of Mortuary Science.
Sorry.
Phipps College of Criminal Studies,
and a New York Art Students Guild.
I had such an array of interests, I had a hard time finding myself.
Have you found yourself now?
I suppose not.
But, you know, I don't plan on doing this work forever.
You're going to play to your other strength,
picking up lonely women?
A man has to nourish his soul.
What are these? Food?
Your fellow artists on Columbus Avenue said you were there
the weekends before these four girls disappeared.
Well, that means they were there, too.
Any of them could have drawn these sketches.
How do you feel about photography, Spencer?
It's not my medium.
Because we thought that these showed promise.
But to be fair, I mean, you did have help from Gerhardt Heltman.
Find them exciting?
Or maybe Gerhardt never let you see them.
This is the first time.
What?
Of course it's the first time.
I had nothing to do with these photos.
I never met Gerhardt Heltman.
Spencer did his homework.
He highlighted where Gerhardt wrote about his parents
in the concentration camps being the ultimate victims.
That and a murder confession might get us an indictment.
Here's his inspiration.
They're well-thumbed, and he might have gotten them from the original owner.
I hope this isn't his wish list for future victims.
He's got them arranged in groups.
Three blondes with long hair,
two with short hair, four brunettes
and three gray-haired ladies.
He picked specific types,
maybe corresponding to people that he knows.
Spencer and his father?
He might be the magazines' original owner.
Broken marbles.
Spencer told his artist buddies that he worked part-time for a mortician.
Maybe he told Heltman he could supply him
with bodies from a mortuary to photograph.
Even if Heltman didn't know the girls were being murdered,
why would he want to take pictures of bodies in the first place?
You know, his wife said that
he was intolerant of people who let themselves be victimized.
This project might have been a way of,
you know, re-sensitizing himself.
Reconnecting to his parents.
I need the lab to reprint these negatives.
I got Spencer's file from Family Services.
He and his three sisters were in and out of foster homes.
Parents were alcoholics, left the kids on their own.
Three sisters, older than Spencer?
One of them, present whereabouts are unknown,
one's got multiple drug beefs, currently living in Seattle,
and the third one's in Bedford Hills, 6- to-18 for manslaughter.
What happened to his father?
Mother died four years ago, liver disease.
Father was in a drunk-driving accident almost 20 years ago.
We need to see the rest of his family.
Spence was a good kid. Girls used to give him a hard time.
We'd dog-pile on top of him. His face would turn red.
It was funny.
Ma said he was a boy, he could take it.
You like your brother, we can tell.
Yeah, he wasn't like us. He could hold a straight job,
talk to strangers without getting in a fight.
You think that's your dad's influence?
They were close, right?
Spence was like him. You know, sensitive.
He was good to Spence.
Bought him toys, like marbles...
Yeah, like marbles.
You're smiling. Did you do something to his marbles?
When Dad died, Spence wouldn't stop crying like a baby,
so we got a hammer and we smashed his marbles.
Shut him up.
We noticed some medical records in his file.
When he was nine, he went to the emergency room.
Somebody set his hair on fire.
Oh, yeah, that was Sandy. She threw matches at him.
And then he spent a week in the hospital with food poisoning?
Oh, yeah, Patty.
Fried up bad meat and made him eat it.
Another time he was brought in with burns all over his body.
Grandma. She threw him in the shower and turned on the hot water.
Oh, yeah? Doris, what did you do to Spencer?
I used to play Bad Nurse.
Tie him down on Grandma's smelly bed, put on my ma's nurse hat,
and then I'd beat the crap out of him.
But, you know, like Ma said, he could take it.
Hey, look, I got to get back to work.
You see him, you tell him hi for me, okay?
We will. Thanks, Doris.
Four photos. Five women.
Fire.
Poison.
Scalding hot water.
And Mom.
The only one missing is Doris.
The sketches in his apartment, one of them looked like her.
His next victim?
If he has her sketch,
then he has a way to get in touch with her to return it.
He did this last weekend.
Is he all right? We were supposed to go out last night,
but he never showed up.
He got very busy.
Where was he taking you, Maisie?
An art gallery, to see some photos.
He say anything about this art gallery?
Where it was...
Somewhere in the city, this big building.
He said you could drive all the way up to the roof.
All right. Thank you, Maisie. The officer will show you back downstairs.
I thought it'd be fun to know somebody with a car.
Lab sent these back. Anything from the girl?
She had no idea she missed becoming
number five in Spencer's revenge fantasy.
He was taking her to Gerhardt's studio.
Stepping into his master's shoes.
If he was planning on taking her photo,
where's his equipment, his camera?
It wasn't in his car or his apartment.
Maybe he's already stashed it at the studio.
Now you see it, now you don't.
No wonder why he was disappointed.
What is it you want my client to do again?
We need to verify if he's tall enough
to access one of the storage spaces in the studio.
Sure. And then he'll do a couple of jumping jacks,
and then we're going to arraignment court.
Well, let's...
Let's start by taking these off, huh?
What difference does it make how tall I am?
I've never been here.
Really?
Didn't you tell Maisie Renfrew you were going to take her
to an art show here last night?
You were going to drive her right up to the roof.
There's not a lot of buildings in the city that you can do that.
Maisie misunderstood.
Oh! I see.
"Drive her up to the roof," that's a euphemism for something.
Mr. Carver, let's get on with this.
All right, Spencer. Come on.
Up.
Let's see you touch the vent.
Why don't you take it off? Just hand it to me.
Thank you. Why don't you just reach around and feel inside there?
You got something? Take it out.
You can climb down.
This doesn't prove anything.
We're quite aware of that. We just wanted to make sure he could reach it.
This is not mine. I didn't put it there.
Speed Graphic cameras.
See that?
Sorry.
They're like classic cars.
This one has a manufacturer's code.
It's a good chance you could trace it back to the old owner.
Could take a while, but it can be done.
Our experts say that this is the camera that took those pictures
that we showed you.
You know, the ones inspired by the detective magazines?
You know, I've got to hand it to you, Spence.
You chose the right equipment.
It really brings out the gore of a crime scene.
I told you I had nothing to do with any of this.
I'm noticing a resemblance,
a family resemblance.
Your sister Sandy.
You know, with the flying matches?
Patty, the fry pan and the meat surprise.
Oh! This must be Grandma.
How dirty could little Spence have been to need scalding hot water?
Mom, who, in her drunken stupor,
thought it was all so funny to torment Daddy's little boy.
You know, you can repress the memory of abuse all you want,
but it always finds a way to express itself.
All right, my client did his song and dance.
There's one missing. Bad Nurse.
One more dance. Come on, Spence.
Up.
No? Okay.
See, we found something else in here this morning.
Bad Nurse,
that was the game your sister Doris liked to play with you.
You know, when she tied you up on Grandma's bed?
You know, just like this cot here? Tortured you.
Your family, Spencer.
Real collection of malevolent freaks.
I am not like them. I became something.
I'm an artist.
Your art. Let's take a look at your art.
Size 14.
Maisie Renfrew was a size 14.
Is this what you had planned for your big date?
You were going to kill her like these other women?
Dress her up? Pose her on the bed?
No.
Toss these into the picture in remembrance of your father?
Your only ally against these monsters.
Your ally who killed himself.
No, they drove him to it.
You could have had the whole set.
The complete chronicles of Spencer Farnell's suffering
at the hand of his family.
That's the proposal you sent to Gerhardt.
And, obviously, he stole all my ideas.
Stole them? You offered him the full package.
Told him that you were a mortuary worker
and that you could supply him with bodies to photograph.
You're wrong.
And then, when he had enough,
with one sister left, you lured him
to the printing house to force him to go on.
When he refused, you attacked him with a metal bar.
You put him in a car half-dead, right?
That's enough, Spencer. We're going to get you arraigned now.
By making Gerhardt's death public and controversial,
his last works, the posthumous collection, would be exhibited.
And everyone would bear witness to the vengeance that you took
on the women that abused you.
And, in time, everyone would know that you conceived the collection.
You'll be famous. I mean, that was the idea, right?
Whatever you say.
It's too bad Gerhardt had other plans.
People will see what he wanted them to see.
When you first saw the photo, you knew that something was wrong,
because the women didn't look the way you remembered them.
You want to see why?
This is the print of Marla, Gerhardt made from the negative.
This is the print that our lab made from the same negative, untouched.
You see the difference?
You see Marla's blemishes,
and you see the two bruises just under the shoulder from your knees
when you sat on her and suffocated her.
But Gerhardt's photo, none of those marks.
The skin is pure, it's glowing,
and around her is this, a halo effect.
And that's why you knew that something was wrong.
You're missing the point.
You're a cop. What do you know about art?
Nothing. I know nothing.
I just know about Gerhardt.
He used his skills in the darkroom
to reconnect with humanity.
Showed us that Marla was beautiful and special.
Turned her into an angel. You know, it makes us mourn her loss.
You know, I guess Gerhardt just loved women.
And that's what we see when we look at these photos,
his love.
He obliterated your artistic intent.
He obliterated you.
That bastard!
That wasn't the deal we made! It was my concept!
That's right, you worked so hard. You had to find the girls...
Yes, and then preparing them!
Spencer!
All he had to do was push the damn button!
Anything else you want to add to that admission?
I need to talk to my client now.
You can talk to him in the car.
He's going to have a hard time stepping back from that.
I'll offer him a plea in return for telling us where the bodies are.
He should jump at it.
Gerhardt's most humane work.
And no one will ever see it.
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