Leann West (Christine Woods) is the hidden main villainess from "47 Seconds," episode 4.19 of Castle (airdate March 26, 2012). She is a reporter for station WMZT, and in the episode, Leann was covering the TakeOver protests at Boylan Plaza.
However, as revealed later on, Leann had her own agenda, as she was looking to use the protests to boost her career. She colluded with the leader of the protests, Jesse Friedman, to plant a bomb in the area to make it appear that the movement was under attack. The bomb was originally placed in-between two dumpsters in an alley and hidden inside a backpack until a thief (who didn't know what was inside the backpack) took it from the location. Before the bomb was taken, Jesse gave the go-ahead, and during the report, the evil Leann detonated the bomb. The explosion killed five people (including Jesse) and left 28 injured.
Leann was revealed as the villainess when Castle deduced the chain of events that occurred in the 47 second time frame. She was interrogated by Castle and Beckett, and after denying the claims, Leann was shown the burner phone used in her brief contact with Jesse at the event, and the remote she used to detonate the bomb. Leann finally admitted to the bombing, and defended her self-serving actions; claiming she kept quiet out of fear for her career and for Jesse. Leann was later taken into FBI custody.
Trivia[]
- "No one was supposed to get hurt. It was just going to make a lot of noise and people would start respecting me as a reporter but everything just went wrong. (Beckett: "Why didn’t you just come forward when you realized what you had done?") I thought about it, but what good would that do? I kept quiet for Jesse. I wanted to protect his memory." (Leann West's confession to planning the bombing)