 " Gone for Goode " included several storylines , and even exact bits of dialogue , adapted straight from Homicide : A Year on the Killing Streets . Among them were the investigation into Calpurnia Smith , an elderly woman suspected of murdering five husbands in order to collect their life insurance policies . This was based on the real @-@ life case of Geraldine Parrish , who was also accused of killing five husbands for insurance money , and was eventually convicted for three of their deaths . A scene involving a funeral director accidentally exhuming the wrong body while investigating the Church case mirrored a similar situation described in Homicide : A Year on the Killing Streets from the Parrish case . The Adena Watson murder case , which is assigned to Bayliss in the final scene of " Gone for Goode " , was adapted from the unsolved 1988 slaying of Latonya Kim Wallace , which made up a major part of the book . The Watson case became an important story arc throughout the first season which ended without the case being solved . The hit @-@ and @-@ run murder of Jenny Goode was also based on Simon 's book , and the murder of the elderly man was inspired by a case featured in the book in which a young homosexual man killed his elderly lover and stole his car . 
