Directed by Tim Matheson
Written by Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie
The Cold Case team is asked by an aging man to investigate the murder of his father who was shunned by their own family.
Tropes:
- Being Good Sucks: Elliott attended a civil rights meeting for integration and he got blacklisted for being a suspected Communist when the FBI found out.
- Dirty Commies: It was rumored that Elliot and his family were communist sympathizers, simply because he was an active civil rights activist.
- Dramatic Irony: Harland openly says the irony was that "I was the dye-in-the-wool Communist," yet the FBI ignored him and Elliot was just targeted for helping the civil rights movement.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: Harland used to be into civil rights but he was dismissed by Reina as just "a man of words". His need to prove himself to her caused him to murder Elliott.
- Hero of Another Story: Two Posthumous Characters sound like admirable people who made offscreen efforts to fight injustice.
- Renaldo Copley was a major civil rights activist who spent years being harassed by the FBI for his work while also gathering disparate allies, but he only makes one short flashback appearance.
- Elliot's lawyer, Martin Bloodworth, defied the Red Scare to file a restraining order against Elliot's main cop oppressor, made a failed effort to investigate Elliot's murder, and is known and seemingly held in esteem by Jeffries.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Harland points that he's too old to face severe punishment. However, his facade of bravado breaks down in the epilogue when he is seen in the holding cell by his beloved Reina.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Elliot’s wife Kay thought Reina, who he met at the integration meeting, was his mistress, and that was why he didn’t want to point the finger at her to save his own family. Turns out, the attraction was completely one-sided on Reina’s part. Elliot was loyal to Kay to the bitter end.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Harland killed Elliott partly because Reina liked him better.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: After seeing an African-American child wrongly evicted from his class due to segregation, Elliot attends a meeting about integration, hoping to get involved and prevent things like what happened to his student in the future. Sadly, it’s this act that gets him put under suspicion as a communist sympathizer.
- Trauma Conga Line: Elliott is accused of being a Communist, he loses his job, and his family loses their standing in the community. He is murdered and his family disowns him for years. It's revealed that he was a killed over a love triangle that he wanted no part of.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: If Dean hadn’t trashed his father’s car to scare him into giving into the feds, Elliot wouldn’t have had to walk home through the park at night, and he might still be alive.
