This episode appears to be loosely based on the 1996 Kathleen Weinstein case. A New Jersey schoolteacher, Weinstien was carjacked and subsequently murdered in March of 1996. She had had the presence of mind to secretly record 46 minutes of her conversation with her killer, thus providing enough details to catch the suspect and prosecute him. Much like in the episode, after the forensics team had found 24 minutes of recorded data on one side of the cassette tape, they later found another critical 22 minutes on the other side of the tape.
The literal translation of "causa mortis" is Latin for "cause of death" or "caused by death". In law a document, such as a will, created "causa mortis" is one written in contemplation of impending death. In this episode, the phrase refers to the audio recording created by the murder victim.
The four Rankin children are played by siblings Jillian Bowen, Alex Bowen, Cameron Bowen and Andrea Bowen.
Detective Curtis mockingly asks an inmate that is appealing his case if he thinks he is "Claus von Bülow" and refers to his lawyer as "Alan dirt-for-brains." Curtis is referring to Claus von Bülow and his attorney Alan Dershowitz. von Bülow is well known for being tried and convicted for the attempted murder of his wife Sunny on two separate occasions. However, the convictions were later overturned on appeal. von Bülow's wife Sunny experienced two comas within a year: she recovered from the first coma, but the second one left her brain-dead. Both comas were initially determined to be caused by hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). During her second coma, doctors became suspicious and ran additional blood tests that showed she had high levels of insulin in her system. However, this testing was only done once and was likely a false positive. von Bülow was arrested for trying to kill his wife with an overdose of insulin twice. The main evidence that led to his conviction was a syringe found in his home with insulin on the outside of the needle. After his conviction, von Bülow hired Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz to handle his appeal. Dershowitz was assisted by future New York attorney general and governor Eliot Spitzer, who was a Harvard Law School student at the time. Dershowitz discovered that the syringe with the insulin on it was not found by the police but by family members of Sunny. They had hired a locksmith to break into parts of von Bülow's home and conducted an illegal search which turned up the syringe. The locksmith left the home after unlocking the doors. In the first trial, Sunny's family committed perjury by testifying that the locksmith had been at the home when they found the insulin and syringe. However, in the second trial they recanted their story and said that the locksmith never witnessed the search of the house. After learning this, Dershowitz had his own experts examine the syringe, and they determined that the syringe only had insulin on the outside of the needle and that no trace of insulin existed inside the syringe or on the plunger. If someone had injected Sunny with the syringe--pushing the needle into her skin--pulling it out would have wiped away any trace of insulin on the outside of the needle and traces of insulin would still exist inside the syringe and on the plunger. Meaning that one of von Bülow's in-laws conjured up fake evidence by dipping the tip of the syringe in a vial of insulin. Dershowitz also had eight expert witnesses, all of them highly respected doctors and medical school professors, testify that Sunny's comas had not been caused by an overdose of insulin but instead by chronic abuse of alcohol, aspirin, prescription opioid painkillers, and chronic health issues. It was also discovered that Sunny was admitted to the hospital three weeks before her second coma and that toxicology tests had shown that she had ingested at least 73 tablets of Percodan (aspirin/oxycodone) and that she was likely trying to commit suicide. Based on all of this newly discovered evidence, the two attempted murder convictions from the first trial were set aside by the Rhode Island Supreme Court. They granted von Bülow a new trial, and in 1985 the jury in the new trial found him not guilty on both counts of attempted murder.
The price shown for a gallon of gas is $1.31.