Let Death Do Us Part (revised review) - part 1

199. (S09E08) “Let Death Do Us Part” ★½

REVIEW:

My rating of this episode has been up and down like a toilet seat.

I went back at the Internet Archive to look at the page containing this review between 1998 and the present. I gave up doing this after a while, because the page could be under either www.mjq.net/fiveo (earliest) or www.fiveohomepage.com (most recent), I wanted to be consistent with the review for the same month every year which was not always possible, and the Internet Archive is very slow when searching for stuff. I might pursue this investigation later.

Way back in the 90s, I gave the episode three stars (really). But more recently I only gave it one. The earliest date I found where I gave this show one star was in June of 2016; Todd's review of this episode in the Classic H50 forum connected with my site, where he mentioned my one-star review, was done in 2019 (where he gave it 1½ stars), so I must have given the show its most recent rating (until now — 2½) when I did the big revamp of episodes to celebrate the show's 50th anniversary starting around 2018. It ain't 2½ any more!

This show is very complicated, mostly because of what is not said or described. When you are finished viewing, you have to decide whether dealing with all the "fill-in-the-blanks" was really worth it. It is like the writer, Bud Freeman, who did The Two-Faced Corpse (meh), How To Steal A Masterpiece (top-level), The Hostage (pretty good), all in the 7th season, and Honor Is An Unmarked Grave, 8th season, one of my faves, wanted to do something different, but this show totally didn't work out or maybe it was overwritten and had to be dialled back. I don't think Freeman was any relation to series creator Leonard.

The show begins with Jim Spier (Jack Kelly) escaping from the Halawa Correctional Facility where he was incarcerated in connection with murdering his wife. He was a model prisoner who refused parole twice because he claimed he was innocent, saying asking for parole would be "a tacit admission of guilt" — or so it is speculated at lunch between Manicote and the Five-O team, where Manicote — who is turning the case over to Five-O — gets stuck with the check, a very funny moment.

It is not said anywhere in the show how long ago Spiers was sent to jail or even what he was charged with (first degree murder, for example). Spiers has grey hair when he escapes, though that may not be of any particular significance. The fact that he has already refused parole twice, however, is odd if he was charged with murder, because you would typically have to wait a very long time to be offered parole, not recently after you went to jail.

We learn early in the show that Spier was a "big man with the ladies" who married Helen Newhall (Arline Anderson), an "older woman" and she made a will, giving "the bulk of her estate," worth over a million dollars, to him. There is no indication how long ago Spier married Helen, or how long after that she changed her will to make him a beneficiary. The will is "still in litigation," and if Spiers' conviction based on the assumption he murdered Helen to collect the money is not overturned, then her daughter Anita (Zohra Lampert) "will wind up with most it."

After he escapes from jail, Spier makes his way to his friend Claudine Hessler (the chameleonic Linda Ryan), who works at a beauty parlor. She restores his greying locks to what was probably the actual color of the actor's hair. Claudine came to see Spier in jail "every visitor's day for the last six months," so we have to wonder how did he know her? Was she one of his "conquests"?

Soon after this, Spier breaks into the house of Karl Norton (Lyle Bettger), the retired HPD cop who was in charge of the case against him, who he blames for him ending up in jail, and finds a filing cabinet which is conveniently in the room where he enters the place. In the cabinet, similar to Richard Hatch's character in season seven's A Study in Rage, Spier quickly finds his folder. Based on information in this file, Norton wrote a book with a chapter about "the Helen Newhall murder case." When Norton and his German shepherd dog Mike are seen and heard outside, returning home, Spier beats it by jumping over the balcony and flees through the neighborhood at the bottom of the hill below.

Later, Spier goes through the contents of the folder at Claudine's house, commenting "I never heard such bull." There is a memo from an HPD Sergeant Pearson in the folder referring to "Edna Kentner," from two weeks after Helen "disappeared." Kentner was Spier's alibi for when his wife was murdered — there will be more about her shortly. Helen's body was found in a lime pit totally disintegrated, but Spier tells Claudine that he never mentioned Kentner's name until after Helen's body was discovered — which is mentioned elsewhere in the show as having been a year after her "disappearance." Another question — how did anyone know where to find this lime pit? Did someone investigate stores on Oahu which sold lime? You can bet that would be a top priority if Five-O had handled this case from the beginning. And who was concerned about Helen's "disappearance"? Spier at one point suggests that he was regarded by HPD as a Lothario type fleecing women for their money, which is why they took a lot of effort to get him convicted and put in jail (this is my interpretation of things).

Anita Newhall, Helen's daughter, is described as "one flaky lady." She is into New Age activities like communicating with the dead via an Ouija board. It looks like she has a business where she uses this gizmo to dispense advice regarding relationships and so forth. When Danno says of the spir¬i¬tua¬lis¬ti¬cal¬ly-in¬clin¬ed Anita after he gets nowhere talking to her, "I couldn't connect with her astral plane," McGarrett suggests "Maybe my kharma is more in tune." Anita is much less hostile when McGarrett visits her, though she tells him "Crime is hardly a fit topic for transcendental conversation." She relays a message from her mother via the Ouija board to McGarrett — "She trusts you to see that justice is done." He replies, "I'll try not to disappoint the lady."

That night, Spier breaks into into Anita's (now the house where he and Helen used to live?) and confronts her. Anita accuses Spier of killing her mother, but not by murdering her. Calling him a "cheap hustler," she says, "You wanna talk about all the different ways you killed her? You married her but you despised her … You were going to love her but you didn't … She trusted you. She gave everything over to you. Money, anything you wanted. She signed her life over to you. And you didn't kill her? … Shall I make you a list?" When Norton, whom she has hired to guard her place, appears at the door, Anita bonks Spier on the head and takes his gun, and then surprisingly shoots Norton dead, blaming it on Spier when Five-O shows up later.

Spier sends a letter to McGarrett with all the facts about the case as he sees it. Later, he is busted by Chin and Duke, who track down Claudine, the hairdresser, at whose house Spier is living, and Spier surrenders to the two of them. Chin managed to come up with a "wanted poster" for Claudine, perhaps after talking to people at Halawa who saw her visiting him frequently. There has been a rumour flying around up to this point (probably in my mind) that Spier made an arrangement with Helen which allowed him to have sex with other women but this is not true. When he is brought to McGarrett's office, Spier confesses "I caused that old girl a lot of pain. I thought I could be a friend and a companion to her when the physical thing didn't work out ... But I didn't kill her."

Unfortunately, Spier made a huge blunder when Helen left home to "spend two weeks at a health retreat." (How far away from their house could this be? We are talking about Oahu, where virtually anything is within a couple of hours.) Because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants, Spier picked up a woman, a "one-night stand" named Edna Kentner in a bar and brought her to the house where he lived with Helen.

Note that "Edna Kentner" was an alias. The real name of the woman — who it is suggested had come to Hawaii from San Francisco for some R&R — was Evelyn Knight (note the initial similarity to "Edna Kentner"). Kentner's name was in the HPD reports on the case, and looking for clues about her, Danno interviews a stewardess (Valli Hanley) on the ramp which leads from the Ilikai Hotel to the beach. Obviously someone who had been questioned during the initial investigation into Helen's murder, the flight attendant recalls that not only Kentner (or someone fitting her description) left Hawaii the day after Helen "disappeared," but she also recommended the woman see a dentist friend of hers (an old boyfriend) in San Francisco for some problems she was having with her teeth. It is important to remember that Spier seemingly only knew this woman as Kentner, so when he tried to use her as an alibi later on, she never existed.

(Continued in next message...)

(Part 2 of revised review...)

Anyway, back in the past, Helen returned home after her car broke down on the way to the retreat. She phoned home, and not getting any answer, perhaps because Spier and Kentner were "doing it," called Anita to pick her up. She was brought home, only to discover her husband having sex with Kentner in her house. She did not confront them yet (I guess she just heard them). Although the house seems kind of large in the show, where was Helen hiding while this was happening?

Obviously Spier had never heard the expression "get a room" (like in a motel or hotel) when fooling around. When Spier left the house for some reason, leaving Kentner alone (another very dumb move on his part), Helen confronted Kentner, who was naked, in the bathroom. Despite being a short and fragile "old lady," she attacked and attmpted to strangle Kentner, who fell and knocked herself out on the bathtub. Anita for some reason suddenly returned, even though she told McGarrett earlier that she never saw her mother again after dropping her off at home. Anita found Kentner in the tub, and then told her mother, who had gone downstairs, the woman "was dead." However, the suggestion is that the woman was not dead, but Anita finished her off.

There is something else very screwy here. Assuming Spier left Kentner alone in the house, did he return there some time later? If he did, wouldn't he have run into Helen and Anita, assuming they hadn't already taken care of the body? If he did return and Helen was there, wouldn't she have given him a piece of her mind? Did Spier never come home again? Or, if he did, did he find neither of the two women were there? There is the whole issue of Helen "disappearing." Did he think she made it to the retreat, and something fishy happened during or after the two weeks she was staying there?

Near the end of the show, Helen says she was suffering from "a terrible shock" and "a traumatic loss of memory" after what happened with Kentner, but she was still lucid enough to pretend that she was Kentner/Knight, changing her appearance and likely scheming with her daughter (or just being manipulated by her daughter) to return to Kentner's home town of San Francisco under Kentner's real name of Evelyn Knight and using Knight's return ticket. Helen has been living in San Francisco ever since (for how many years?) under this other woman's name! Danno later unsuccessfully pursues "Kentner" (i.e., Helen) to San Francisco as the woman who needed dental work, but doesn't find her or Knight.

Seriously, this is so crazy!

I guess Anita took care of Kentner's body, put it in a lime pit with her mother's ring on its finger, which was a big clue that the body was supposed to be her mother (and that Spier had killed her). If you do a Google search for disposing of bodies using lime, you will find that the body can completely dissolve very quickly. However, this ring was returned to Anita after Che Fong and the court was finished with it, and Anita then returned it to her mother in San Francisco (they were still "communicating").

At the end of the show, Helen comes back to Honolulu, presumably to "fess up" to everything. We are left guessing (again) as to why she did this. Danno says "A woman fitting the description of Evelyn Knight showed up at the Newhall house. Taxi picked her up at the airport." Was her house under surveillance? Perhaps the mother found out about Danno snooping around San Francisco trying to find her under her alias?

McGarrett and Danno head to Helen's place where McGarrett starts to grill Anita more, but then Helen strolls blithely down the stairs and starts blabbing away, telling the truth about what happened up to the point of fighting with Kentner in the bathroom and leaving town, pretending to be her. Anita gets very edgy, telling her mother to keep her mouth shut. When McGarrett sees the ring on Helen's finger, he says, "This ring was introduced as evidence in Spier's trial. Now, if you and your mother were not in touch [as Anita claimed], how did she get it? By astral projection?" Anita goes into a big huff, "I don't have to sit here and take these snide, vicious attacks on my beliefs. They're my convictions. They're my religious convictions."

The two women talk about who really killed Kentner, totally incriminating each other, but McGarrett says that it was Anita who did this and he busts both of them for conspiracy. Obviously Spier is off the hook for murder and will collect the money … but an ugly mess in court is coming soon, especially since when the women started yapping away, McGarrett should have immediately read them their rights, among other complications.

The music by Broughton is very modern-sounding, especially the final "confession" music.

MORE TRIVIA:

At the beginning of the show, Spier knocks out a guard at Halawa and takes his gun, then goes over the fence outside, which looks like it is going to collapse; in fact, he could probably go through what looks like a gap in the fence produced by it bending under his weight.

A sign near the gate at Halawa says visiting days are Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Children 12 years and under are not allowed to visit.

In the files he stole from Norton's, Spier learns that Anita hired a private detective to investigate Edna Kentner after her mother's disappearance. When he confronts her later, he asks her "Who was the shamus," a term for a P.I. Before she can answer, they are interrupted by Norton knocking at the front door.

The Newhall folder in the filing cabinet is numbered N03 9358. Other folders for Terry Oh Song and Jas. T. Yamato can be seen.

In the Goofs section for this episode at IMDb, it says, "When Spier is burglarizing Norton's home, he is still wearing the clothes he was wearing when he escaped prison and his hair is greasy and unkempt." This is totally wrong.

Chin Ho says "Charlie Chan knows all," referring to himself when he figures out an important clue.

McGarrett is annoyed, saying "I want this case cleaned up." He tells the Five-O team to "check every beauty parlor in the state" to find Claudine, the beautician. The Five-O office number of 732-5577 is on a "wanted" poster for her. The poster says that Claudine has blue eyes, but they are actually brown.

Claudine lives at 9196 Kolanianaoli. She has a very nice waterfront house. She tells Spier that she spent over $2,000 investigating Norton.

McGarrett is wearing a very cool seersucker suit at the beginning of the show (white with blue stripes). But when seen with different camera angles after this, this seems like just a blue suit. Has the focus of the camera changed or something, that the stripes disappear? Some of the shots are close enough to McGarrett later so that you should still see the stripes.

Danno has goo-goo eyes for the stewardess he interviews.

McGarrett mispronounces "alias" as "a-less" .

Very interesting film noir-like lighting in the scene where Anita shoots Norton.

Fred Helfing tracked down the area of Norton's house at 2356 Aha Maka Way which has a sensational view of Honolulu, though you won't see that in Google Maps, and, because of development, the area looks much different than in the show. Fred points out this house is located directly across the street from Richard Hatch's home in Season 7, Study in Rage. He also points out, "a little later in the episode, Danno is up there with McGarrett and he's informing McGarrett about his interview with Anita Newhall. In the background, you can distinctive sun lights on the roof of the house. That fits with the house next door to Norton." When Spier escapes from the house after Norton and his dog Mike discover him there, jumping over the balcony and running down the hill below, you can see a house there which is at 2431 Halekoa Drive. Fred adds, "Spier has to run quite a bit to the right. 2356 is on the extreme left of the map while 2431 is on the extreme upper right (light colored roof). Obviously, the roofs have been replaced, but the layout is the same. Also, in looking at episode, the Norton's house is two levels. Street level is the upper level while there's a lower level built into the hill. If you play around with Google Maps, you'll see that 2356 has that two level plan."

(The actual review, which is at https://fiveohomepage.com/5-0log9.htm#199 has specific links in the trivia section...)

Thanks for the impressive review on Let Death Do Us Part Mr. Mike. A JC salute! I agree this is a difficult episode to grade. Think 11/2 Stars or 2 Stars ⭐⭐ is about right. There are plenty positives about the episode. I like the Jim Spier character. He's intelligent and resourceful. Jim escapes from prison instead of taking the parole. Won't admit to something he didn't do. Claudine is also a great character. She helps research his case and stands by Spier. Even when he's a fugitive. It would have been easy for her to distance herself from Spier. Anita also is an intriguing character with her New Age Religion and Ouija Board. Obviously, she has a deep hatred of Spier. I think Spier took advantage of his "arrangement" with Helen Newhall. I think that's 1 of the things Anita hates about Spier. Karl Norton the retired detective turned writer also is an interesting character. He assists McGarrett in filling the blanks on the Helen Newhall case. I think Norton has deep contempt and hatred for Spier because he believes he's guilty. Norton had worked on the case for several months including chasing a ghost witness Edna Kentner. Everything pointed to Jim Spier as the murderer of Helen Newhall.

1 of the interesting moments of Let Death Do Us Part...Anita shoots Norton dead pinning 📍 the murder on a late night Jim Spier visit. Why shoot Norton? Jim Spier is an escape prisoner and fugitive. She would have been justified to shoot him. Norton would have backed her story. I wonder if the writers considered having Spier shot dead here and McGarrett going back over the evidence. Realizing Anita was the shooter and killer. Also, setting up Spier in the death of the Edna Kentner. I think having Spier alive to tell the story was the right move. Anita has the advantage because she expresses to McG that Spier shot Norton. Going over the story. McG & Spier meet up later and states Anita said you would blame her. Todd brings up some good points about why Evelyn Knight would use an alias to go to Hawaii. She's having a good time in Hawaii. This is the 1970's and before the Internet and things. It would be long odds somebody in Hawaii would return to the states and talk about her affairs. Also, a good point about Helen who is very frail and thin. Harming a healthy and younger Evelyn Knight. It doesn't make sense Helen could inflict enough damage to nearly kill Evelyn. No doubt, the ending is kind of cumbersome on the porch area. Helen tries to be as honest and truthful but she was in contact with Anita several times over the years. At any time, she could have come forward to the police. Anita appears to have finished off Evelyn who could have been saved with medical attention. I wonder how many times before Spier brought women over to the house for romantic interludes. I think something that could have improved the episode...A young friend maybe of Evelyn Knight Roberta or Stella meets McGarrett talking how Evelyn never returned from Hawaii. The Knight Family also could have hired a Private Detective Fulmer or PI Stevens to look around in Hawaii. It would have been interesting Det. Stevens and McG working it from different angles. Then comparing notes. Evelyn Knight was somebody's daughter, friend, or relative. I think a strong ending would have been Anita having McG & Danno at gunpoint. Going on a psycho type rant how she was the 1 who finished off Edna Kentner and placing her in the lime pit. Duke in his sharpshooters role wounding Anita saving the day. Good to see quality discussion about this episode. JC

You write "I like the Jim Spier character. He's intelligent and resourceful."

But this is not true, he is really dumb.

To quote from my review:

Spier made a huge blunder when Helen left home to "spend two weeks at a health retreat." (How far away from their house could this be? Presumably we are talking about Oahu, where virtually anything is within a couple of hours.) [New thoughts: if the retreat is somewhere else, like on another island or even the mainland, her car broke down, perhaps on the way to the airport.] Because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants, Spier picked up a woman, a "one-night stand" named Edna Kentner in a bar and brought her to the house where he lived with Helen.

Helen returned home after her car broke down. She phoned home, and not getting any answer, perhaps because Spier and Kentner were "doing it," called Anita to pick her up. She was brought home, only to discover her husband having sex with Kentner in her house. She did not confront them yet (I guess she just heard them). Although the house seems kind of large in the show, where was Helen hiding while this was happening?

Obviously Spier had never heard the expression "get a room" (like in a motel or hotel) when fooling around. When Spier left the house for some [illogical] reason, leaving Kentner alone (another very dumb move on his part), Helen confronted Kentner, who was naked, in the bathroom. Despite being a short and fragile "old lady," she attacked and attempted to strangle Kentner, who fell and knocked herself out on the bathtub. Anita for some reason suddenly returned, even though she told McGarrett earlier that she never saw her mother again after dropping her off at home. Anita found Kentner in the tub, and then told her mother, who had gone downstairs, [that] the woman "was dead." However, the suggestion is that the woman was not dead, but Anita finished her off.

There is something else very screwy here. Assuming Spier left Kentner alone in the house, did he return there some time later? If he did, wouldn't he have run into Helen and Anita, assuming they hadn't already taken care of the body? If he did return and Helen was there, wouldn't she have given him a piece of her mind? Did Spier never come home again? Or, if he did, did he find neither of the two women were there? There is the whole issue of Helen "disappearing." Did he think she made it to the retreat, and something fishy happened during or after the two weeks she was staying there?

==========

The evidence in the case seems circumstantial, and what did Spier say after he was arrested? I think he had a VERY bad lawyer! It is suggested in the show that Norton and the other cops had it in for Spier because of his "way with the ladies" and how he conned more than one woman to take advantage of their money, that's why they doubled their efforts to make sure that Spier ended up in jail.

Mr. Mike

Thanks for your response on a very complex and twisting episode Let Death Do Us Part. I was talking about Jim Spier intelligent and resourceful breaking out of prison and trying to clear his name. He shows his intelligence breaking out of prison. It isn't easy to break out of prison. Sometimes, a prisoner will inform on another inmate. Other times the CO's will get wind of a possible break out. Stopping a break out before it gets started. Spier also was intelligent not taking a possible parole. He would have to admit his guilt. Through the episode, Spier maintains his innocence and should receive Helen Newhall's inheritance now that Anita & Helen conspired against Spier. He shows his intelligence and resourcefulness stealing the file 🗃️ 🗄️ out of Retired Det. Norton's room office. I think Norton is shown to be a high quality sharp detective. Spier also evades Norton and his alert dog grabbing the file and escaping. Spier also avoids Norton's security to visit with Anita. I'm interested why Spier would visit Anita late at night. They have a good conversation each scoring points. Spier does good work avoiding HFO for awhile on an island 🏝️ until they follow Claudine. Jim Spier's girlfriend. Even at that point, Jim Spier has Chin and Duke under control but he gives himself up. I will agree that Spier doesn't make it easy for himself having many romantic encounters and the Evelyn Knight death. Let Death Do Us Part is 1 of the episodes that could have been 3.5 or 4 Stars🌟🌟🌟🌟. There's some interesting characters Anita, Jim Spier, Norton, etc and a good mystery. Unfortunately, there are some questions that are difficult to answer and cloud the story. 1. At what point, did Jim Spier meet up with Claudine to become his girlfriend? 2. How would a frail and thin Helen Newhall inflict enough damage on a younger and most likely stronger woman in Evelyn Knight? 3. Why would Evelyn Knight utilize an alias Edna Kentner flying to Hawaii? 4. Why would Anita finish Edna Kentner off and not call an ambulance? 5. Why wouldn't an Evelyn Knight friend or relative start looking for her when she's missing several months? 6. Who constructed this lime pit and wouldn't HFO be able to trace the lime somehow? JC