A family stands around an elderly man on his death bed in the family mansion at the start of High Potential episode 11. George Donovan (Lawrence Pressman) tells his daughter Heather (Marguerite Moreau) to start recording because he wants to confess a secret. She turns on her phone and he confesses that 10 years earlier he killed Barry, Heather’s husband.
He waited for Barry at the top of the basement steps and knocked him down the stairs. After Barry fell back and snapped his neck, George moved Barry to the sauna, so it looked like an accident.
But there’s more to this cold case than meets the eye. Read on for our in-depth recap of the case at the center of High Potential episode 11, "The Sauna at the End of the Stairs.”
Selena’s not convinced
Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) and Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) are bantering when Lt. Melon (Garrett Dillahunt) and Captain John (Russell Wong) go into Selena’s (Judy Reyes) office. They brought her a bottle of champagne to close out a 10-year-old case, the Bucket Lane murder, after the Donovan family sent in the video of George’s confession. But Selena is angry. Morgan isn’t familiar with the case so Selena explains.
The Donovans are a rich influential family, so the Bucket Lane murder was in the news for months. Melon thought George did it, but George was able to beat the charges because there wasn’t any evidence. Selena never thought George was the killer and the case has bothered her ever since.
At first, they thought it was an accidental death, but Barry had a broken neck. So their theory was that the killer pushed him down the basement stairs then stuck him in the sauna and turned it on high so it looked like he fell asleep and cooked himself. The only evidence was a single drop of blood on one of George’s shirts that was in a laundry cart in the basement. Lenore Donovan (Pamela Roylance) said she saw Barry going down to the basement in his robe around midnight the night he died, so they assumed he died just after that.
Selena always felt something was off. She asks Morgan to go through the case files and see if there’s anything they missed. Morgan dives into the case and spends several days going over all the evidence, eventually coming up with a totally different theory.
Morgan’s theory
Morgan thinks someone killed Barry while he was in the shower by sticking a hair dryer that was lying on the sink into the shower while the water was on.
The hair dryer used to kill Barry was a 70s model, which didn’t have the safeguards that hair dryers started implementing in the 80s to protect against electrocution. But the outlet sparked and caught fire when the dryer was thrown into the shower.
The killer panicked and dumped Barry’s body down the laundry chute in the bathroom. When Barry hit the laundry cart in the basement it broke his neck and deposited the drop of blood on George’s shirt. Then the killer moved Barry into the sauna and placed a wine bottle next to him to make it look like an accident.
Upstairs, the killer replaced the burned outlet cover with an outlet cover from Barry’s bedroom. She points out that all the other outlet covers in the bathroom were covered in wallpaper except one. The one near the shower.
Selena, Morgan and Karadec go to the Donovan’s mansion to test Morgan’s theory, bringing along a dummy to see if a body the size of Barry would fit into the chute.
But they’re not the only ones looking back into the case. So is Nedda Donovan (Nasim Pedrad), who is making a documentary about the murder.
Testing the theory
In the mansion, they go right to the bathroom where Morgan thinks the murder happened. When Morgan removes the outlet cover with no wallpaper, they find the outlet underneath is burnt. And in the attached bedroom behind the bed they find a scorched wallpaper-covered outlet cover on the wall. In the bedroom Morgan also finds a remote that controls the TV, cameras and other electronics.
The next test they do is to shove the dummy through the laundry chute. It falls down the chute into the laundry cart with a crack. Morgan’s theory holds water.
Back at the precinct Nedda tries to convince Oz (Deniz Akdeniz) and Daphne (Javicia Leslie) to speak to her, but they refuse to speak on camera. Nedda, who is Clark Donovan’s ex-wife, tells them George didn’t kill Barry, though she doesn’t have an answer for who did. Nedda does reveal that the family found out the day of the murder that Barry was beating Heather. This causes Oz to frantically call Selena to tell her.
Melon sees Nedda at the precinct, and is furious that Selena and the others went to Bucket Lane. He grabs Captain Pacheco (Keith David) and they head to the Donovan’s to stop the investigation.
What really happened
The family and the detectives gather in the living room to hash things out. Someone in that room killed Barry. The suspects include Heather Donovan, her son Cody (Noah Silver), Clark Donovan (Jonathan Chase), Lenore Donovan and Matt Donovan (Ryan Devlin).
Everyone tells a piece of the story, but it’s up to Morgan to put a timeline together and figure out who killed Barry. Eventually Morgan gets everything straight. Cody killed his father for beating his mother. He shoved the body down the chute, then switched out the outlet covers. Then he went back downstairs.
After the family went to bed, Cody put on Barry’s robe and went to the basement, which is what Lenore saw. Then he put Barry in the sauna and staged the accident. Captain Pacheco and Melon are floored by Morgan’s abilities. Cody confesses and is arrested.
New episodes of High Potential air Tuesdays on ABC. Stream them the next day on Hulu.
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