Lenanne Wellesley | |
---|---|
Vital Statistics | |
Gender | Female |
Status | Alive |
Children | Winston Wellesley (son) Blake Wellesley (son) Unnamed Son (deceased) |
Other family | Olivia Debiasse (granddaughter; deceased), Trent Wellesley (grandson) |
Character Information | |
Appearances | Kill the Messenger |
Portrayed by | Jill Andre |
Lenanne Wellesley is the iron-fisted, if now occasionally addled, matriarch of one of the city's great families.
Mrs. Wellesley appears with the rest of her clan in "Kill the Messenger", and when she first encounters Beckett, with Castle in tow, presumes the police have finally stopped messing about with their unimportant matters and assigned personnel to the vital task of recovering her lost ring, believed stolen. Her grandson Trent therefore steps away to answer the official enquiries, and sends the duo in search of his Uncle Winston.
Blake, the favored child and candidate for senator, turns out to be the true focus of his mother's machinations, however, since he had fathered a daughter out of wedlock, a revelation the then-lucid Lenanne had decided could not be allowed to interfere with his stellar trajectory. She, therefore, gave instructions to her 'fixer', Frank Davis, to "take care of it", and Olivia Debiasse disappeared from the Wellesleys' lives - and the world.
Frank paid a desperate soul called Brady Thompson to take the fall for the murder, but when Lenanne was found to be non compos mentis, power of attorney passed to Blake, and Frank was cut off from the source of funding for his payments. He assumed Brady would simply rot in prison, but the other man had taken the precaution of storing proof of his innocence with his aunt, Sally Niedermeyer.
Frank was therefore in dire straits, and stole Lenanne's ring to cover a few final payments, those that would get Brady silenced permanently and retrieve the evidence from the corpse of Caleb Shimansky, the unfortunate bike messenger who was taking the exonerating material to Captain Roy Montgomery.
Confronted again by Beckett and Castle, Lenanne makes the outright statements "I don't care for questions. Olivia questioned me.", and shows absolutely no signs of remorse that her desire not to be 'inconvenienced' caused three human beings to die.
Her mental state, however, along with the remaining family fortune and connections, makes it seem extremely unlikely that this still-dominating woman will face trial as an accomplice.