This episode appears to be based on two different crimes of family annihilation cases:
- The 1971/1989 John List (a.k.a. "The Boogeyman of Westfield") case. On November 9, 1971, List killed his wife, mother, and three children at their home in Westfield, New Jersey, then disappeared; he had planned the murders so meticulously that nearly a month passed before anyone suspected that anything was amiss. List became a fugitive from the law and assumed a new identity. He later remarried, and further eluded justice for nearly eighteen years. He was finally apprehended in Virginia on June 1, 1989, after the story of his murders was broadcast on the television program America's Most Wanted. After extradition to New Jersey, he was convicted on five counts of first degree murder and sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole. List gave critical financial problems, as well as his perception that his family members were straying from their religious faith, as his rationale for the murders. He reasoned that killing them would assure their souls a place in Heaven, where he hoped to eventually join them. List died in prison in 2008 at the age of 82.
- The 1976 Bradford Bishop case. One of the most famous family annihilation cases in American history. State Department official Bradford Bishop killed his entire family in 1976 when he didn't receive a promotion. He then vanished. He is still on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives list, and he has been featured on "America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back (1988)"and "Unsolved Mysteries (1987)." As late as 2010, the FBI believed that he was still alive, likely in Europe, and that he fled the U.S. shortly after the murders using his diplomatic passport.
Brooke Smith plays a friend of Jill Hennessy's character Claire. Both are lawyers. The two would later work together as doctors in Hennessy's show "Crossing Jordan (2001)."
In this episode, Ellen Pompeo plays Jenna Weber, and Brooke Smith plays Margot Bell, Jenna's father's lawyer. They both have worked together in Grey's Anatomy (2005) as well.
Actress Ellen Pompeo, who plays Jenna Weber, played a character named Laura Kendrick 4 years later in Fools for Love (2000) (S10E15).
Linda Emond has played three different characters over the course of the series:
- Episode 6.16 Savior (1996) - Laura Cochran.
- Episode 10.13 Panic (2000) - Carolyn Tyler.
- Episode 15.20 Tombstone (2005) - Rosalie Helton.