JAG TV - 115

Ensign Kingsly killed Misty James, her husband Andy's lover, with a pipe wile she was forcing Andy to break up with Misty in her presence. Harm (H) and Mac (M) investigated and found that Kingsley and her husband had different stories but James had no defensive marks on her body and the fingerprints on the pipe, which were hers, were placed over spinal fluid meaning that she was attacked by surprised and the pipe placed in her hand after she had been hit. When Kinsley was arrested she hired Juanita Ressler, Ms old law school professor, to defend her. Ressler had her appear in the press where she claimed that she used self defense and had screamed out "they are trying to kill me." The press went into a feeding frenzy. M refused interviews but Ressler played to them and personally attacked M. Craig Kilborn showed a photo of M in a bikini with lude jokes and Ressler told them that she thought M would make a "better lap dancer than a lawyer." M couldn't obtain a "gag order" because the SECNAV allowed the court martial to be televised. Ressler played to the cameras. Bud was flummoxed by the. When Ressler was able to pressure security chief Dandridge into claiming he heard someone say "they are trying to kill me" that he had only ever heard on television, C counseled M to open up to the press. When M was unable to find direct evidence for several "rumored" prior incidents of Kingsley's violence, she finally gave a television interview. She said she was "disappointed in the many rumors" about Kingsley and "only dealt in facts." Several people came forth and M was able to get Kinsley to claim she wasn't emotion and "wouldn't do that" opening the door for using the new evidence. M also began playing Ressler's game with the cameras and quickly gained national TV notoriety. Kingsly was convicted and, when asked, M said that she was disappointed Ressler had obscured the truth and that she (M) had used trickery to bring it forward. The reporter asked "wasn't that what lawyers did?" and M replied "unfortunately it is."

Harm investigated the apparent suicide of PO Matteo Palermo at the impassioned request of Palermo's grandmother who was being prevented from burying him next to his mother by religious rules. Palermo had run out on the carrier deck in front of a landing F14 yelling "lets rumble"- the battle cry of comic book character Captain Atomic. H realized that Palermo had not been despondent because he had just finished writing a letter to his grandmother that he had been accepted into the SEAL program and was getting leave to ask his girlfriend to marry him. H had blood work done and found LSD in Palermo's blood. After seeing the comic book in Palermo's quarters and speaking with his roommate, H noticed the stamp on the grandmothers letters was different than all the other letters he had sent. H had the stamp tested and found LSD then talked with the roommate and found that it was his stash of stamps which had been accidentally borrowed for Palermo's letter. Palermo was buried with military honors by his mother.

The press claimed that M was engaged to Brumby (Brum) after he had told them he wouldn't "abuse his fiancé's privacy." M called Brumby and left a phone message that he had no right telling the press that they "were engaged when they weren't and weren't likely to be if he kept it up." Danny Walden was caught by Chegwidden (C) coming home at 5:30 am just as C was up jogging after staying with Danny's mother. Danny claimed that he had "fallen asleep on a friends couch." He then manipulated Chegwidden into loaning him his SUV, ostensibly to pick up a tree for his mothers birthday present. The SUV was found, by Detective Grady, locked and abandoned in a ditch with 8oz of marijuana in it. Danny had neither filed a police report nor told C but claimed that it had been stolen from the nursery parking lot but he just didn't have the courage to tell C. Then he denied being stoned or knowing about the drugs in Cs personal questioning.