‘Presumed Innocent’: Who Is the Killer?

In the nail-bitingly tense finale for Apple’s gripping courtroom thriller “Presumed Innocent,” audiences finally learned who killed lawyer Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve), the former lover of Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Rusty Sabich, who was charged and tried for the murder.

In last week’s episode, Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard), who relished the opportunity to prosecute his longtime rival, was ruled out as a suspect, as director Greg Yaitanes confirmed to TheWrap.

Tommy came home to find someone had left a fireplace poker — possibly the one used to kill Carolyn — in his house, with an unsigned, hand-printed note that read, “Go f—k yourself.”

Later, Rusty confronted Barbara in the garage, where she was obsessively riding the stationery bike. She had packed a bag… not to leave him now, but as a warning of what she would do if there’s a “next time.”

He told her that he’s known since the first night that she killed Carolyn, and admitted that he was the one to stage the body so it resembled the murder of Bunny Davis. He said everything he did was to protect her and the family, and that it was a clear case of disassociation, such as what their daughter Jaden (Chase Infiniti) had mentioned in a previous episode. Barbara was shocked and adamantly denied his accusation.

Rusty still didn’t believe her, because he had put a tracker in Barbara’s car, so he knew she was the one who drove to Tommy’s house to plant the poker.

That was when Jaden quietly joined them in the garage and admitted that she was the one who killed Carolyn. As Barbara began sobbing uncontrollably, Jaden described how she went over to Carolyn’s house the night of the murder to tell her to stay away from her father. When Carolyn said she couldn’t stay away completely because she was pregnant with Rusty’s child, Jaden grabbed the fireplace poker and struck her repeatedly.

Jaden drove home, thinking that it had all been a dream, at first. She cleaned the car and buried the poker in the yard. Rusty told her that this was all his fault, because he set the events in motion. He vowed that they will “never speak of this again.”

We later see the family happily celebrating Thanksgiving, as if none of this had ever happened. But Barbara and Rusty exchanged a somber look that clearly said neither of them would ever forget. It appears that Jaden’s brother Kyle (Kingston Rumi Southwick) never learned the truth.

“Presumed Innocent” was renewed for Season 2 on July 12, ahead of the release of the season’s final episodes. #PresumedInnocent #getlatests