'Perry Mason' HBO: What We Know About Who Killed Charlie Dodson, Through 'Chapter 4'

The HBO series has been sparse with the clues, but it sure does look like there’s a conspiracy afoot

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(Spoilers ahead for “Perry Mason” on HBO through the July 12 episode)

“Perry Mason” on HBO isn’t quite your standard whodunit — as is usually the case with these sorts of HBO shows, the character stuff comes first. But it’s definitely also a whodunit.

We’re halfway through this story now, and it really doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten much of a glimpse at the big picture yet. There’s just a bunch of disparate hints and not much connective tissue to bring them all together.

As of this week’s episode, we know at least four people were involved in the kidnapping and murder of Charlie Dodson. Three of them are dead, and one is still alive. We have no idea whether there’s some kind of greater conspiracy, but this is an old-style noir thriller — there’s almost certainly some kind of conspiracy here.

So right now, here’s what we know. Charlie Dodson was kidnapped by a group of men who promptly demanded a ransom payment of $100,000 from the parents, Matthew (Nate Corddry) and Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin). They were able to pay that ransom thanks to Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick) — Matthew is his bastard son.

The Dodsons left the money in a hotel room near Angels Flight in downtown Los Angeles and went to retrieve Charlie, who had been left on one of the train cars. But Charlie was dead, his eyes sewn open so other people in the train car would think he as alive.

At least four men were involved in the kidnapping. After the ransom swap, three of the men hid out in another hotel. The fourth man, LAPD Detective Ennis (Andrew Howard), retrieved the ransom money then met up with the other three. At which point he murdered all three of his co-conspirators.

Before Ennis showed up and killed them, we saw the trio discussing how the whole thing went down — all three of them indicated they didn’t know that Charlie would die. One of the men even specified that someone gave Charlie’s body to them, meaning either Ennis or someone else was the real mastermind behind the whole thing. So Ennis was tying up loose ends either for himself or on the behalf of said mastermind.

One of the three dead men was George Gannon (Aaron Stanford). Gannon was having an affair with Emily Dodson, and he worked at the Radiant Assembly of God, the evangelical revivalist church where Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany) leads. George is likely the one who did the actual kidnapping.

While Los Angeles district attorney Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root) uses Emily’s relationship with George as an excuse to pounce on Emily, it’s very much unlikely that Emily had anything to do with the kidnapping of her son. First, it’s just too easy and simple. And second, there’s just no way the cops are right in a “Perry Mason” story.

So what we know right now is the Detective Ennis is, at minimum, an accessory to the kidnapping and murder of baby Charlie. And it’s possible he’s the mastermind. But we learned about Ennis’s involvement in the kidnapping during the premiere episode, and it’s tough to fathom them giving away the game so early on.

More likely is that there’s a greater conspiracy at work. The biggest suspect thus far is Baggerly. He fronted the ransom money, after all — something that wouldn’t upset him too much if he knew he’d get some or most of it back. Thus far Baggerly hasn’t said anything that I would consider incriminating, beyond just being a creepy sexist old guy, but he’s certainly leapt on the chance to distance his son from Emily. Could this whole thing just be a way for Baggerly to bring his son into the fold and remake him in his own image?

It sorta looks like Baggerly is doing just that, convincing Dodson to help the case against Emily. This could just be opportunism on Baggerly’s part, or he could be turning Matthew against Emily just for the sake of making the situation go away. It’s hard to tell either way, but it does kinda look like Baggerly could have a potential motive.

There are two other folks whose part in this situation isn’t super clear as of now, but they certainly feel like prime suspects. The first is Detective Holcomb, Ennis’s partner. At best, Holcomb is barely trying in this investigation. At worst, he’s in on it with Ennis. But there’s been nothing that directly incriminates him yet.

The other is District Attorney Barnes. Barnes may have cleared himself this week during his scene with Ennis and Holcomb in the bathroom, when he yelled at them after Perry Mason found evidence that a fourth man was involved. He directly asked them who killed Charlie Dodson, which is not a question that somebody who was in on it would ask.

That said, Barnes can certainly be “in on it” without knowing the particulars. Barnes appears to have a vested interest in pinning the murder on Emily, which could just be a case of “the mayor is on my butt to clear this big case.” Or it could be that he was told by the conspirators to make sure Emily goes down for the murder. He could just be the corrupt DA making sure the right and powerful folks get what they want.

And, for the record, Barnes’s attempt to blackmail E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) was such a power move that it felt like something more than just standard criminal justice machinations. It was like using a nuclear option.

Beyond that, it’s pretty tough to put the pieces together right now, or at least you’d need somebody smarter than I am to do so. In any case, there’s still four more episodes of “Perry Mason” left, and hopefully the answers will start to trickle in a little faster from here on out.

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