| “ | Ken Blanchard was my friend for 35 years. I was the only one he would entrust with his children. That family can't survive without me. I pay their bills, I invest their money, I clean up the messes they make, I damn well run their lives! And Meryl dares accuse me of stealing from them? No sir, I was entitled! I'm not going to waste a minute regretting anything I've done! | „ |
| ~ Kamen excusing his actions. |
Jerome Kamen is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Guardian". He is a financial adviser who embezzles from the wealthy Blanchard family and allows their daughter to die of a drug overdose to cover up his crimes.
He was portrayed by Jon Cypher.
Early life[]
Kamen was a high-priced financial adviser whose main clients were the wealthy Blanchard family, having been patriarch Ken Blanchard's oldest friend. After Ken died, Kamen became a father figure to his children, Katey and Matthew, managing their trust funds to pay for their education and filling the parent role that their mother Meryl, a cold, self-centered alcoholic, failed to provide them.
He also helped them when they got into trouble, such as pulling strings to get Matthew into medical school after he was expelled from his prep school for smoking marijuana. When Katey became addicted to heroin, Kamen repeatedly bailed her out of jail and paid for her stays in rehab clinics, only for her go right back to using again.
When Kamen's wife left him, she took a great deal of his assets in the divorce settlement. Desperate for money, he started embezzling from Katie's trust fund, ultimately stealing $375,000. Katie found out about his embezzlement, and threatened to go to the police unless he gave her money for drugs. He quietly paid for her drug habit for a year, recording the withdrawals as money for food and rent.
One day, Matthew called Kamen in a panic and said that Katey had overdosed after shooting up with him. Kamen picked her up in a shooting gallery and put the unconscious girl in his car, and told Matthew to go home and pretend nothing had happened. When Katey began choking on her own vomit, Kamen did nothing to help her, letting her die to get rid of the one person who could expose his crimes. He then placed her dead body behind a dumpster near a daycare facility.
"Guardian"[]
When Katey's body is found, NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan investigate her death as a murder after deducing from her expensive clothes and dental work that she was not a run of the mill street junkie. They speak to Meryl, who tells them that she had cut her daughter off financially in an attempt to force her to get clean, but directs them to Kamen, who was still helping her.
Kamen tells them that he had been letting her stay in another client's empty apartment and had paid for her to have an abortion, but denies having been present when she died. Crime scene technicians eventually discover Katey's vomit in Kamen's car, however, which proves that she was in his car while overdosing. Because he did not take her to a hospital while she was dying, Briscoe and Logan arrest him for manslaughter.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid's case against Kamen is endangered when the trial judge rules that the contents of his car are inadmissible as evidence. After examining Kamen's financial dealings, however, they discover that he had been stealing from Katey's trust fund, and charge him with larceny to give themselves more time to find evidence proving his culpability in Katey's death. They question Matthew, who tells them that Kamen drove away with Katey after her overdose, promising to "take care of her". McCoy and Kincaid then raise the charges against Kamen to murder in the second degree.
During Kamen's trial, he denies stealing from Katey, and claims that Meryl is only accusing him of that crime to escape her own guilt for disowning her daughter. His lawyer, meanwhile, accuses Matthew of being responsible for his sister's death because he injected the heroin that killed her into her veins. McCoy brings up the forensic evidence from Kamen's car, which the judge rules can be mentioned, but not shown to the jury, as evidence of his culpability in Katey's death.
Fearing defeat, Kamen's lawyer tries to strike a plea bargain with McCoy, who refuses to go lower than manslaughter in the first degree, which carries a sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison. Kamen first tries to excuse his actions by saying that Katey was going to die eventually; when that doesn't work, he indignantly insists that he is entitled to take as much money from the Blanchards as he pleases after everything he has done for them. When McCoy threatens him with life in prison, however, a defeated Kamen accepts the deal. He is then imprisoned for manslaughter.
External links[]
- Jerome Kamen on the Law & Order Wiki
