Minnelli guest stars on 'Criminal Intent'

Oscar and Emmy winner Liza Minnelli will guest-star on a November sweeps episode of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" that puts a fictional spin on the JonBenet Ramsey case.

Minnelli, who had a recurring part on FOX's "Arrested Development" the past few seasons, will play a woman named Beth Harner in the episode, which is filming now and will air sometime in November. The character is a former beauty queen whose child-actress daughter was murdered 14 years ago.

The unsolved case returns to the spotlight when a pedophile confesses to the murder.

That storyline parallels events in the Ramsey case in August, when John Mark Karr, who was living in Thailand at the time, confessed to killing 6-year-old JonBenet, who competed in child beauty pageants, on Dec. 26, 1996. He was extradited to the United States, but the case fell apart after DNA tests could not place him at the crime scene (Karr is set to go to trial this week in Santa Rosa, Calif., on separate charges of possessing child pornography).

Minnelli won an Oscar in 1973 for her role in "Cabaret"; that same year, she took home an Emmy for her TV special "Liza with a Z (a remastered version of which debuted on Showtime earlier this year). She's also a two-time Tony and Golden Globe winner.

Her other credits include "New York, New York," "Arthur" and, most recently, the indie film "The OH in Ohio," which had a brief run in theaters this summer.