Murder, She Wrote Season 3, Episode 11
"Night of the Headless Horseman"
Original Airdate: Jan. 4, 1987
Writer: R. Barker Price
Director: Walter Grauman
Cast: Angela Lansbury, Thom Bray, Karlene Crockett, Judy Landers, Hope Lange, Doug McClure, Charles Siebert, Guy Stockwell, Fritz Weaver, Barry Williams, Brandon Douglas, Forry Smith
Tonight on Murder, She Wrote we’ve got a modern take on a classic American ghost story, Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The way the killer is handled here anticipates the slashers of the post-Scream era. It’s too bad we didn’t cover this during spooky season proper. Then again, this episode first aired in January of 1987.
Mommy? Sorry. Mommy?
Meet our modern Ichabod Crane, Dorian Beecher, played by Thom Bray of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness and Barnyard Commandos. Dorian teaches poetry at a private school in Wenton, Vermont. He’s sweet on his boss’s daughter, Sarah (Crockett), but fears daddy won’t accept a low-born geek like him into the family. Walking home alone one night along a country road, Dorian is accosted by a cloaked rider who hurls a glowing jack-o-lantern at his head.
Recognizing the horse, Gunshot, Dorian identifies the rider as Nate Findley, the school’s riding instructor and the “Brom Bones” of this caper. Shaken, Dorian delivers a barbaric yawp, swearing to the harvest moon he’ll get revenge on the local womanizer.
Soon after, Dorian picks Jessica up from the train station in his plum 1935 Cadillac V-12 370-D convertible. Hell of a whip for a poetry teacher at a boys’ academy. She meets local dentist Penn Walker (Siebert) whom anyone who’s ever watched a crime procedural will immediately clock as the week’s killer. Just doesn’t pass the vibe check.
Jessica finds the interaction odd for another reason and it demands an immediate explanation from Dorian. Turns out he didn’t just invite his friend here for a holiday; he wants her to pose as his mother! His colleagues are already expecting her. Wild behavior. Jessica begrudgingly agrees to play along, only because Dorian’s dug himself so deep. They barely get through introductions with Sarah and her father, Edwin Dupont, played by three-time MSW guest Fritz Weaver (Creepshow!).
Dorian, in reality an orphan, shows off his fashionable new mother around campus. They encounter headmistress Charlotte Newcastle (Lange), stable master Dorn Van Stotter (Stockwell), and Bobbie (Landers), a pretty young waitress at the local tavern. Bobbie, perpetually garbed in a colonial serving wench uniform, flashes a new necklace from Nate Findley. Dr. Walker takes notice of the bauble in the all-too conspicuous fashion of a future murderer. When Nate arrives, presumably to give Dorian his daily swirly, it’s in the form of Barry Williams, Greg Brady himself! And boy if he isn’t Gaston-coded. Williams is up to the task of playing this guy like a world-class jerk. He’s even got a crew of townies to help him shove poor Dorian around. Our spindly poet’s at his wit’s end, though, and his stunt double delivers a haymaker to ol’ Nate, knocking loose a molar. The pair comes close to dueling with sabers from the tavern wall. Dorian flees to blow off steam, leaving Jessica to head out on her borrowed bicycle.
Later, on that same lonely stretch of country road, Nate’s friends pull up in a car and taunts Dorian with one of the sabers. They leave him with the weapon after they get their jokes in, some unlucky happenstance as we’ll soon see. Alone once more, Dorian hears the approach of the Horseman. He brazenly attempts to charge at the rider, who knocks him out cold. When he finally wakes up a few hours later, the saber is gone.
The Junior Skull and Bones Club
Early that morning, some boys find a body while out fishing. A snake tattoo on the right forearm identifies the body as Nate Findley’s. That’s fortunate because his head is missing. Police find the saber nearby. Curiously, Nate’s boots are on the wrong feet.
Given the scene they’d made in the tavern the night before, Dorian is the prime suspect and it’s not long before he’s taken into custody. This is around the time when the whole fib about Jessica being his mother unravels and the whole town learns the truth. Now it’s time for J.B. to find a missing head, infiltrate an elite boys’ club, and solve a conspiracy surrounding blackmail and embezzled funds at the academy. Oh, and hopefully exonerate Dorian in the process. Of course loverboy is far more concerned about Mr. Dupont learning he isn’t of proper stock to court Sarah.
In the short time she’s been at Wenton, Jessica keeps spotting a little trust fund twerp named Todd (Douglas) nosing around, paying particular interest to Nate’s horse, Gunshot. Fortunately this isn’t a weird Equus scenario; Todd and two of his cronies have a little Skull and Bones club setup above the stables where they hatch schemes and commune with dead republicans at a Ouija board. Jessica breaches their salt barrier and shakes loose a confession. They were the ones originally responsible for terrorizing Dorian in the guise of the Headless Horseman. They don’t fully elaborate, so in my head it’s the three of them sitting atop each other’s shoulders under the cloak to approximate a full grown man.
One of these boys also saw the stable master, Van Stotter, bury something in the corner of the stables. It’s gotta be Nate’s head. The police investigate, with Jessica and the boys hilariously positioned in full view of the excavation. Fortunately when they unearth the old sack and the wooden box within, it’s not a prelude to Se7en. It’s just cash that Van Stotter’s been stealing from the school to fund a private investigation into the death of his daughter, Gretchen.
What if I told you Gretchen is the name of a young woman whose photograph can be seen framed in Dr. Walker’s dental office? And in that photo she’s wearing a familiar gold necklace.
Confessions, Like Pulling Teeth
This one’s pretty wild, even for MSW standards. Dr. Walker was engaged to Gretchen some time ago, but she left him for Nate Findley while Walker was in Italy. At some point Nate took possession of the necklace, which Walker had actually made for her. Gretchen and Nate crashed her car into a lake one night and Nate was able to swim to safety, leaving her to die alone. Police ruled it an accidental death, but her father always suspected that someone else had been in the car with her.
When Walker saw Bobbie wearing the necklace, claiming it was an unwanted gift from Nate, he realized Nate was linked to Gretchen. You’ll recall that Nate lost a tooth when Dorian punched him. He sought emergency care from Walker that evening, and Walker spent much of that encounter wondering how to kill him. When Nate saw the photo of Gretchen, he boasted — in an admittedly hysterical flashback narrated by Walker — to have cucked the man working on his teeth. Walker stabbed him with a pick, killing him instantly. Between that wound and the fresh dental work, Walker decided he had to get rid of Nate’s head. Which gave him an idea. Why not exploit Nate’s feud with Dorian and the recent Headless Horseman pranks?
You can probably put the rest together. Walker confronted Dorian as the Horseman, knocked him out, and staged Nate’s body to frame Dorian. The presence of the saber made it even easier.
I don’t think he ever reveals where the head is.
When Dorian drops Jessica off at the train station, she makes him promise to invite her to his and Sarah’s wedding. Just then, Sarah arrives by taxi. She’s been off at a hotel avoiding her domineering father. In that time, she’s been reading some of Jessica’s books. Inspired by her fiercely independent female protagonists, Sarah has decided to start a whole new chapter in New York City. Dorian wonders how he fits into this new life. Reader, he does not. As she exits to purchase her train ticket, Dorian turns glumly to Jessica and says the next time he summons her for an emergency he hopes she’ll ignore it. Ouch! Jessica offers an exaggerated shrug.
And with that, Pop Heist's Retro Recaps of Murder, She Wrote hit the pause button for the holidays. I'll be back in 2026 with a new stretch of episodes — starting with a mystery set 40,000 feet over the Atlantic!
