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| “ | But I'm innocent. I didn't kill anybody. | „ |
| ~ Peter denying that he killed his brother. |
Peter Nicodos, Jr. is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Jeopardy". He is a businessman from a wealthy family who murders his younger brother.
He was portrayed by Peter Frechette, who also portrayed Jack Curry in an earlier episode of Law & Order.
Early life[]
Peter is the eldest of Peter Sr. and Elaine Nicodos' two sons. Peter, Sr. was a wealthy businessman who founded a successful wholesale food distribution company called Nicodos Foods, a family business that he groomed Peter to eventually take over. Elaine, meanwhile, neglected Peter in favor of her younger son, Eddie, a spoiled ne'er-do-well who wasted her money on a series of failed business ventures. Eddie briefly worked for Peter at Nicodos Foods' corporate office, but he was a substandard employee and quit after getting into a heated argument with his brother.
Peter dutifully took over Nicodos Foods after his father died, even though he hated his job. He married a woman named Elizabeth and had two children, but he cheated on her with a clothing designer named Celia Gaston, the only person whom he felt he could be himself around.
He persuaded Elaine to cut Eddie off after his latest company, a technology magazine called BYTE Head, lost money in its first year. Soon afterward, however, a game developer sued Peter because Eddie printed a bad review of his game in BYTE Head that revealed confidential information about the product; the developer's lawyer then blackmailed Peter. threatening to tell Elizabeth about his affair unless Nicodos Foods paid him off.
Peter blamed Eddie for his being blackmailed, seeing the whole situation as just one more time in which he had to clean up his brother's mess. Peter broke into BYTE Head's editorial office with a gun that he stole from his secretary and shot Eddie point-blank in the chest, killing him; he also shot and killed two of Eddie's employees, Sally Kestler and Jesse Rand, because they witnessed the murder.
"Jeopardy"[]
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis investigate the murders and learn that ByteHead was broke after Elaine cut Eddie off; they also find out about Peter being blackmailed over his affair with Celia.
They begin to suspect Peter after watching a recording of a deposition hearing in which Peter got into a violent argument with Eddie after the latter said that the financial consequences of the lawsuit would fall on Peter, not him. They question Peter, who says that he was having dinner with his mother at the time of the murders.
When they question Jeremy Brice, the chief operating officer at Nicodos Foods, however, he says that he had seen Peter in the office shortly before the murders occurred, and that his secretary's gun had been stolen. Finally, when forensics testing proves that hair from Celia's cat had been found at the crime scene and on Peter's clothes, Briscoe and Curtis arrest him for the murders.
Celia tells Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid that Peter had come to her apartment, covered in blood, and told her what he had done. They plan to make Celia their star witness, but Peter's lawyer, Norman Rothenberg, persuades the trial judge, Edgar Hynes, to exclude Celia's testimony as hearsay and the forensics evidence as inconclusive. Hynes dismisses the case, meaning that, under double jeopardy, McCoy cannot try Peter, Jr. again for the murders.
District Attorney Adam Schiff, an old friend of Hynes', finds a similar case from years earlier in which Hynes had ruled in favor of the prosecution, arousing his suspicion. McCoy and Kincaid eventually discover that Hynes went to college with the elder Nicodos, and that Elaine had gone to her bank shortly after the trial began and threatened to withdraw her account unless they gave Hynes a $600,000 mortgage loan. Hynes is arrested for bribery, and he admits to Schiff that Elaine had promised him the money, which he desperately needed after his ex-wife took all of his assets in their divorce, in return for acquitting Peter. Hynes ultimately commits suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Briscoe and Curtis arrest Peter again, and McCoy and Kincaid once again indict him for murder by reasoning that double jeopardy never applied to the case because the acquittal was achieved through bribery. Peter refuses to admit his guilt, but when McCoy threatens to put Elaine in prison for bribery, he suffers a moment of conscience and agrees to plead guilty as long as she is spared. Peter is then sentenced to serve three concurrent sentences of 25 years in prison.
External links[]
- Peter Nicodos, Jr. on the Law & Order Wiki
