The Murder of Johanna Beckett: Chapter Two
While the ABC series Castle follows the basic blueprint of the modern day crime drama, it is also a direct descendent of the classic detective shows of the 1970s where the characters mattered just as much as the cases. Viewers tuned in during that decade to watch the likes of Lieutenant Columbo, Marshal Sam McCloud and private investigator Jim Rockford more than the actual crimes they solved, and the same holds true for Castle. Although the episodes of the series are both enjoyable and intriguing in their own right, it is the characters of mystery novelist Richard Castle and homicide detective Kate Beckett that provide the true entertainment.
Similar to the main protagonists of yesteryear, Richard Castle and Kate Beckett have finely crafted personalities that go beyond the mere professional personas of contemporary forensic dramas. Richard Castle, for instance, is a successful writer who brings a quick-wit and touch of youthful innocence to the proceedings despite his age. Kate Beckett, meanwhile, is a no-nonsense cop that is haunted by the unsolved murder of her mother back in 1999.
The death of Johanna Beckett was the driving force in Kate Beckett’s decision to join the New York City Police Force, and she spent the first three years on the job conducting her own investigation into the crime. Eventually the obsession overwhelmed her and Beckett had to leave it behind, but the inquisitive nature of Richard Castle and a more recent murder with connections to the long ago tragedy briefly resurrected the event during the first two seasons of Castle. What had originally been ruled a case of gang violence thus became part of a larger conspiracy when it is discovered that the death of Johanna Beckett was just one of four unsolved murders from the same time period. The main culprit was eventually discovered to be a contract killer by the name of Dick Coonan, but Kate Beckett is forced to shoot Coonan before he can reveal who was ultimately behind the death of her mother. The ABC drama, however, adds additional insight into the crime during the third season episode “Knockdown” when the former lead investigator—retired police office John Raglan—is diagnosed with lymphoma and given six months to live.
“I hid a lot of sins behind my badge and now I got to carry them,” Raglan tells Kate Beckett. “But your mother’s case, that one weighs a ton.”
With the exception of an added “I did what I was told and I kept quiet because I was afraid,” Raglan digresses in regards to his confession. “You need some context here,” he begins. “This thing started about nineteen years ago, back before I ever knew who Johanna Beckett was. Nineteen years ago I made a bad mistake and that started the dominoes falling, and one of them was your mother.”
Before John Raglan is able to finish, however, a bullet rips through the window of the coffee shop in which they are meeting and ends the life of the retired police office. The shot came from the fourth floor of the building across the street, presumably by a professional sniper. Raglan’s friend and former academy classmate Gary McCallister immediately hints at drug lord Vulcan Simmons as a potential suspect.
“Raglan liked to play the ponies,” McCallister explains. “Nineteen, twenty years ago would have been about the time he had a string of bad luck. He was hard up for money. Word was he got well working as a dope courier for Simmons, moving product across town in his patrol car. If it were my case, I’d take a hard look at Vulcan Simmons.”
The information quickly begins to fit together. Ten years earlier, Simmons ran the drug trade in Washington Heights, an area of New York where Johanna Beckett had organized a “Take Back the Neighborhood” campaign against illegal dealers. The effort would have cost Simmons a lot of money, it is reasoned, and since Dick Coonan—the hit man who actually killed Kate Beckett’s mother—dealt in drugs himself, it wasn’t hard to believe that both Coonan and Vulcan Simmons might have known each other.
Simmons is brought in for questioning but his indifferent and mocking attitude inevitably ruffles the feathers of the normally in-control Kate Beckett. When she physically assaults the drug lord, Beckett is both chastised by her commanding officer, Captain Roy Montgomery, as well as taken off the John Raglan murder investigation.
While fellow homicide detectives Javier Esposito and Kevin Ryan take over the reigns of the case, Richard Castle suggests to Kate Beckett that the two of them conduct a clandestine examination into the death of Johanna Beckett. Even though Beckett had gone through her mother’s personal possessions years earlier, Castle believes they might be a good starting point nonetheless. While flipping through some old photos, the mystery novelist notices that a few of them are missing. Using computer imaging software to enhance the negatives, the two discover that Johanna Beckett had taken photographs of the same empty alley where she herself was murdered only a few weeks later. The place had originally been considered a “location of convenience” for the crime but now becomes a clue instead. After a brief perusing through the police archives, Richard Castle begins to understand the implications.
“It turns out before your mother there was another murder in this alley, back when it was the back entrance to a club called Sons of Palermo,” he tells Beckett. “It was a mafia hangout. It got shut down years before your mother was killed, after an FBI agent by the name of Bob Armen was killed in the alley behind it.” Mob enforcer Joe Pulgatti was convicted of the death but of more significance is the arresting officer in the case—John Raglan.
Richard Castle and Kate Beckett decide to visit Joe Pulgatti in prison. Although the former thug pleaded guilt, he maintains that he is innocent and only confessed in order to avoid the death penalty. “I was in that alley with Bobby,” he explains. “I was the only witness to his murder but it wasn’t a hit. It was a kidnapping that went sideways. Three guys in ski masks rolled up in a van, said they wanted to take me on a tour of the city. Bobby tried to stop them, he went for one of their guns and wound up on the wrong end of it.”
Because no one else knew that he was in the alley, Pulgatti is convinced that John Raglan was one of the men in ski masks that showed up at the scene. In later years, Joe Pulgatti wrote letters to various lawyers asking for assistance in proving his innocence, but only one ever answered—Johanna Beckett.
With a new lead, Richard Castle and Kate Beckett take a closer look at the murder of Bob Armen and discover that Raglan’s backup in the arrest of Pulgatti had been Gary McCallister, the retired police officer that put them on the false trail of Vulcan Simmons. It doesn’t take long before McCallister confesses to his involvement in the frame up of Joe Pulgatti, as well as the attempted kidnapping of the mob enforcer.
“He and the rest of those jackals fed on the city for decades but you couldn’t touch them because they bought everybody,” he explains to Beckett and Castle. “And this part, this part I want you to know because this part I’m not ashamed because at least we tried to do something. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t legal but it was right.”
It also wasn’t the first time. “We called it incarceration,” McCallister continues. “We grabbed them off the street and we’d take them somewhere and we’d tune them up. We put the fear of God into them, at least for a while. But we know we couldn’t hold them forever, so we set bail.”
Kate Beckett, of course, is more interested in the murder of her mother. While Gary McCallister has no qualms about admitting his involvement in the death of Bob Armen, he suddenly goes quiet when it comes to Johanna Beckett. “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” he tells Beckett. “That was somebody else. Somebody you’ll never touch. You don’t understand, detective. You woke the dragon. And this is so much bigger than you realize. And I’m done talking, I want a lawyer.”
The murder of Johanna Beckett in an empty alley in 1999 was initially ruled an unsolved act of gang violence, but by the conclusion of the season three episode of Castle entitled “Knockdown,” it has evolved into something much more. There was nothing random about the death at all, and with ties to a series of mob kidnappings by a trio of rogue police officers, the killing of an undercover FBI agent and matters still not yet revealed, it contains all the ingredients of a Richard Castle mystery novel—and enough intrigue to keep fans of the series hungry for more.
Anthony Letizia (October 3, 2011)
Discuss on the alterna-tv.com Forum
