CSI: Miami – Episode 7.04 “Raging Cannibal” Recap

Episode 7.04 – Raging Cannibal
Air Date: October 13, 2008

A couple “exploring” in the Everglades are interrupted by what sounds like a panther. Suddenly, a man, bleeding fron his mouth, comes out of the brush. The woman calls 911.

As the man, lies dead, Horatio and Frank question the man who discovered the victim. The man says he is authorized to be in that restricted area, but his lady friend is not, “technically.” He appears to have brought her to the ‘Glades to “get technical.”

They identify the victim as Vincent Koslov. Price and Ryan inspect the Koslov’s bloodied abdomen. Price tells him that he must have been stabbed through to the stomach, leading to his spitting up blood. In autopsy, though, she finds his stomach and lungs were not pierced. A tattooed piece of flesh in the his stomach indicates he had another man’s blood on his face…he ate another man’s flesh. Horatio recognizes the stag design as a Russian mob tattoo, one that indicates he was “marked for death.” Who was the other victim, though.
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Calleigh and Eric search the surrounding area, and find the other victim, Andrew Brodsky. Brodsky is also tattoed. Eric, who is half Russian and uncomfortably familiar with the Russian mob, tells her that they tattoo the story of their exploits. The cat on the victim’s chest indicates that he was a thief. Brodsky has a large bite mark on his neck, exposing the severed carotid artery. There is a bloodied diving knife at the scene. The other victim’s blood wasn’t on the knife handle, though. They now need to find a third man. At the lab, Eric finds prints on the knife handle, belonging to Greg Donner, who works at Diver Tech Supply.

[NOTE: Was I the only person who enjoyed the subtle irony of a character named "Donner" in an episode entitled Raging Cannibal...?]

Horatio questions Donner. He claims to have sold the knife to a blonde woman that morning. He had her number and name; Cassandra Gray. When Horatio and Eric confront Ms. Gray, she confesses…far too quickly.

When Horatio and Eric question her, they notice lacerations on Gray’s hands. Eric swabs the wounds for the lab.

The swabs from Gray’s hands yield bits of glass from the cuts. In fact, there are three different kinds of glass, including tempered window glass. This leads them to the idea that she must have fallen onto a city street while she was running from someone. Tempered glass is commonly recycled in asphalt, and may accound for the cuts. They believe Gray isn’t covering for anyone, but running from someone…someone scary enough to make it worth taking a murder rap.

Wounds on both bodies indicate that the men fought in ultimate fighting competitions, the all-out, no rules street fighting sport. Horatio and Ryan head to the one Russian-owned fight club, that of Ivan Sarnoff. In Sarnoff’s club, Ryan finds a large pool of dried blood hidden beneath a new mat.

In the lab Price identifies the blood as Nathan Madden’s. Madden’s blood was in the system, because his wife turned in a reference sample, after filing a missing person report two days earlier. She doesn’t know why Nathan would have been at the fight club. She says that a man visited the other day, and Nathan called him Weller. He took off after saying that he wasn’t going to let anyone take their home from them. She tells Horatio and Eric that she can’t say anymore.

Calleigh and Natalia find that the yachts in the area been sold recently to a single corporation, except for the Maddens’ boat. They all sold for $10,000. They figure that the mob was extorting the owners to sell, only to lease the boats back to them. Madden must have refused.

Searchers find Madden’s sport boat. Ryan and Eric find arterial spray high on the hull, consistent with the arterial wound on Brodsky’s neck. The rest of the boat seems to have been wiped of prints. Eric says no shoe prints showed up since the gray color of the carpet makes it impossible to find dirt. Ryan, though, shows him a crafty as usual technique, shining a flashlight from one direction, and using a mirror to look at the carpet from the opposite direction. One set of prints looks like the victim’s shoes. Another shoe, though, matches that of Greg Donner’s.

Donner claims “it was business.” Apparently Andrew just didn’t follow orders. He says he stabbed Vince because he had become a liability. Why do these mobsters talk so much? When they ask about the depth of his involvement with the Russian mob, Donner asks how “Russian” his name sounds. Eric replies that they know his real name is Bratva. Asked about Madden, Donner says he heard the naive man was fighting for his boat slip. He thanks Eric and Calleigh for flushing out Gray, a “loose end that needed tying.”

Horatio tells Gray that they have the real killer. Afraid of being set free, she tells how she and Andrew were outside the gym, when a man carried out a body. Andrew and the other man shared a look, then Andrew pulled a gun on her, and said he had to kill her for seeing the body. Down on the ground, he whispers to her to run and hide. Someone saw her go back to her apartment, so they had to kill Andrew. A U.S. Marshall shows up to enroll Gray into witness protection.

Calleigh and Eric go to the pier behind the fight club. The dumpster is empty, but they hear a garbage truck around the corner. They stop the truck and find a body inside, that of Nathan Madden.

Eric convinces Price to let him look for prints on Madden’s body. He tells her that the nature of fight club beatings should yield the prints of the murderer. Sarnoff’s prints are all over the body. Sarnoff is dismissive about Gray’s testimony, given the trouble she’s had in the past. When they humor his denial of guilt, and ask who did it, Sarnoff says he’ll talk to Jason Weller, and he’ll turn himself in. He smugly taunts Horatio with the fact that, no matter what, Weller’s testimony will exonerate him.

Outside, Horatio says goodbye to Gray, telling her to call him if she needs anything. Sarnoff says it’s a shame. Weller was one of his best fighters. “You trained him well,” retorts Horatio. Then, Horatio tells Sarnoff that his goal is to take him down.

So, we have a new season arc.