11. Gone — Episode — Law & Order: Criminal Intent

11. Gone

Detective Goren matches wits and moves with a paranoid but murderous chess grandmaster after a newly engaged woman is found slain and tossed in a garbage bin -- but Goren believes the killing might be a case of mistaken identity and finds links to a wealthy family and a pimp. Edging closer, Goren and Detective Eames study the passenger manifest on the victim's recent flight and they discover the curious zig-zag path of one disturbed man who is later discovered to be a famous chess prodigy-turned-fugitive now intent on blackmailing his family for money.

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The story

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Plot summary

Fiancée of Brad Wycliff, Allison Jenkins, is murdered while walking to the Wycliff home of her future mother-in-law Lenore Wycliff and Brad's brother, Jared. Their investigation leads them to Lenore's brother, using the names David Blake and Roger Wither, a former child chess prodigy. He has become highly paranoid and is blackmailing Brad into giving him the large sum of money he won years earlier in an unsanctioned chess game in Cuba against a Russian master. Goren and Eames uncover that he killed Allison Jenkins in the mistaken belief she was surveilling him and then successfully talks him out of committing suicide convincing him that as in chess, it's better to draw rather than lose the game.

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