John David Myers

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“	My mother was a pig. Carrie was a pig.	„
	~ Myers' opinion of his mother and the woman he killed.

John David Myers is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Shrunk". He is a brilliant, but severely mentally ill, Broadway composer who is manipulated into killing a woman by his unethical psychiatrist.

He was portrayed by John Shea, who also portrayed Lex Luthor in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Dr. Charles Hendrickson in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid.

Early life[]

Myers was born into a deeply dysfunctional family; his mother was mentally ill and treated her family with cruelty, and eventually stabbed her husband to death right in front of Myers, then 13 years old. She was institutionalized, and Myers disowned her, calling her "a pig". He was nevertheless deeply traumatized by watching his mother kill his father and grew up to have serious emotional issues with women, unable to have relationships beyond casual flings - many of which ended with Myers becoming erratic and violent with the woman he was dating. He also began having auditory hallucinations of his mother's voice and developed an irrational fear that she would kill him just like she killed his father.

As an adult, Myers wrote several Tony Award winning musicals and was celebrated throughout New York City as a musical genius, even winning two Pulitzer Prizes. Eventually, however, his psychiatric problems overwhelmed him, and he began abusing drugs and alcohol, worsening his already erratic mental state. He ultimately became a recluse, rarely leaving his house, taking a heavy dose of Thorazine, and meeting every day with his psychiatrist, Frederick Barrett, upon whom he had a childlike dependence.

"Shrunk"[]

On Barrett's advice, Myers goes out one night to see a revival of one of his plays. He meets Carrie Gunderson, an emotionally volatile wannabe actress, at the theater, and he takes her home and has sex with her. When Gunderson speaks harshly to him afterwards, however, he suffers a psychotic break in which he has a flashback to watching his mother kill his father and stabs her to death in fit of rage with one of the antique knives he collects.

NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green investigate her murder, but Myers, who is a near-catatonic state, gives them only a sketchy account of meeting her. The house appears to have been ransacked, suggesting a burglary gone wrong, but nothing of value is missing, while forensic evidence proves that the killer entered through the adjacent greenhouse, which only someone who had a key would be able to do. Briscoe and Green question Myers' housekeeper, Margot Dalton, who admits to having staged the burglary and hid the murder weapon to protect Myers, whom she had found crying and covered in blood.

Briscoe and Green arrest Myers for murder, but he refuses to say anything without Barrett in the room, and starts mindlessly singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". Eventually, however, he becomes lucid enough to confess to killing Gunderson after Briscoe and Green promise to let him see Barrett.

Myers is charged with second-degree murder, but his lawyer gets his confession excluded as evidence because he was denied counsel - meaning Barrett. Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn learn from Barrett of Myers' childhood trauma, history of violence, and fantasies of killing women. Forensic psychiatrist Emil Skoda evaluates Myers for the prosecution, during which Myers becomes violent when denied Barrett's counsel and says that he killed Gunderson "because". Skoda says that Myers killed Gunderson because she was angry and domineering, just like his mother, but that he knew what he was doing and feels remorse, which proves that he is sane enough to stand trial.

During the trial, McCoy cross-examines Barrett, who refers to Gunderson as "emotionally unstable". This makes McCoy suspicious, as there is no evidence in the case of Gunderson having emotional problems. Southerlyn questions Gunderson's roommate, who identifies Barrett as a customer at the restaurant where she works who gave her a ticket to the party, which she then gave to Gunderson. Southerlyn then finds out that Gunderson had been one of Barrett's patients, and that she had been planning to sue him for malpractice after he broke off an affair with her.

McCoy holds a meeting with Myers, with Barrett in tow, and tells him that Barrett manipulated him into killing Gunderson by creating a situation in which they would meet - a situation that would inevitably end in Myers becoming violent, thus eliminating the threat Gunderson posed to Barrett's career. McCoy offers to have Myers committed to a psychiatric hospital in lieu of prison if he testifies against Barrett, but Myers refuses to believe that Barrett used him and takes full responsibility for the murder, pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter and accepting a sentence of 15 years of prison.

External links[]

John David Myers on the Law & Order Wiki

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Exiled: A Law & Order Movie
Gianni Uzielli