 Mitchell in 1990 | |
| Mitchell Bayes | |
| Portrayed by | John Walcutt |
| Episode | Churchgoing People |
| Status | Deceased (1990) |
Mitchell Bayes was an organist at Drexel Insurance and played the organ at St Anthony's Episcopal Church in Roxborough and the main victim in "Churchgoing People".
History[]
Married to Charlotte Bayes, and the father of Ryan and Tina Bayes, behind the facade of being a nice, respectable churchgoing family, Mitch's life was very different than it seemed. His wife Charlotte was an abusive alcoholic who would beat him and verbally abuse their children for hours when she was drunk. They maintained separate bedrooms, with Mitch's having several locks. He couldn't sleep unless he was locked in at night. He had also begun an affair with Judy Enright, who sang in the choir in his church and whose husband was in a wheelchair. Knowing that his son, Ryan, was blatantly favored by Charlotte, Mitch did his best to make it up to his daughter Tina, often making her milkshakes and calling her his "best girl".
On the night of his death, while driving his daughter to a sleepover, Tina confronted him about Judy, telling him it was a sin. Mitch seemingly disregarded her mention of Judy and replied that her friend was waiting, but later that night went to meet Judy at a motel as they had arranged, and broke off the affair, telling her he couldn't have his daughter be ashamed of him. Meanwhile, Judy's husband had also discovered the affair and had called the Bayes home, informing Ryan that his father was a 'cheating sinner'
Upon returning home, Mitch was confronted by a drunk Charlotte, who had kept Ryan home from his date at the high school dance to commiserate with her. He refused to discuss anything with Charlotte while she was drunk, and offered to drive Ryan to the dance once he put on some dry clothes, stating that no teenage boy wants to stay home with his mother on a Saturday night. As he proceeded upstairs to change out of his rain-soaked clothes, Charlotte followed him, stumbling and slurring, ordering him not to walk away and calling Judy 'cheap Christmas trash'. After hearing a mirror in the upstairs hall break behind him, Mitch turned around and realized that Charlotte was wielding a fireplace poker. He tried closing his bedroom door on her, but it was too late, she attacked him with the poker and killed him while a horrified Ryan watched, ordering Ryan to get the van after she realized Mitchell was dead.
Under Charlotte's orders, Ryan drove the van to Kensington Avenue, which Ryan knew was frequented by hookers after driving by it to look at them with his friend Tom Walsh, and then staged the van to look like the crime scene with discarded crack vials found in the alley and some porno magazines stolen from Tom's dad. Despite the van looking obviously staged, Mitch's case went cold, possible due to the assigned detective, Gil Sherman, having a drinking problem.
In 2003, ironically it was the mutterings of his now-feeble widow, Charlotte, that prompted Detective Lilly Rush to reopen Mitch's case. It didn't take long for Lilly to figure out that Mitch hadn't been killed by a hooker as assumed, and that his body had merely been dumped there. This came as a relief to Mitch's now-grown and troubled daughter Tina, who for all these years had assumed that the 'Judy' her dad had been having an affair with had been a prostitute. After Ryan, who became the prime suspect after finding the name of his friend's dad on the porno magazines, was confronted, he revealed the truth about his mother, which led to her arrest. After Charlotte's arrest, Mitchell's spirit "appears" to Tina with a milkshake, smiling, and watches over his children.