Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Netflix’s ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ follows Mickey Haller trying to figure out another murder mystery. His client, Lisa Trammell, has been accused of killing a businessman named Mitchell Bondurant. Like the Trevor Elliot case, Haller’s client is the only suspect in the crime, and the prosecution claims they have overwhelming evidence to prove her guilt. While Haller has suspicions about Lisa, they don’t matter because it is his job to get his client out of a trial with a verdict that best serves them, preferably an acquittal. The most sure-shot way of assuring Lisa’s freedom is finding the person who killed Mitchell. If you are wondering what might have happened to Bondurant and whether Lisa really killed him, here’s what you need to know about him. SPOILERS AHEAD
Did Lisa Kill Mitchell Bondurant?
From all the facts presented in the first half of the second of ‘The Lincoln Lawyer,’ several suspects have emerged. The first and most obvious one is Lisa Trammell. Lisa owns a restaurant right next to the property that was being developed by Bondurant. It was a part of his many other projects, and Lisa, along with other members of the community, resisted it due to gentrification.
Trouble arose for Lisa when things got violent during one of the protests, and Lisa got a restraining order. Soon after, Bondurant was killed in the parking lot, and Lisa was seen coming out of the building by Bondurant’s secretary. Lisa’s hatred for the victim was public knowledge, and she had a solid motive to want him dead. She also had the opportunity and was present near the crime scene. Circumstantial as it might be, it is evidence enough to make Lisa the prime suspect.
When Lisa is arrested, she claims her innocence. However, the most Haller looks into it, the more he realizes his client has lied to him. When Lisa came to him about the restraining order, she swore that she didn’t hit Bondurant, and he paid the witness in this case. Later, however, Cisco talks to the witness and discovers that Lisa was lying. She hit Bondurant during the protests, and the witness had photos to prove that.
In addition to this, Lisa misplaced the hammer in her toolbox, which could have been used as a murder weapon. In the pre-trial hearing, the prosecution revealed that traces of Bondurant’s blood were found on Lisa’s gardening gloves, which were confiscated from her tool shed when she was arrested. This is a revelation to Haller, who knew nothing about the gloves, making him wonder if Lisa is lying. However, there are other scenarios too.
Looking into Bondurant’s finances leads Haller and his team to Alex Grant, the owner of Argel Construction, who was in business with Bondurant. In an email, Bondurant, who already owed millions to Alex, threatened him with going to the Feds and reporting the “suspicious activities” Alex had been involved in. Cisco digs into Alex’s past and discovers that his surname is Kazania, meaning he belongs to the Armenian crime family in Los Angeles.
Haller has yet to discover what suspicious activity Bondurant was referring to in his email, but this is reason enough for Alex to have killed him. A member of a crime family killing someone who threatened them while also owing them millions of dollars is a better story than a chef killing a building contractor over protests against gentrification. This gives Haller the straw man to prove in court that the cops didn’t look into other possible suspects and focused singularly on Lisa.
While Haller means to use Alex Grant to turn the suspicion away from Lisa, he can’t ignore that she has too many things working against her. The prosecution has amassed enough evidence to make a case against Lisa. The cops arrested her because she is the simplest answer to the question of Bondurant’s murder. As Lorna said, sometimes the simplest answer is the right one.
In the books on which the Netflix series is based, Haller discovers that Lisa did kill Bondurant. She lied to him about her innocence, and this isn’t the only crime she had committed. The TV show has diverted from the source material in some aspects, which means that the outcome could differ from how it is in the books. Perhaps, Lisa is the red herring the show wants us to be occupied with while the real killer walks in plain sight.
Speaking of such a person, Henry Dahl comes to mind. The podcaster suddenly showed up out of nowhere to help Lisa get the bail bond money. He did this in return for the exclusive rights to her story. He had been in touch with her before when he interviewed her regarding the gentrification protests. However, he is much more interested in producing true crime podcasts and wants a project to put him on the map. Perhaps, when he couldn’t find a true crime story, he decided to create one. Perhaps, Henry Dahl killed Mitchell Bondurant.
Read More: Do Mickey and Lisa Get Together in The Lincoln Lawyer?
