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| “ | It's so sad. You're part of the conspiracy and you don't even know it. You're a dupe, Mr. McCoy. | „ |
| ~ March accusing Jack McCoy of conspiring against him |
Levi March. aka Glenn Fordyce, is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Absentia". He is a political activist who tries to get away with having murdered his girlfriend 20 years earlier by claiming that the U.S. government is framing him.
He was portrayed by Mandy Patinkin, who also portrayed Huxley in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland and Satan in Touched by An Angel.
Early life[]
March came from a wealthy family and fancied himself a political activist, although he was often dismissed as a "gadfly". He was primarily known for appearing on any TV network that would give him airtime and promoting conspiracy theories, including one proposing that the CIA was behind the murder of John Lennon, having supposedly trained his murderer, Mark David Chapman, as an assassin as part of a "black ops" program to eliminate political leftists. He also circulated self-published conspiracy screeds using the pen name, "The Griffin".
In 1983, March was in a relationship with a woman named Abby Sherman. He regularly dominated and abused her, isolating her from her family and hitting her whenever she did not do what he wanted, when he wanted it. She decided to leave him after she caught him in bed with her friend Patricia Tippens, although she confided in her sister that she was afraid he would kill her if she broke off their relationship. Sure enough, when she tried to leave, March struck her over the head with a bottle of champagne, killing her instantly. He dismembered her corpse and buried her remains behind a wall in his house.
Eventually, however, his neighbors complained of the smell and summoned the police, who found Sherman's remains. They arrested March, who, thanks to his family's wealth, easily paid the $1 million bail the arraignment judge had ordered, and fled to Canada with his new girlfriend, Anne-Marie Goutreaux. Thanks to damning evidence of his guilt, he was found guilty of murder in absentia, to be arrested immediately if he was ever found.
Ten years later, the main detective on the case, Will Ashman, found March living with Goutreaux, now his common-law wife, under the name "Glenn Fordyce" in Montreal. Once again, however, March and Goutreaux gave him the slip, and fled to Chicago, where they lived in anonymity for the next 10 years. Even while hiding, however, March still managed to pursue an on-again, off-again affair with Tippens, and dominated Goutreaux just as he had Sherman, even forbidding her to attend her own parents' funeral after they were killed in a car accident.
"Absentia"[]
During a business trip to New York City, March stops into a jewelry store to buy something for Goutreaux, when small-time Russian gangster Eddie Trevandze suddenly robs to the store and opens fire, killing the owner and wounding March. NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green question March, who is using his "Glenn Fordyce" identity, as he recovers in the hospital, and he identifies Trevandze as the man who shot him.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn plan to call "Fordyce" as a witness during Trevandze's murder trial, but he and Goutreaux abruptly leave town to avoid revealing his real identity; this results in Trevandze being acquitted for lack of evidence.
McCoy and Southerlyn at first suspect that Trevandze had "Fordyce" killed, so they send out their would-be witness' photo and fingerprints to law enforcement nationwide in hopes of finding his body, only to discover who "Fordyce" really is when his fingerprints are matched to the case file for Sherman's murder. Briscoe and Green threaten to arrest Goutreaux, who is pregnant with March's child, for harboring a fugitive unless she tells them where he is; she reluctantly tells them he is in Montreal, where they manage to find and arrest him just as he is about to leave town.
March's lawyer Marvin Silverman, who had also represented him during the 1983 trial, manages to get him a re-trial for Sherman's murder. During the trial, March testifies that agents of the U.S. government murdered Sherman in order to frame him and silence his activism; he also denies having abused her in any way, claiming that such accusations are just part of the "conspiracy" against him. When an incredulous McCoy confronts him with evidence proving his guilt, March says that it was planted, and accuses McCoy of being a "dupe" of the government that is trying to destroy him.
Worried that March's conspiracy theories might sway the jury, McCoy and Southerlyn try to persuade Goutreaux to testify against him, to no avail. She changes her tune, however, after Southerlyn goes through March's phone records and finds several calls between him and Tippens spanning years, proving that he is cheating on her. March tries to convince her that the phone records are fake, but she finally sees him for what he is, and tells McCoy and Southerlyn that he had confessed to her to killing Sherman years earlier. Silverman claims that the confession is inadmissible under spousal privilege rules, but Goutreaux replies that they are not legally married, so she can testify against him freely.
Facing possible life in prison, March reluctantly agrees to plead guilty to second-degree murder, with the possibility of parole after he serves 25 years.
Trivia[]
- March is loosely based on the real-life murderer Ira Einhorn, who like March was a prominent conspiracy theorist who abused and murdered his girlfriend, fled and was convicted in absentia, and later claimed at his re-trial that he was framed by the CIA.
External links[]
- Levi March on the Law & Order Wiki
