Written By Jonathan Greene
Directed By George Pattison
A Canadian student goes missing while on a school trip and two young men are blamed for her rape and death despite the lack of a body. However, the judge is forced to dismiss the case against the pair when the only witness to the crime disappears...only to later turn up dead himself.
Tropes
- A Day in the Limelight: The detectives are all present, but the episode mostly focuses on Casey.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jennifer is dead, her body will likely never be found, and Nicky and Doug can't be prosecuted again for her murder. Jason is dead too, but his body is found, and Nicky and Doug will most certainly go to jail for killing him.
- Dramatic Irony: The detectives struggle to solve the disappearance of a teenage girl; they have three suspects but no body and not enough other evidence to convict them. Casey manages to get one of the boys, Jason, to testify against the other two, Nicky (his cousin) and Doug, but after testifying before the grand jury, he disappears as well; since the prosecution can't find him or conclusively prove that he was kidnapped, the case is dismissed with prejudice. Afterwards, with some more hunting, the detectives finally manage to find the getaway car that the boys were driving when they committed the original murder... and it was in the city impound lot the entire time, overlooked because someone input the wrong number when they were entering the car into the system. It does at least lead the detectives to Jason's body and allow them to charge the other two boys for that crime instead.
- Drowning My Sorrows: After the case against Nicky and Doug finally collapses, Casey hits the bar.
- Dirty Coward / Spoiled Brat: Nicky and Doug, as evidenced by their attitudes and all of their crimes throughout the episode. Jason's parents even refer to Nicky, their nephew, as the latter at one point during the episode.
- Finding the Bug: The perps go to extreme lengths to ensure they won't get caught, including murdering Jason (the hesitant member of the trio) and bribing a court officer to bug the judge's private chambers. Thanks to TARU tech Morales, the squad able to find the bug and bring the remaining members to justice for their crimes.
- For Want Of A Nail: Crucial evidence in the case is missed because information was incorrectly entered into the system—the car the three boys were in, which not only had considerable evidence that would have left no doubt that they killed Jennifer, but was found abandoned where they dumped her body.
- Historical In-Joke: The cops eventually realize that Jennifer was dumped in the river and washed out to sea. This is what many people speculated happened to Natalee Holloway, who this episode is based on, and 18 years after her disappearance, was finally confirmed by her killer.
- Incredibly Obvious Bug: The bug planted by Emily McCooper has a large blinking light for some reason.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: A variation, considering that poor Jennifer was likely already dead when it happened, but finding her sneaker among the debris on the riverbank is the final confirmation of what happened to her.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Court Officer Emily McCooper. Big time.
- Never Found the Body: Jennifer's fate, sadly. The closest we get is a discarded sneaker that the detectives recognize her as wearing when she vanished, found on the bank of the river where she was dumped. Jason nearly met with the same fate, but got caught on a piling.
- Posthumous Character: Jennifer's last night is depicted from security camera footage—her returning to the hotel after being gang-raped, then leaving again, etc.
- Token Good Teammate: Jason's the only one to feel any remorse over what happened to Jennifer. This could be especially since he, like her, was only looking for a good time when he, his cousin Nicky, and their friend Doug took her out, and everything he and her together did was consensual. But Nicky and Doug ruined it all by forcing their way with Jennifer, then murdering her to silence her, then trying to pin everything on Jason – who up to that point, still tried to protect them out of blind loyalty – to get out of trouble, and when that failed, seducing and bribing a court officer into helping abduct him, and then murdering him to prevent him from turning against them in court.
