Joyce Weber and her 10-year-old son are found shot dead; the Webers' teenage daughter Jenna (Ellen Pompeo) is injured but alive. Ron Weber, the father of the family, is the prime suspect. His alcoholism had caused him to lose his job and incur serious debts, and his wife's death allowed him to claim on her life insurance. He insists he had been drinking so heavily on the night of the murder that he can't remember what he did. When the detectives find his wife's missing jewelry in his office, Weber is charged with murder. He claims he planned to sell the jewelry but didn't kill his family.
In order to eliminate reasonable doubt, the prosecutors need to explain why Weber would want to kill his children. Their case is that he fits the profile of a "family annihilator": someone who kills in a warped attempt to "protect" their family. But after Weber testifies, Olivet has doubts and says that a family annihilator would have confessed under pressure. The prosecutors start to question why Jenna has now changed her story at trial. They learn that Mrs. Weber demanded Jenna break up with her boyfriend Chester Manning, who's a juvenile delinquent with a history of violence.
McCoy and Kincaid review the evidence and conclude that Jenna must have let Chester into the house. Weber, believing her to be innocent, agrees to lure her into thinking he's accepted a plea deal for thirty years in jail. Jenna now claims that she and Chester planned for him to steal her mother's jewelry, but it wasn't there; Mrs. Weber and her son woke up, so he killed them. McCoy knows this isn't true - Jenna could just steal the jewelry herself. In fact, she asked Chester to kill her mother, and promised him the jewelry as payment. McCoy tells her that Chester's already been arrested and is unlikely to protect her in court.
This episode contains examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Ron Weber has a very serious drinking problem.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Jack asks Jenna Weber why she didn't just give Chester the jewelry instead of having him steal it. When she can't answer, that's when he realizes that killing her mother was the plan all along.
- Bait-and-Switch: For most of the episode, it appears the murderer is Ron Webber. Then near the end the story behind the murder suddenly changes.
- Bland-Name Product: A Hooters knock-off called "Long Legs" features.
- Daddy's Girl: Jenna was much closer to her father than to Mrs. Weber.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: In this case, Jenna's mother was the one who didn't approve (although Mr. Weber doesn't like Chester either.)
- Death of a Child: The Webbers' 10-year-old son was murdered along with his mother.
- Everyone Has Standards: When the detectives discuss Weber's story, Briscoe is skeptical.Briscoe:If he loved his kids that much, he'd have been home to tuck them in.
Curtis: Yeah? You tell me you never drank too much and blacked out.
Briscoe: Hey—I missed the whole Carter administration, but I was always home for breakfast. - Friendly Rivalry: Kincaid has such a relationship with Weber's lawyer.
- The Mafiya: The detectives briefly suspect that an Eastern European mobster, who knew Mrs. Weber had evidence of illegal dealings at his bar, could be responsible for her death.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Jenna appears to have this reaction once Jack confronts her about what she did.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Ron Webber is the primary suspect for the murder of his wife and son until near the end of the episode.
- Pater Familicide: The case the prosecutors are trying to make is that Weber is one of these, but he does not really fit the profile. There was Murder in the Family, but it was his daughter.
- Rewatch Bonus: Jenna tries to undermine the prosecution while testifying. Initially, this appears to be out of misguided loyalty—that she still loves her father despite what he did, or that she can't believe that he would do this despite overwhelming evidence. When it's finally revealed that SHE is the one responsible for everything, it's now apparent that she had enough of a shred of conscience to genuinely not want to see her father go to jail for something she knows he didn't do.
- Ripped from the Headlines:
- Based on the cases of John List and Bradford Bishop, both fugitives who disappeared after killing their entire families.
- Also based on Jessica Wiseman, a teenager who hired her boyfriend to murder her parents.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The previously scrupulous Mrs. Weber had started accepting bribes at work to solve her family's financial woes.
