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| “ | I never meant kill her. I needed the money. I only meant to scare her. | „ |
| ~ Weiss expressing remorse for killing Florence Manning |
Max Weiss is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Big Bang". He is a nuclear physicist who mails a bomb to another physicist's house to get even with him for plagiarizing his work, only to accidentally kill the man's wife.
He was portrayed by Randle Mell.
Early life[]
A brilliant physicist, Weiss paid his way through Wisconsin University's doctoral program by serving in the National Guard. During his studies, he married a woman named Alice, with whom he had three children, and became acquainted with Edward Manning, a renowned physicist who served as his thesis advisor. Manning offered him a job as a research assistant for an experiment he was conducting regarding proton decay, but Weiss turned him down in order to pursue a teaching job at Oberlin College. In retaliation, Manning pulled strings to make sure Weiss did not get the job.
After graduating, Weiss moved to New York City and was accepted to a post-doctoral program at Hudson Polytech, where Manning was now teaching. He eventually formed a theory regarding proton decay that had the potential to revolutionize the field of physics - and that directly contradicted Manning's work. He submitted a proposal for a research grant to the American Science Foundation, unaware that Manning chaired its review board. Manning rejected Weiss' proposal, took credit for it, and blackballed him with New York's insular scientific community, robbing Weiss of the chance to prove himself as a scientist and forcing him to support his family with a low-paying job as a doorman.
Enraged, Weiss threatened to expose Manning's plagiarism, but Manning kept him quiet by giving him $3,500 and promising to share credit with him on a research paper he was writing. Ultimately, however, Manning went back on his word, refusing to credit Weiss and yet again pulling strings to make him unhireable, and thus take away any credibility his accusations of plagiarism would have. Weiss confronted him outside of his house, accusing him of taking food from his children's mouths.
"Big Bang"[]
Weiss becomes obsessed with getting back at Manning, so he mails a homemade bomb to his house. Unbeknownst to him, however, Manning is in the midst of a divorce and has moved out of the house he shared with his ex-wife, Florence; when she opens the package with a letter opener, the force of the explosion hurls the blade into her neck, killing her.
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan investigate Florence's murder and talk to Manning's girlfriend, Cynthia Thomas, who tells them about seeing Weiss argue with Manning shortly before Florence's murder. After she identifies Weiss, Briscoe and Logan ask him to stand in a lineup, but he refuses. They talk with another scientist at Hudson Polytech, who says that Weiss has access to the kind of tools one would need to build the kind of bomb that killed Florence, so they search his work desk and find those very tools, giving them enough evidence to arrest him.
Still obsessed with getting revenge against Manning, Weiss claims that he hired him to kill Florence, for which Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid offer to let him plead guilty to manslaughter instead of murder. They find in his financial records the $3,500 that Manning gave him, but Manning says that he merely paid him to do some minor research work. They eventually find out about Manning's plagiarism and, thus, Weiss' true motive, however, so they revoke the plea agreement.
After Weiss' lawyer persuades the trial judge to exclude Thomas' identification of him as evidence, Stone and Kincaid ask Manning to testify, but he refuses, as admitting his plagiarism would ruin his career. Stone meets with Weiss and says that testifying about the theory that Manning plagiarized is his one chance to be taken seriously as a scientist, so Weiss offers an impassioned explanation of his method, which he says would be like "reading the mind of God". Stone shows the theory to a few of Manning's colleagues, who are impressed with it; Stone then meets with Manning and threatens to out him to his colleagues as a fraud unless he testifies, leaving Manning no choice but to agree.
After Manning testifies to plagiarizing Weiss' theory, while still insisting that it was "flawed and amateurish", Weiss' motive is established, and the jury finds him guilty of second-degree murder. During his sentencing hearing, Weiss apologizes to Florence's family and expresses remorse for what he did, saying that he would give up anything, even science, if he could take it back. Neverthless, the judge sentences him to 25 years to life in prison.
External links[]
- Max Weiss on the Law & Order Wiki
