Edward "Ned" Lasky is a man obsessed with the Kappa Delta Alpha sorority, believing his soulmate was in it and the sorority was keeping them apart.
Background[]
Ned was born to a working-class couple in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His father was a factory worker, while his mother worked as a grocer at Burbank's Market. Ned attended the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, majoring in Chemistry. In his sophomore year, he met a student visiting from Dartmouth College, Susan, at one of their football games and developed a crush on her. After she mentioned she was transferring to a university in Illinois, she invited him to a party at her sorority, Kappa Delta Alpha (KDA), and Ned accepted. He hitchhiked all the way to Dartmouth to meet up with Susan, but when he arrived, the sorority president, Joyce, asked him to leave after Susan instructed her to. Ned became enraged to the point where Joyce threatened to call campus police, forcing him to leave. Ned went on to blame Joyce for keeping him and Susan apart. He dropped out after completing his sophomore year and returned home. Ned tried to convince his parents to let him transfer to Harvard, but his parents said they couldn't afford to send him anywhere else except a state school. Ned then started calling every Illinois college town with a KDA chapter in an effort to look for Susan.
Eventually, Ned's search didn't bear any fruit, and he returned to the University of Massachusetts, where he earned his bachelor's degree. After graduating, Ned married a woman named Nora, but he continued to view Susan as his soulmate. They eventually had a daughter named Molly. Ned drew Molly into his obsession with KDA by forcing her to do certain activities so Molly would eventually have the qualifications to pledge at the sorority and help him find Susan. To this end, Ned made Molly take ballet and French lessons after school, paid for riding lessons in Central Park, and had her volunteer to collect clothes for the homeless. While Molly was a B+ student, Ned was disappointed, believing she wasn't beautiful enough, and because she would rather go skateboarding than do the activities Ned was forcing her to take. When Molly started attending Seldom College to study biology, she told Ned that she still would like to pledge KDA. Ned responded that she wasn't the best and that they wouldn't accept her because she was too ordinary, then called Nora second-rate and her third-rate. He gave Molly the same response when she told him of her aspirations to become an actress.
In 2003, Ned's obsession with finding Susan reached a breaking point: he started going around the country, visiting every college town with a KDA chapter in it, but he was unsuccessful. In 2007, Ned started vandalizing the KDA's Wikipedia page with false and derogatory information and continued to do so until he was locked out by an administrator. At some point, Ned found out that Joyce got married and is now Joyce Foley. In November 2008, Ned, a fact-checker, convinced his boss to let him be a reporter and to do a story about Joyce and her husband Harold. Ned used this opportunity to aggressively research Joyce and Harold's line of work. He then started calling Joyce's office for an interview, but she kept ignoring her calls. In response to this, Ned called Joyce's boss, complaining about how she was ignoring him, thus forcing Joyce to agree to an interview. When Ned went to the interview with the express intention of asking about Susan, he discovered that Joyce had sent her intern in her place, enraging him.
Pledge[]
On October 13, Ned walks to the Foley house, knocks on the door, and is answered by the housekeeper Grazinya. He murders her and Joyce and Harold's son Eric. Afterwards, Ned cuts off a patch of Eric's hair, drives all the way to Amherst, and mails the hair to Joyce with a note taunting her. Interviewed by Detectives Lupo and Bernard about the Foleys, Ned tells them about a study his workplace conducted three years ago and claims it was never published. He then implies the Foleys either supplemented the money gained from the study into their accounts, or didn't publish the study because of a horrible outcome they didn't want exposed. Later on, Ned attends Eric's wake, where he taunts Joyce about her son's death before being pulled away by Lupo and Bernard. Ned claims he went to the funeral because he felt sorry for them and lost control for a moment. Lupo asks where he was at the time of the murder; Ned says he was working but cannot recall where from. When asked if he had ever been to Amherst, Ned refuses to answer and leaves after the detectives warn him to stay away from the Foleys. He then starts telling his family the police are harassing him for no reason.
Ned prepares to leave for Vermont to look for Susan, but he is arrested by Lupo and Bernard before he can get in his car. At his arraignment, Ned pleads not guilty and claims he is being persecuted for being a reporter hunting a story. When ADA Rubirosa asks for remand, citing his harassment of the Foleys, Ned claims he was following up on a story he was writing. After the judge instructs him to settle down, Ned takes it personally and claims she is trying to silence him. He is remanded, but requests through his attorney that he be allowed to continue his job as a journalist in prison, including access to writing and research material, which the judge allows as long as he doesn't contact the victims' families. On October 23, Ned tries to get his attorney to file two motions on his behalf. The first is a motion to dismiss the charges, citing a conspiracy between Hudson University, the AMA, and the Manhattan DA's office. The second is a discovery motion for Rubirosa's college transcripts and law school application, trying to find out if she is a member of KDA. When his lawyer refuses, Ned uses the writing materials to file the motions, pro se, directly to the DA's Office.
In court, Ned argues that the medical institutes are framing him for murder by bribing witnesses with the promise of a $100,000 reward for information, and are using the DA's Office to help them. Judge Rachel Cates denies the motion to dismiss and moves on to his second motion, the discovery request. Before Cates can rule, Ned reveals he wants to amend it to include hers as well. When he will not reveal the reason why, this motion is denied as well. After his attorney files a motion to dismiss the charges, he listens to Molly testify to Ned's emotional abuse. When Joyce takes the stand, she says Susan told her to force Ned to leave. Ned snaps and shouts that she is lying. On cross-examination, Joyce says Ned didn't have a chance with Susan, infuriating him into replying out of line before his attorney stops him. When the testimonies are done, the judge decides to hear closing arguments and adjourns the court until the next day. When EADA Cutter says they have one more witness to call, Ned's attorney objects to this. However, when Cutter identifies the witness as Susan, Ned yells out that he wants to hear what she has to say, and instructs his attorney to withdraw his objection.
During her testimony, Susan explains that, at the time she invited Ned to the party, she was participating in a competition between the sorority sisters, in which they invited everyone they can find to their mixers. Sometimes, some of the sisters would ask to have another sister "squash a bug", which was a code for making someone who did not attend an elite school leave the party. When Cutter asks if she was like that, Susan explains that her mother was in KDA and only joined the sorority to make her happy. She then says that she wasn't concerned about money or elitism like the other sisters and would have married a blue-collar man like Ned. When Cutter asks how she knows, Susan replies that she already did. Ned flies into a rage and proclaims to Joyce that he hates her, then confesses to killing her son to make her feel the same pain he did when she kept him and Susan apart. Cutter then reveals that while everything Susan said was true, her maiden name was Laramie, while the Susan Ned knew was Susan Walden, who was murdered, in 2000, by her husband in a drug-fueled rage in their Bahamas yacht. Realizing Joyce was telling the truth about not having a chance with Susan, Ned accepts a plea of two sentences of thirty years to life imprisonment to be served concurrently.