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| “ | That little bitch killed my Nicole! | „ |
| ~ Bailey after murdering his own daughter |
Randall Bailey is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "The Family Hour". He is a politician who abuses his family, and who kills his own daughter.
He was portrayed by Harry Hamlin, who also portrayed Cameron Kaiser in Batman: The Animated Series, Charles Patton in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Aaron Echolls in Veronica Mars.
Early life[]
Bailey is a former U.S. senator who has two adult children, Trina and Chaz, with his ex-wife, Nicole. Bailey regularly abused Nicole, and both of them beat their children, sending them to the hospital several times for injuries including black eyes, fractured limbs, and broken jaws. It is also implied that Bailey sexually abused Trina and passed her around to his friends. Trina and Chaz also beat up on each other, with Trina at one point burning her brother with lit cigarettes.
Both Trina and Chaz grew up to have serious problems; Chaz became addicted to heroin, while Trina became addicted to cocaine and married Jim Kirkpatrick, who was just as abusive as her father. Nicole, meanwhile, used her connection to her ex-husband to become a socialite, frequently appearing in gossip columns for her many affairs and frequent episodes of public drunkenness.
During a charity fundraiser, Nicole was photographed openly flirting with Kirkpatrick. Enraged and humiliated, Trina broke into Nicole's house, beat her to death with a fireplace poker, and sexually assaulted her postmortem with a wooden spoon.
"The Family Hour"[]
After being told of Nicole's death, Bailey talks with NYPD Homicide Detectives Ed Green and Nina Cassady, who are investigating the murder, and their superior, Lieutenant Anita Van Buren, and offers to help in any way he can. Green and Cassady eventually find evidence revealing the abuse Bailey subjected his children to and pointing to Trina as the killer. They go to Bailey's residence to question him and his daughter - only to find Bailey is aiming a gun at Kirkpatrick, who has beaten Trina up, and that Chaz is chained to a radiator. They arrest Bailey, Trina, and Kirkpatrick, and bring them all in for questioning.
Green and Cassidy interrogate Bailey, who claims to have restrained Chaz to wean him off of heroin, and to have been holding Kirkpatrick at gunpoint in defense of his daughter. When Cassady confronts him about abusing his children, however, Bailey flies into a rage and wrecks the interrogation room, and an exasperated Van Buren reprimands Cassady and throws her out. Eventually, Green and Cassady find evidence conclusively proving Trina's guilt, but when they go to arrest her, Cassady finds Bailey stabbing her to death. He then inflicts several superficial wounds on himself with the same knife. When Green walks in, Bailey claims that Trina attacked him, forcing him to kill her in self-defense.
Bailey is charged with murder, and is sent before Judge Barry Dilwynn, who makes it clear with his hammy pretenses of concern for the victims and fawning deference to the defense that he is trying to use the trial to get publicity for himself. Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy asks Dilwynn to recuse himself, but the judge denies the request. Meanwhile, Bailey sends Chaz to rehab in order to keep him from testifying about the abuse that he and Trina suffered at his hands. He then testifies in his own defense, blaming the abuse on Nicole while repeating his claim that he killed Trina in self-defense.
Medical Examiner Elizabeth Rodgers testifies for the prosecution, saying that Bailey's injuries appear to be self-inflicted, and could have stabbed himself superficially in a manner similar to that described in one of the first edition crime novels he collects. That night, however, Rodgers visits McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa and admits that she identified the wrong novel as the source of Bailey's ruse. McCoy says they have to tell the court about the mistake, but District Attorney Arthur Branch forbids it, taking McCoy off the trial and having Rubirosa deliver closing arguments in his place.
During closing arguments, Bailey's lawyer, Clint Glover, argues that Bailey was forced to defend his own life from a woman who was about to kill him, even if that woman was his own daughter. Rubirosa, however, tells the jury that Bailey had been abusing Trina for years, and finally killed her after learning that she killed his ex-wife, meaning that his motive was not self-defense, but murderous rage. The jury is swayed by Rubirosa's arguments, and finds Bailey guilty. As he is led out of the courtroom, Bailey threatens to destroy Dilwynn's career. He is then presumably imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Trivia[]
- Bailey’s murder trial is inspired by the Mark Winger case.
External links[]
- Randall Bailey on the Law & Order Wiki
