Hot Pursuit

This episode appears to be based on two separate cases: The 1974 Patty Hearst case. In1974 Hearst was kidnapped by the left-wing terrorist organization The Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found and arrested 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. She was held in custody, and there was speculation before trial that her family's resources would enable her to avoid time in prison. At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. However, she testified that she had been raped and threatened with death while held captive. In 1976, she was convicted for the crime of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison, later reduced to 7 years. Her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and she was pardoned by President Bill Clinton. The 1958 Caril Ann Fugate case. Fugate was the girlfriend and accomplice to spree-killer Charles Starkweather, who himself was a high school dropout and five years older than her. Caril met Charles through her older sister who was dating Charles' friend. On January 21, 1958 Caril came home from school to find that Charles had killed her parents and stabbed her sister to death. They disposed of the bodies in the barn and lived in the house together for several days, allegedly having sex with each other in the same bed Caril's sister was killed in. When family and friends became suspicious after not seeing any other members of the family for several days Charles and Caril fled, driving across Nebraska and Wyoming where they murdered six more people. They robbed a high school couple at gunpoint, stealing $4 from them, the boy and girl were both found dead later that evening with the boy being shot in the head with a .410 shotgun and the girl's body found half-naked, wearing only her bra and panties, and stabbed several times in the stomach and breasts. After being caught Charles and Caril accused each other of killing the girl, though Charles claimed credit for the other five murders. Charles was convicted on five counts of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to death, he was executed by electric chair on June 25, 1959. Right up to his execution he continued to claim credit for five of the murders but insisted that Caril killed the high school girl, some reports say he claimed her reason for killing the girl was that she was jealous because Charles commented on how beautiful the girl was. Caril continued to claim that she was innocent and didn't kill anyone, and that she was a captive of Charles and he forced her to go along with the murders. The jury in her trial did not believe her, the prosecution presented evidence that she had multiple opportunities to flee from Charles and they also presented witnesses to the fact that Charles and Caril were in love with each other. The jury found her guilty on one count of first-degree murder and five counts of accomplice to first-degree murder and sentenced her to life in prison. She is the youngest female in United States history to be tried for first-degree murder, being only 14 years old at the time of the killings. The story is the basis for the 1973 film, Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.

The crime scene is the Vivant Room - a bar. The name is referred to frequently during the investigation and trial, yet when the detectives return to the scene of the crime for more information, it is labeled the Velvet Room. In the original airing, the actors did say "Velvet Room" but it was re-dubbed to "Vivant Room" for future airings. But the label was not changed.

References Star Trek (1966)