12. Privilege

Detectives Goren and Eames investigate when a reporter, Isabel Harrington ( Margaret Laney ), and her yoga instructor Willem Vanderhoeven (John Walton) are found brutally murdered in her apartment. Isabel is the granddaughter of a prominent wealthy socialite bedridden with illness, Virginia Harrington ( Doris Roberts ), and former member of an aristocratic family from New York. The detectives find that the matriarch's illness has been induced by her philandering son Grant ( D.W. Moffett ) and his second wife Cheryl ( Kay Story ) who are slowly plundering the estate. As they dig deeper, the detectives discover that Isabel was about to expose her father Grant's financial dealings and her mother's suspicious death eighteen year earlier. Eventually, the detectives charge Grant's brother Ernest Foley ( Richard Kind ) for the murders which he committed in the mistaken belief that he was protecting the family name. Inspired by the Brooke Astor elder abuse controversy.