CSI: Vegas Episode 9.09 – 19 Down
Air Date: December 11, 2008

In a dimly lit living room, two men watch a video. On the video, a woman seems to be wimpering, as if she is held captive, perhaps being tortured or sexually assaulted. One man, seated on a sofa, says it brings back old times, and asks the man standing behind him what he thinks it’s worth. At that the other man strangles the seated man, and stuffs his lifeless body into a large trashbag. He drags the body out of the house, and places it into a car. In the dark, he dumps the body off a cliff into a ravine. The camera captures the body’s exposure to the elements and visible decomposition.

Grissom finishes a crossword, and walks out to hand Riley paperwork for a case of suspicious remains at the city dump. She jokingly pretends excitement over the assignment, “Awesome! Trash run for the low man on the totem pole.”

Greg gets a recovered stolen vehicle. To Nick he hands a possible arson at the Burger Giant. He hands Catherine a 419 in Green Valley. Grissom somberly announces his departure from CSI, and tells them that Catherine will take over. They will also get a new Level 1 CSI. He gets a message that there’s another case, that he’ll take. As he walks away, the team looks stunned.

Grissom looks off into the woods as he’s examining the scene of the dumped body. An officer comes over and tells him that two hikers found the trash bag, and said it wasn’t a popular trail. Grissom tells him that the body could have been there just a short time, or for years, but tells him to forewarn the coroner.

Catherine, Nick, and Hodges examine the “soup”. As they inspect the lack of clues in the mess of bones, clothes, and decomposition “juice”, Catherine notes that the generic clothing won’t help them ID or guess the gender of the victim. Nick finds a Star of David pendant. They do find some locks of hair. Catherine tells Hodges to separate it and get it over to Wendy for mitochondrial DNA testing. They don’t know whether the hair is the victim’s or possibly his attacker’s.

Dr. Robbins inspects the skeletal remains, noting to Grissom that it’s most likely a caucasian male about 5 feet 9 inches. Partial fusion of the coronal (cranial) suture indicates an age of at least 25 years. His broken hyoid suggests strangulation as the cause of death. Al asks Grissom if he’s really leaving, and if he’s running to or from something. Grissom takes leave to his office.

Grissom checks missing persons for Jewish males wearing Star of David pendants. A Joel Steiner shows up, missing since 1997, and listed as a possible victim of the “Dick and Jane Killer”. Grissom calls the team together and they discuss the Dick and Jane Killer, Nathan Haskell. He killed several couples, the males of which were found dumped in remote locations, all with post mortem stab wounds. None of the females were ever found, and the killer would never discuss them. He was picked up at a sobriety check point in Reno.

Haskell changed his plea to guilty and received life without parole. The seven males that were found, each had one more stab wound than the previously found victim…the first had two, the second three, the third four, etc. Grissom says that they theorized that the first male victim was never found. Joel Steiner and his fiancée were reported missing earlier than the other DJK victims, and were linked to him because they lived near his home.

Joel Steiner’s parents talk to Brass. Mrs. Steiner says that she had the pendant made especially for Joel. Brass asks them for DNA samples, explaining that the private lab that handled Joel’s sample misplaced it.

Grissom tries to stop Hodges in the hallway to speak with him. Hodges breezes on by, replying, “A little too late for that, huh? Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Have a nice life.” Grissom looks stunned.

Hodges examines the victim’s clothing.

Wendy reports to Grissom that she was able to “put the screws” to a guy at the lab…her uncle…to get the DNA results quickly. The blond hair was a minor DNA match to Nathan Haskell. Hodges rushes up to Wendy and Grissom, and addresses only Wendy. He says the shoes in the soup were only available since two years before. The D&J Killer has been incarcerated for at least the last 10 years.

Catherine shows Grissom the shoe company’s website. It was s custom design, so she has requested the customer records. Grissom begins to discuss his surprising her with his news. She stops him, though, and says she knew even before he knew.

The records come back. The sneakers were designed by Gerald Tolliver, a Hawthorne, Nevada man with a record of theft and drug busts. He was registered as a criminal informant just before he disappeared six months before.

Nick and Greg go to Tolliver’s house in Reno to meet with Ken Martz from the Reno Police. He says he didn’t work the DJK case, but he was the officer who caught Haskell. Tolliver’s house is still in probate, so still accessible by police. Inside, he shows them blood that matched Tolliver, both on the wall and the floor. Greg notes a partial shoe print found in the blood. Martz wondered how Tolliver is connected to DJK, since he was seventeen at the time of the murders, and was never part of the investigation. Nick notices a bizarre collection of taxidermy and other items, and wonders if Tolliver was a murder memorabilia afficionado. He remarks that Tolliver could have gotten a lock of DJK’s hair from Ebay, but wonders about the Star of David, since it was never recovered.

Riley matches items from Tolliver’s house to victim photos from the DJK’s file, including a school letter from one victim’s jacket, a pair of eyeglasses, a pair of Pearl Jam tickets from the arena where Joel Steiner and his fiancée were last seen.

Grissom tells Catherine that Haskell’s attorneys argued that the murders were the work of more than one killer, stating that he alone couldn’t have subdued the males and females at the same time. Grissom wonders if Tolliver was an active participant. Meanwhile, Greg matches the shoe print from Tolliver’s house to one from the recent “S&M double murder” of couple Ian Wallace and Justine Stefani. Ian also had nine post mortem stab wounds. In light of their discoveries related to Tolliver, this links the new murders to the DJK. He thinks it’s a copycat trying to make Ian and Justine the ninth DJK couple. Nick surprises Greg by interpreting his assertion as finding a copycat killer who just happened to kill an accomplice that no one knew existed until after his own death. Greg is bewildered, but Catherine promises to help him catch up. Nick suggests they go to Ely Prison to talk to Haskell. Catherine doesn’t believe that the guy will talk to them, since he seems to want to be the main character in his own story.

Brass tells Grissom that Ely State Prison has sent over all of Haskell’s correspondence and logs of his phone calls. He told detectives to look for any names that will link Tolliver to Haskell. Brass tells Grissom that it’s too bad he’s moving on, seemingly implying that any interaction they have at gatherings might not be as meaningful. A detective tells them that Haskell has had a lot of calls with a professor at WLVU, and has plans to participate in an upcoming seminar on criminology, including a video Q&A with the students. Grissom plans to attend. Brass will talk to the school and have Grissom go in posing as a visiting professor.

In the seminar, professor Raymond Langston (Lawrence Fishburne) makes opening statements on the common attributes of serial killers: male, caucasian, under 30 years old. He also points out exceptions, as well as Jane Goodall’s witnessing a rampage by chimps.

Haskell is evasive, at first. He then agrees to be honest, and tells Langston that he doesn’t like his book. Grissom asks if he’d ever shared his experiences with anyone, but Haskell insists that he worked alone. Haskell tells them that his definition of “fun” is taking something away from someone. He points out a “nice Jewish girl”, and says he’d take her on a vacation of three days of heaven on earth, then just a little “l’chaim.” [Creepy!]

Greg and Nick tell Catherine about the tickets from Ian and Justine, and note Joel’s Pearl Jam tickets. Ian had ordered tickets for three consecutive nights of Paramore concerts. The couple went missing after the first night, but the third night’s tickets were used. Catherine jokes that the murderer “wasted” a couple, but wouldn’t waste a pair of tickets.

Students, and Grissom, ask Haskell about the female victims. He says nobody ever asked, but, when he took them, they stopped being neices, girlfriends, daughters, etc. One student asks if any resisted. He said a couple of them fought a little, but only at first. He answers one student that he subdued them without force. He then changes the subject back to “the Jewish theme.” He explains that the Jews in the Holocaust panicked when they thought they were about to die. He continues that the Nazis comforted them by giving them the hope that they were really going to be given work to do. He says that, when you take a person to near death, then give them hope, even just a little, you can do anything you want to. And, he says, he did. At the end of the seminar, one girl looks upset. A male student offers to buy her a drink, and she accepts.

Archie and Greg examine internet video of the Paramore concert of the night after Ian and Justine went missing. Zooming in on a frame that includes their seats, they notice that the two men sitting there seem to have matching hats: “Reliant Wash and Wax”.

Brass takes officers to the car wash, and question the two men from the video. They claim to have bought the tickets from a scalper. One man still has his ticket in his wallet. Besides Ian Wallace, prints on the ticket match Curtis Keesey.

Police enter Keesey’s home, where they find a body.

Grissom and David Phillips examine insects on the latest victim. As Grissom identifies the insects, Phillips tells him that he’s going to miss this work. Grissom tells him that there are bugs everywhere, but that he is going to miss Phillips. David gets misty-eyed, and has to turn his face away and leave the room.

Back at Keesey’s house, Catherine notes that his tires match those at Justine Stefani’s murder scene. Nick says, though, that his shoes don’t match, so he must just be the driver.

Catherine, Greg, and Grissom examine the physical evidence from the four murders. They wonder if the unidentified killer was also an accomplice to the DJK. They speculate that he killed Tolliver, when he decided to become an informant. Grissom adds that this might have fueled his taste for killing, leading to the other three murders.

In the second day of the serial killer seminar, Professor Langston asks Haskell about his mistakes leading to his capture. One student adds that he must have wanted to get caught, didn’t he? When Haskell protests the idea of wanting that. Grissom responds, though, that this careful killer was captured because a rookie cop noticed a drop of blood in plain sight inside his car. Grissom asks how such an average sized man was able to overpower large, athletic men, while subduing the female victims, without any help. Haskell seems defensive and tries to change the subject. As Langston tries to push him to answer, Joel Steiner’s mother appears in the back of the room, first demanding, then begging, Haskell to tell where her son is. Students calm her down.

Grissom tells Haskell that they know that he had accomplices. He then adds that, if he were to identify them, he might be let out of keepaway. Haskell identifies Grissom to the rest of the class as a member of law enforcement, explaining that “keepaway” is the form of solitary he is in. Angry, Langston kills the video feed.

Langston complains to Brass and Grissom about their “hijacking” his class without his knowledge. He tells them that he would have helped, if he’d been informed of the existence of another DJK. They tell Langston that they’ll keep him informed. He storms out, proclaiming, “I know a kiss off, when I hear one.” Grissom tells Brass that Langston was an M.D. back east. He studied a case of several dying patients, who ended up being the victims of an “angel of death” physician.

Back at the university, Langston receives a call from Haskell. He tells the professor to look out the window, because he’s in the parking lot. It turns out to be a prank, though. He wants to talk about what happened with Mrs. Steiner. Langston conferences Grissom in on the call. He tells them that seeing all those faces made him miss killing. He adds that Mrs. Steiner’s outburst made him want to offer closure. He gives an address out in the desert. He says he’ll find Joel, and, if they’re lucky, they’ll find something else. He warns them, though, that closure often leads to something new. At the scene, they find Joel Steiner. Under the railroad bridge, they find another, fresh body with ten stab wounds. [It looks like one of the students.]

Brass tells Grissom, “I guess you won’t be leaving just yet.”

to be continued…

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: Vegas – Episode 9.08 – Young Man With A Horn
Air Date: December 4, 2008

A man and woman sing a duet in rehearsal for the show “Overnight Sensation” –an obvious take on American Idol. The producer gruffly stops them, complaining that the young man is lazy and insufficiently emotive. The man’s father rushes from offstage to defend his son. The producer reprimands the father and warns the Layla that she was flat. They resume singing. When the producer shouts over Layla’s singing, telling her to watch her pitch, she rushes off the stage, crying. At the producer’s order, the man continues singing.

Below a highway overpass, Catherine and Phillips examine what looks like a tablecloth rolled up like a handled sack. Cutting through the cloth, they find a woman’s face –it’s Layla Wells.

Wells had been wrapped up in the bundle, clothed in just her lingerie, hinting at sexual assault. Dr. Robbins notes the time of death is between 2 and 4 AM.

(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Brass questions producer Drew Rich. Rich informs him that Layla had gone to her room, and told her chaperone, at midnight, that she was going to bed. He also tells Brass that Layla was an emancipated minor. The chaperone had gone to the casino to gamble after midnight. Hearing Kips’s father tell Kip that Layla’s death means that he won, Rich corrects him, calling up the most recent cast-off, from the semi-finals, to compete against Kip in the show finale.

Catherine and Stokes examine the tablecloth that Layla was wrapped in. Stokes finds the imprint from the room service company that services the casinos. Catherine notes that circles from drink condensation indicates that it hasn’t been washed for quite some time.

At the dump scene, Riley and Greg find blood drops and wheel tracks with an 11″ wheel spacing. Greg adds that they could be from a shopping cart, except that they’re missing the second, wider tracks from a cart’s rear wheels. Riley remarks on the fact that the area surrounding the underpass is teeming with homeless men with shopping carts.

Dr. Robbins notes that blunt force trauma to the abdomen was the cause of death. He adds that the impact is where the liver would rest while the victim was standing. He tells Catherine that he found no signs of sexual assault, but she was about eight weeks pregnant. She wonders if that’s the motive.

Brass and Stokes visit Layla’s room in the Palermo. Stokes reads the keycard record showing that Layla’s card was used to enter the room at 7:12 PM, right after she left the rehearsal. She had made calls to Drew Rich and to her chaperone. The chaperone was up all night at a progressive slot machine. Nick checks her web browser history. She had looked up several abortion clinics, around 8PM, followed by a series of adoption agencies.

Hodges and Archie look at web tabloid articles embellishing upon the “news” that Kip and Layla had been cavorting after hours. Hodges shows no respect for the show, but mentions that he and thousands of other men had voted for Ajaya, helping him make it to the semi-finals. Archie shows him surveillance footage of Drew Rich getting in the elevator just before midnight, followed by Layla, a few minutes later, and Kip, two minutes after that.

Brass questions Kip Westerman and his father. He dismisses Kip, and addresses the belligerent Mr. Westerman. Brass lays out his theory that Westerman left the Navy and mortgaged his home to support Kip. He concludes that he’d be wiped out if Kip lost, giving him motive to have killed Layla.

Simms shows Catherine that Kip’s DNA didn’t match the baby’s. She did find a CODIS match on a Marvin Flick, who had been charged in North Carolina in 2002 for having relations with a 15 year old. The mug shot, though, revealed that Flick is Drew Rich. The girl changed her story, letting Flick go free.

Brass interrupts Rich, who is editing the finale’s dedication to Layla. The video includes mention of Layla’s showgirl grandmother. Rich claims that Layla agreed to his paying for an abortion, but only to have it if she won the competition. He refused to be blackmailed, but says he didn’t kill her. Brass tells Rich that they have record of his leaving the Palermo at midnight, then using his credit card, 20 minutes later, at the Blue Madonna motel, just three blocks from where Layla’s body was found. Rich claims he was with a hooker. An officer takes him into custody.

Hodges tells Grissom that Layla’s lipstick contained spermaceti, a waxy liquid found in sperm whales’ heads. This, along with asbestos found in the tablecloth, hadn’t been used for decades. Layla’s belongings didn’t include lipstick with spermaceti.

Catherine and Stokes examine a map of Vegas from the 1950s. They notice one casino on the west side, near where Layla was found, that was closed but not torn down –Le Chateau Rouge.

Stokes and Greg visit Le Chateau Rouge. As they walk through, they talk about its being the first integrated casino, and all the big names that once performed there. Greg finds tracks similar to those he found at the scene, with the same 11″ spacing. Stokes finds pink fuzz on a chainlink wire, similar to the material in the sweater that Layla was wearing when she left the Palermo. Inside, Greg finds a cart that seems to match the tracks. Stokes finds the only table in the place that’s missing its tablecloth. He finds latent blood in an apparent track on the table.

When Grissom arrives at Le Chateau Rouge, he is curious about a classic limo. The passenger is Karen Rosenthal, the building’s owner. She invites Grissom into her car, and tells him about the casino. Her husband, Jules, was murdered inside. She says she never set foot inside, since that night. She tells Grissom that she didn’t sell the building because she knew the new owner would tear it down.

In the showgirls’ dressing room, Catherine finds recent footprints. One vanity is marked “Jasmine” –the name of Layla’s grandmother. Examining a lipstick from the vanity, she comments that Layla must have been trying to connect “with her roots.”

Grissom finds a bullet in the casino floor. Stokes finds Layla’s cellphone. The last activity on the phone was the camera. They play the last video that features Layla, clad in a costume from her grandmother’s dressing area, and matching the one Jasmine was wearing in the photo from the tribute video. Kip must have been holding the camera and a light. In the video, Layla is frightened by the sudden appearance of a saxophonist entering the stage. Grissom appears to hear something. He walks over and opens a curtain, revealing an elderly man (Bill Cobbs), holding a revolver down at his side. The man passes out and drops to the floor.

In Desert Palm Hospital, Grissom tells the man that he’s in custody, and being treated for dehydration and malnutrition.

Kip tells Brass that he cared about and loved Layla. He had searched online, and found out that her grandmother had performed at Le Chateau Rouge. He took her there, and she insisted they go inside. She peeled the fence open, and found an open door. Finding her grandmother’s vanity and costume, she put it on.

The man from Le Chateau Rouge tells Grissom that they were making sweet music. He says that Kip was jealous, and came at him, pushing Layla down. The sax player fired a shot and missed, then Kip fled alone.

Kip tells Brass that, although he left Layla inside, he went back and looked all over for her, but didn’t find her.

When Grissom tells the saxophoist that a girl is dead, he responds, “You got me.”

Back in the lab, Grissom looks over a documentary, case files, and clippings all covering the end of Le Chateau Rouge, and the murder of Jules Rosenthal. Despite rumors that it was a mob hit, Rosenthal’s employee Melchior Wilson was tried and convicted for the murder. Grissom tells Catherine that Wilson died in prison. Stokes matched the old man’s gun to the one from the Rosenthal murder. Grissom says that the sheriff, in the 1958 murder case, had lifted Wilson’s print from Rosenthal’s alligator wallet. Grissom demonstrates, with Hodges’ help, that his own print from an alligator wallet has massive voids from the skin’s texture. The one from the original case, supposedly from the same type wallet, was a perfectly clean print. He deduces that Wilson was framed, having probably had his print lifted from any number of places in the casino, since he was a musician there.

Grissom finds Sheriff Montgomery in a poker game. Montgomery says he’ll talk to him about the Rosenthal case, but only if Grissom beats him in a hand. Grissom wins the wager. Montgomery swears by his “evidence”, but Grissom is persistent. He knows the sheriff was part of the cover-up, and challenges him with the issue of the voids from the alligator skin. When Grissom shows him a photo of the saxophist, Montgomery quickly dismisses the pertinence of his fifty year old murder case, turns, and briskly leaves.

Back at Le Chateau Rouge, Catherine finds fibers from the costume on a chair. Stokes comments that the pattern on the arm of the chair matches Layla’s bruise. They deduce that she ran across the floor, and fell down, striking the arm of the chair. So, it looks like an accident. They wonder, then, why did the old man confess.

Riley shows Greg that there are two saxophonists on the brochure from Le Chateau Rouge, besides Melchior Wilson. The other two, Harry Bastille and Stanley Brown, seemed to fall off the face of the earth after 1958. The computer matches the old man’s face, though, to that of Harry Bastille.

Grissom asks Bastille why he confessed, when Layla’s death was an accident, and why he didn’t report it. Bastille says he wanted to keep people out of his place. He says it was the last place he was ever happy. Mrs. Rosenthal comes to the hospital, and says the man isn’t Harry Bastille. Grissom follows her into the hallway, and tells her that the man is Harry Rosenthal. She wonders why he asked her, to which he responds that that man is her husband’s murderer. Grissom tells her that the champagne she was drinking in her car is the same kind found on the floor near where her husband was murdered. She confesses that she met with Bastille after the last show, that night. Rosenthal entered the dressing room, and pulled a gun. Karen Rosenthal lept at her husband, and the gun dropped. She picked it up and shot her husband, before he could attack Bastille. He wanted to say it was him that pulled the trigger, but she didn’t want that to happen. She confessed, but “the town was very different then.” The town leaders convinced the sheriff to go after Melchior Wilson.

Walking down the street at night, Catherine asks Grissom about his coming to Vegas. She tells him that he has a good thing, now, including a “family” –at least, a work family. He answers, “Maybe it’s time to up the ante.”

Notice how much less time Grissom spends in each episode this year. His time, this episode, is near the end, and seemingly just as further insight into his upcoming departure.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: Vegas – Episode 9.06 Say Uncle
Air Date: November 13, 2008

At a Korean street party, gunshots interrupt the fun, and send the crowd running, ducking, and scrambling for cover.

The team shows up, but no one seems to have seen exactly what happened. A young woman and a young man lie dead on the asphalt, she with two bullet wounds, he with three. Grissom spots only one casing nearby, but the rest may have been scattered by foot traffic from the crowd. Riley opens the man’s wallet, and identifies him as Sung Bang. He also has an prison release form in his pocket, indicating that he spent six months in detention for two DUIs and had just been released that morning. Hodges notes that the man is loaded with ID, but the woman doesn’t even have lint in her pocket. Just a few feet away from the bodies, Grissom finds a child’s sunglasses, spattered with blood.

(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Police find it difficult to find anyone with information on what happened, partly because of language issues. They also suspect that gang activity may frighten people from saying anything. Greg finds one man, though, with blood on his shirt. The man also speaks English, “If it’s gonna get me out of here quicker, I’ll be William Freakin’ Shakespeare.” The man has little to say to Brass. Brass asks if he thinks it’s worth the apparent cultural honor to know that a killer walks free. He tells Brass that he’ll agree to any forensic tests they want, but he won’t tell what happened.

Both victims died of exsanguination (they bled to death) from their gunshot wounds. The bullets come from two different guns, though. So, they figure it might be two gunmen, or one gunman with two guns, gang-style. Also, the man’s wounds are shot at pretty level trajectories. The woman’s are very steeply angled, as if shot from below, or while she was lying on the ground. Grissom asks if she could have fallen, trying to flee. David says it could be drugs. She has needle marks. Grissom notices strange scars above the woman’s eyes, indicating she may have had cosmetic surgery. They wonder if she’s a hooker.

Riley and Catherine discuss the man’s background. He’s unmarried with no children. Besides the DUIs, he has a clean record, including no gang affiliations. He was released from prison, 45 minutes from Vegas, and went to Dempsey’s department store. A couple hours later, he’s dead. Grissom comes in, and tells Catherine about the woman’s eye surgery, blepharoplasty. He tells her the so-called Asian eyelid procedure is fairly common in Korea, and is spreading in the U.S. by women wanting a more “Caucasian-look”.

Brass takes the woman’s photo to “Makeover Town”, the block of Korea town where a lot of cosmetic surgery is done. He quickly finds the doctor who performed the procedure. He tells Brass that he was held at gunpoint, and forced to perform the surgery. Brass questions the performing of this surgery to make women’s eyes look less Asian. The doctor says the procedure has become insanely popular, ever since Jackie Chan had it done.

He said the men forced him to agree to 15% of his profits. The doctor says he believes the men are part of the new group KD, the Kam Pai Dragons. He says they work in extortion, but don’t act like many other gangs. They don’t ride lowriders, spray graffiti, wear tattoos, or even deal in drugs. They take from their own, because they know they won’t turn them in. When Brass presses for why the people of Korea Town don’t turn these gangs in, he responds with a plea for the police to protect the immigrant community as well as do others groups. He says he no longer pays the extortion money. When he switched to an HMO, he says, they came and installed security cameras. The KD don’t like to be seen.

Catherine and Brass go down to view surveillance video from Dempsey’s department store. In a lab that is clearly better equipped than that of the city’s, one of the store’s video analysts recognized the man as the victim from Korea Town. The head of Dempsey’s Forensic Services asks Brass about the police and their property crime solve rate. He boasts that theirs is 93%, nationwide. The man in question was in the department store with a little boy. The boy had touched a toy car. One of Dempsey’s “CSI” hands Catherine the toy. She looks at a fingerprint on the car, and matches it to the one they have for the boy at the crime scene.

They all view video of Sung Bang leaving Dempsey’s store with the little boy. The boy is Park Bang. The female victim is Kora Sil, Park’s mother. Park’s father died of AIDS a couple years ago. Park is also HIV-positive. He’s on a strict drug regimen.

Kora has several priors for prostitution. Her “friend agenda” page shows she’s single, and was born in Seoul. It appears, from the comments people have left that she uses the page to score drugs. It also lists her address, in Korea Town.

At Kora’s house, a man: Mr. Pan answers the door. Brass tells his team to take a look around. Pan tells Brass that he’s a respected businessman, and that Park and Kora come over to use his computer. He denies knowing anything about the shooting, or Park’s whereabouts.

Nick marks a satellite photo of the area, showing Dempsey’s and the location of the shooting. There are a couple of blocks between the two locations. Riley notes the receipt for items that Park would have been carrying. Since they found nothing but the sunglasses at the crime scene, some of the other items may have been dumped or lost nearby. The team goes down to find the other store items.

Not seeming keen on “hunting”, Hodges smugly shows Nick something inside a house dumpster, where he has deduced the items might be. It’s a plastic sack with the boy’s bloody shirt in it. Inside the corresponding house, an older woman inside pulls a gun on Riley and Nick. The scene is very tense, until Park Sung comes into the room, and tells her, in Korean, that everything is going to be alright.

As a doctor takes a look at Park, Grissom asks Riley about him. She says he’s very weak. She said he wouldn’t open up about anything. Grissom chides Riley for questioning a minor without an advocate from Child Protective Services present.

Grissom asks the doctor why Park has a gastric tube inserted into his abdomen. He responds that they’ll need to look over his records to find out if he has a feeding issue, requiring the use of the tube. The doctor says dried blood around the feeding tube indicate he may have caught it on something, or tried to pull it out.

The woman from the house tells Nick, via an interpreter, that she pulled the gun because, where she comes from, people watch out for their neighbors.

As Grissom gently tries to coax Park into talking, another doctor, Dr. Eisling, enters and tries to give the boy HIV meds. Grissom looks on, with noticeable concern, as Park squirms violently to avoid the treatment. The boy screams as the staff holds him down and forcibly gives him the drugs.

Henry Andrews tells Grissom that Park’s drug screen is incredible. Since the boy is only HIV-positive and doesn’t have AIDS, there is no need for such aggressive drugs. The mix of drugs he’s taking would inhibit his growth. In fact, one of the drugs has the FDA’s blackbox label, and others are still undergoing clinical trials. Grissom wonders how a boy with a druggie mother gets on a clinical trial.

Wendy shows Greg that DNA from skin under Park’s fingernails matches that of Jin Ming: the man who identified himself as Mr. Pan. Jin was arrested at 18 for stealing cars with his street racing gang. She adds that the tissue was from gluteus tissue. Greg asked if this meant that Park had been molested. She says maybe not. Jin Ming’s mugshot, from when he was 19, showed him covered with tattoos. Now he has none. She says his gluteus tissue may have been used to graft over his tattoos. She also notes that being a street racer, it makes sense to have tattoos. If you’re a Kam Pai Dragon, though, it’s better to “be invisible.”

Greg and Detective Cavaliere return to the house where they met “Mr. Pan” and it has been emptied. They look around Jin Ming’s basement. They find where Park and his mother must have been living. Greg finds a lawyer’s business card on a desk. When Cavaliere looks at a photo of the three of them together, he tries to pick it up. He notices a trip string tied to the back of the photo, and yells, “Get down!” A small pair of blasts come from behind the shelf. Cavaliere fell in the blast, mostly, it seemed, from trying to get away from it.

Greg tells Grissom that he called the lawyer whose card he found on Kora’s desk. He says that Kora was suing Park’s doctor. He was paying her $25 per week. She wanted $50.

Grissom sits outside Park’s hospital room. He blocks Dr. Eisling, who shows up to administer more drugs. Grissom dresses him down for testing those drugs, that clearly weren’t needed, yet, when “doctors” have a stake in the pharmaceutical company that makes the drug. The woman from Child Protective Services says they’ll back Grissom.

Park, having seen that Grissom kept Eisling out of his room, tells him that they were living in Jin Ming’s house. He says that his uncle found them there, and saw the gastric tube. His mother fought with his uncle, then Jin showed up. Sung and Park managed to get away from Jin, and ran out. Hesitating, Park continues carefully, saying that Jin and Kora found them. According to the boy, Jin shot Sung and his mother, with two different guns. When Grissom tells Brass this, over the phone, Brass tells him that Sung, who was in on only a misdemeanor, was released with a 9mm.

In the lab, Grissom finds that Sung carried his gun inside the front of his waistband. Riley asks if Kora carried. Her purse showed traces, indicating a gun. She suggests that they shot each other, and Jin took off.

Riley and Grissom take Park, along with three mannequins marked to show bullet trajectory, to the parking lot where the shooting happened. He says that neither Jin, nor Kora fell before Jin shot her. When Grissom asks Park how he shot her, he positions the third dummy and points, “Bang! Bang!” The motion of his arm between shots indicates a position consistent with the low angles of the two bullets in his mother.

Brass says that juvie may be the best place for an eight-year-old with HIV. He’ll get the care he needs. Grissom says that he wished they hadn’t solved this one.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: Vegas – Episode 9.05 Leave Out All the Rest
Air Date: November 06, 2008

The team works a scene out in the desert during a heavy downpour, where a man’s body is badly beaten up, and his fingers and toes torn off. Ligature marks on the man’s wrists make it look like he was tied up and dragged behind a vehicle. On his back, burnt motor oil, and scorched shirt fabric make it appear he was actually tied to the bottom of a vehicle.

Nine stab wounds are in the victim’s shirt. White tissue around the facial wounds indicate they happened post-mortem. No bleeding around the stab wounds in the torso, as well as lack of bruising around rope marks also point to happening post-mortem. Nipples are swollen with puncture wounds around the arioles.

(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

At the scene, presumably the next day after the rain stopped, Hodges whines to Catherine about the dirt. [What a diva] She records tire tracks at the scene, while Hodges finds a length of rope, and manages to get a splinter in his finger and whine about that. This is not Hodges’ best grown-up time.

Catherine notes melting of the rope ends, indicating the victim may have dropped while being transported. She figures the perp lost the “load” from under the vehicle, then tied him to the back and dragged him out into the desert to dump the body. Carrying him under the car would have kept police from finding him it the vehicle were pulled over.

Brass leads Nick and Riley into a house. [They seem to have edited out any dialog that would have helped us know what led them to this particular house.] The victim’s wallet, inside the house yields the victim’s ID: Ian Wallace. Nick finds a spit out blood drop, probably from a punch. Riley finds blood on the sofa too.

Henry tells Catherine he found low levels of THC and alcohol in the victim’s blood.

Grissom, who has been preoccupied by memories of Sara’s words, opens an emailed video. She tells him she’s happy for the first time in a long time, having gotten away from Vegas.

Nick and Riley find Wallace’s car in the garage of his house. Women’s magazines and other materials imply a female inhabitant. One magazine has a mailing label with a name: Justine Stefani.

Punctures in the nipples are mysterious. The victim’s tongue is burnt, consistent with application of electicity. Cause of death is bare-handed strangulation. Grissom realizes many of the clues point to S&M: asphyxiation, needle punctures, burns on his tongue. The post-mortem stab wounds are inconsistent with this, though. Grissom walks off abruptly. Catherine asks David if this seems normal. A socially awkward Grissom seems normal to him.

Grissom visits Lady Heather (Melinda Clarke) for some help. He seems cold and scared; very boylike. She seems surprised to see him. When she asks about his apparent lack of sleep, he responds, “Bad dreams.” He tells her about Ian Wallace’s wounds. She tells him she’s now a licensed therapist. She tells him the nipple piercing creates a very sensitive “pain button”. She tells him that his wounds seem to indicate that he’s submissive. She asks about the woman.

Back at Wallace and Stefani’s house, Riley finds a photo that reveals she had had implants. Greg finds semen on the TV stand and a “booty imprint” on the TV. Riley finds the stash of bondage implements. There’s a bloody shirt in a laundry basket. The marks seem to match the wounds on Wallace’s chest. Riley thinks Stefani could have killed him, changed his shirt, and tied him to the bottom of the car. Nick doubts that the woman could have done because he weighed too much. She disagrees, and Greg confirms that he thinks that she could do it.

Lady Heather tells Grissom that photos don’t reveal any dedicated space to act out in the house. So, Ian must have gone out to find his fun. She tells Grissom that Lower Linx, a postcard for which is in the house, is an “amateur” SMBD joint. They have a room “in the back”.

In Lower Linx, Brass and Nick find the owner, Michelle Tournay. She denies knowing the two vicims. She obviously wants to get rid of the cops. They mention the back room, and ask to see it. There, Nick and Brass find the oscilloscope…the possible source of the electricity, as well as metal chopsticks….the tongue bondage implement.

Wendy tells Riley the semen from the TV stand was actually mixed with vaginal fluid. DNA matches Wallace, but the female DNA doesn’t match that from Stefani’s toothbrush. The back of Wallace’s shirt has expiratory blood on the back. Perhaps his attacker had been punched, and was spitting out blood. The killer, then, may have been on his back, after all.

Looking at photos of the inside of the house, Heather tells Grissom that the couple had different priorities. She’s traditional, afraid of the dark. He was “compartmentalized”, and needed a place for everything in his world, including his “therapy” outlet. She says he had sex with another inside the house out of a need to be caught and punished. This need is also why he was with Justine. She’s the mommy that he needs to hide from.

Twenty miles or so south of the crime scene, police have found Justine Stefani’s body, charred inside her burned out SUV. Serial numbers from her breast implants confirm that the victim is Justine Stefani.

At the scene where Justine’s car was dumped, Catherine finds that footprints lead away from the highway, and the tire tracks followed after her. David finds breaks in Justine’s leg, indicating a blow from a car, from behind. So, she ran into the desert, and the car followed. Justine’s hair is on the skidplate of her car.

They appear to be looking for two suspects, one wearing size 9 shoes, and a second, who drove the getaway vehicle, which had front Pirelli tires, and rear Michelin tires. Catherine says Ian was killed at the house, and carried in Justine’s car. Justine must have been kidnapped from the house.

DNA on the center of the metal chopsticks match Ian Wallace, prints on the ends match an unknown female, but the same one that provided the DNA in the vaginal secretions near the television. Greg ran Justine’s phone call records. Last call was from a Martin Devlin. They believe they can get a warrant for Michelle Tournay.

Devlin schmoozes Brass. He was selling insurance to Justine. He claims that she hung up on him, before he made the deal.

Lady Heather tells Grissom that a killer dominant would have found a slave to assist her.

Nick questions Tournay. She denies that she’s been to Wallace’s house, or that he’d been to hers. Nick takes cheek cell samples from Tournay.

The blood from the back of Wallace’s shirt shows familial match to a convicted felon George Devlin. They call in Martin Devlin. He has puncture marks around his nipples, much like Wallace. He also has marks on his tongue like Wallace. Devlin seems nervous as they describe the scene, how he would have helped Tournay kill Wallace and kidnapped Stefani, eventually killing her and torching her in her car.

Lady Heather tells Grissom that the post-mortem wounds are not congruous with SMBD. They indicate that the killer was a sexual sadist. Such a person wouldn’t stop when asked to stop. He or she would continue, finding pleasure in the torture. So, the sex acts and the murder/kidnapping were separate events.

Grissom continues to imagine Sara’s words, remembering her in the video. Lady Heather notices Grissom’s lost look, and asks about her. His mind plays back Sara’s saying that she just kept waiting for him to respond.

Lady Heather tells Grissom that not making a decision was his decision. She thinks her own place is safe for Grissom, since it’s neither home, nor work. It is the place that doesn’t have to remind him of Sara.

Devlin’s phone records indicate no calls to or from Tournay. The last call to Stefani ended one minute before a text message was sent. The message included a photo of Wallace in a compromising position with…Devlin’s attorney. The message, however, was off by one digit. So, it didn’t go to Stefani.

Devlin’s attorney tells Brass that she just met Devlin. He asks if it’s a conflict of interest to represent a man, when you had relations with one of his alleged victims. He shows her the photo. She admits that he was there. She says she left right after the photo was taken.

She says she had feelings for Ian. After the Lower Linx, she followed Ian home to tell him how she felt. After sex, he told her to leave. Martin came in through the back door and attacked Ian, but he left.

The team goes over the evidence. They seem to have linked the suspects with the victims, but not the suspects to the scenes. It doesn’t add up, leading them to believe they were distracted by the S&M element. There must be someone unrelated, who killed Ian and kidnapped Michelle Stefani.

Now, we wait until next week to find out who did it!

Grissom, in Lady Heather’s guest room, in hopes of getting one reasonable night’s sleep, breaks with his decorum to ask her to stay in the room with him. She closes the door from the inside.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: Vegas Episode 9.04 Let It Bleed
Air Date: October 30, 2008

A man in a police uniform runs out of a liquor store. Nick and Riley give chase. When the man runs into a building, Nick follows, but tells Riley to call for help. The man, cornered, jumps out an upstairs window, landing in a dumpster. Inside the dumpster is also a woman’s body. The man had small bills, beef jerky, and a porn magazine. Riley notes that the woman smells fresh.

An ink stamp on the victim’s upper thigh leads the team to a club. There, Catherine finds her daughter, dancing with a man, and sporting a fake ID. Catherine scolds her, and sends her with a patrolman. Riley says that she must have come in through the back, not having a wristband indicating she paid the cover at the door. She must have been in the VIP area.

Catherine and Riley show the Craig Hess, the club owner, a photo of the victim. He says he doesn’t recognize the girl. Catherine tells him about her own underage daughter being there, and threatens to card the other patrons and shut the place down. He smugly retorts that her parenting is the problem and she’s only seeking to ease her guilt by placing the blame on a legitimate club for accepting her daughter’s valid-looking ID.
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Nick tells Brass that the fake cop’s gun is unregistered, and has no useful prints. The patch on the shirt is a Reno police seal. Brass uses the light to show ink lines in the shirt pocket, a telltale sign of a real police uniform that suffers from constantly putting away an open pen. The shoes, though, are weak patent leather.

Greg and Riley find footage on the club’s surveillance video of the victim leaving. She looks upset, then the Hess says something to her, and she seems to calm down.

Catherine pulls glass from the woman’s body, none of them having produced vital response in the her tissue, indicating that they were post-mortem. She has recent needle marks on her arm, and white power in her nose. She has hives on her abdomen.

Vartann tells Grissom that the woman showed up in the Homeland Security database. Angela Marie Carlos, 19, comes from Colombia, and goes to college in Salt Lake City. Her father is Juan Ramón Carlos, a major drug lord. He’s linked to every drug dealer in Vegas, and has a sister in Henderson. Vartann and Grissom visit the sister.

The aunt is upset over Angela’s death. She said Angela was living with her, going to school, until two months before. She went to Utah to be away from the partying in Vegas. The aunt tells them that Angela was a partier, like her mother. Juan Carlos didn’t approve, of course. She says she had only one true friend, Sylvie, who went to high school with Angela. She laments not being able to protect her neice, saying that Juan will never forgive her.

Nick talks to Officer Brady, the Reno policeman who owns the stolen uniform. He’s in Vegas to testify in court, and says he met a girl, who seduced him. He let her wear his uniform in the hotel room. He sent it to hotel housekeeping to have it dry cleaned before his testifying. It never came back to him.

Greg talks to Sylvie. Angela wanted to come to Vegas for Halloween, and they went out to the club. She heard Craig Hess tell her to leave, indicating that she was endangering his life. Sylvie stayed with a guy that she hooked up with and texted Angela to meet up with them at a party.

Riley and Catherine confront Craig Hess for lying about knowing, and talking to, Angela. He claims ignorant of who her father is.

Hodges finds a large piece of glass in the top of Angela’s head, along with red tissue, making it look like it lodged there at the time of death. David shows Grissom that Angela’s blood is hemolyzed, which might indicate several different things, including transfusion reaction, serin, risin, and autoimmune hemolytic anemia. He says he’s waiting on her medical records, tox, and DNA tests, before certifying the cause of death.

Mandi checks the armed robber’s prints, having to reconstruct them from his damaged, disembodied fingers. They match those of Thomas Taylor from Bakersfield, California. He has priors, including assault charges, breaking and entering, and DUI.

Catherine finds her daughter in her office. She apologizes for using the fake ID, and tries to convince Catherine that she doesn’t need to worry about her.

Hodges invites Grissom out to a lecture with an open bar. Grissom deflects the invitation, and Hodges tells him the powder in Angela’s nose wasn’t cocaine. It was atropine. Used to cut cocaine or methamphetamine, it’s also used to tranquilize fish and other animals. She had no signs of meth or cocaine in her system, leaving the question: how did it get in her nose?

Brass tells Nick that Taylor would have had to be a guest or a hotel staffer to get access to Officer Brady’s room. He didn’t work there, though, and wasn’t registered as a guest. Nick wonders about the shoes. Were they rented for a wedding or a reunion?

Greg and Riley follow up on a GPS hit on Angela’s cell phone. It’s moving. They it down to a garbage truck. They stop the truck and find it in a inside her purse, in a garbage sack, along with with a lot of blood stained glass.

Riley shows Catherine the map of the garbage truck route. It hadn’t stopped at any of the clubs where Angela Carlos had been.

Wendy tells David that Carlos’ blood sample reveals multiple came back as a mixture of blood from one woman and two men, making the sample appear to be tainted. After a testy interchange over whose fault it was, David takes a new sample from Angela’s leg.

Nick tells Brass that “Barry Wunderlich” had rented two tuxes and two pairs of shoes, three days earlier. Wunderlich, also from Bakersfield, had the room across from Brady’s. He was supposed to check out the day before, but his stuff is still in the room.

David and Wendy tells Grissom about Angela’s blood test. Retesting reveals, again, a female B-, one male O-, and one male A+. Blood from the glass in her skull revealed the first mixture. The mixing of A+ blood with her B- must be the cause of death. Transfusion explains the fresh needle marks and the hives.

Nick and Brass question Barry Wunderlich. Apparently, he has been in custody for three days for drunk and disorderly charges. Wunderlich says they’d rented the tuxes for his bachelor party at the Acid Strip. At the strip club, the owner and the woman appeared to have been trying to rip them off. So, Wunderlich…who says he’s an Ultimate Fighter…beat up the manager and two bartenders, and was arrested. He asked Taylor to get the money to bail him out before the wedding. So, Taylor seems to have stolen the uniform at the Palermo, where they were staying, took Wunderlich’s 9mm handgun, and committed four armed robberies, before losing his life in the chase with Stokes.

Hodges examines the glass pieces, and a skin fragment from the garbage bag and Angela’s purse. The skin turns out to be a goldfish scale. Hodges reconstructs the glass from the garbage bag, finding that it was fish bowl shaped. Catherine asks Hess about feeding his fish. He claims his “boy” Goya feeds them. He says Goya has a warehouse.

Police arrest Goya and Joe…Goya’s partner or employee (?)…at Goya’s Fish, finding cocaine in the “sand” cartons they are carting across the warehouse. Catherine and Riley examine the warehouse, finding a large number of atropine vials. Riley finds an aquarium, a pump, and blood-stained tubing. Catherine finds blood on a glass-top coffee table.

Goya….whose blood is A+…tells Catherine that Hess sent Angela to them to get the cocaine she wanted. Because of Carlos’ violent vindictiveness, Hess was trying to ensure that Goya would take the heat for taking part in Angela’s partying, not himself.

Joe tells Riley that he had been cutting cocaine in the room where Angela was waiting for him. She must have decided to try some of the coke, but snorted the atropine instead. Finding her unconscious over the broken fish bowl, he and Goya tried to “swap out” her blood like he had heard Keith Richards did.

Joe dismisses Riley’s assertion that Richards’ “swapping out” his heroine-saturated blood is just an urban legend.

“It makes sense.” He and Goya tried to replace her poisoned blood with their own, using aquarium pumps and tubing. When she died, they planted her body in a dumpster near Hess’ club to make Carlos think that Hess was to blame.

Grissom gets a call. The team members arrive at various locations to find everyone at all involved in Angela’s partying and death: Hess, Sylvie, Juan Carlos’ sister, Goya, and Joe all murdered, execution style.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: Vegas – 9.03 Art Imitates Life
Air Date: October 23, 2008

A woman is found dead and leaning casually against a light pole. She is seemingly frozen in place, like a wax figure. No burn marks, no signs of lightning. The body is in full rigor, and is roughly the same temperature as the outside air, around 100 degrees fahrenheit. She’s sporting a brand new mobile phone, that has no personalization yet. The only call on it, so far, is to MovieFone. Her purse is totally empty, and pretty new looking.

Back at the lab, the “frozen” woman’s fingerprints turn up in the health workers database. She’s Carla Peretti, an LPN at Desert Palm Hospital.
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

The team gets called in to meet Patricia Alwick (Alex Kingston, ER), a grief counselor to help the team adjust after Warrick’s death. She warns them that anyone feels fine now, she has seen grief strike people suddenly, at a later time.

New CSI Riley Adams (Lauren Lee Smith) arrives. After a little unwelcome advice from Alwick about the difficulties of being the new person in a group that has just lost a beloved team member, Riley seems to cut her a bit short. She tells her that her parents are both psychiatrists, so she knows the schtick. She’s prepared to see what happens without her help. [Ooo-too-tooo!] Grissom meets Riley, and asks her to come with him, since the team is very busy.

Another victim, a jogger, is found on a bus stop bench. He’s frozen in place, like Carla. Hodges meets Riley and Grissom at the scene. Hodges finds no identification, or other personal effects on the jogger. Riley quickly commands, “Roll ‘im.” Hodges looks at Grissom, who nods. Riley pretends to be offended by David’s response, but quickly laughs, revealing her dry, morbid, smart sense of humor. [I like her.]

The bus driver that turned it in, said the man wasn’t there 90 minutes before, on his previous stop. So, the team wonders how rigor mortis set in so quickly. Riley offers that intense exercise right before a heart attack may have caused the rapid onset rigor. Grissom is definitely testing Riley’s proficiency in the field. She’s very cool about it.

Willows tells Nick that Peretti’s apartment was undisturbed, and she was last seen leaving her hospital shift. She adds that she had worked a lot of typical side jobs: model, convention booth “babe”. Autopsy revealed she died of cardiac arrest. They discuss the lack of signs of what caused her muscles to seize. There were no signs of electrocution, no history of epilepsy, no organ damage, no drugs that would have caused it.

Al meets Riley in the lab over the jogger’s body. The jogger had traces of meth, ecstasy, and heroine in his body. Pulmonary edema suggests drug abuse, but nothing bad enough to indicate drugs as the cause of death. The red and pink color of his and Peretti’s livers indicate possible gaseous asphyxiation.

A check at a methodone clinic reveals the “jogger” to be Harley Soon. Soon had a sheet full of drug abuse, solicitation, and various petty violations.

Hodges walks in on Grissom doing a blood gas assay. Grissom notes that Hodges should have been doing it. Hodges, however, had just been in the hallway, seemingly considering a little grief counseling. He notices that Grissom has skipped a stepp on his test prep, to which Grissom sheepishly notes that he probably did it on all of samples. Hodges offers to start them over, right about the time that Grissom receives a text to go to a scene.

Grissom arrives at the scene, where a dead man in a black suit is posed, holding a briefcase in his left hand, and seemingly hailing a cab with a newspaper in his right hand. It’s very creepy.

The briefcase is empty, and the man has no ID. There’s lead in the sole of his shoe, which Nick presumes is there to help hold him upright.. His nails are cleaned and trimmed, but head lice and other marks seem to imply he was a homeless man dressed up. Strangely, the lice are all dead. Grissom notes that they definitely seem to have a serial killer, working at one body per day.

Willows, Nick, and Riley discuss the possible connections between the victims. They all were stripped of their identities. They all had traces of Zolpidem Tartrate (the sleep drug Ambien). Carla was the only one that had a seemingly “normal” life, so she should have emails, phone calls, and the like, to track down any personal contacts that might lead to the killer.

At Peretti’s home, they find recent artwork, and a drawer containing marijuana. One portrait of Carla on the wall makes her appear dead. It’s signed “J. Skaggs”. Riley finds Skaggs on the internet. [nice 3G phone!]

Brass visits Jerzy Skaggs (Jeffrey Tambor, Arrested Development) working on a painting. He remembers Carla as one of his models. He doesn’t recognize the two men, though. Skaggs tells Brass that the coroner photo of Carla was a cheap imitation of his work, before Brass tells him that she’s really dead. The studio is full of macabre death scenes that Skaggs seems to be working on simultaneously. He quickly tells Brass that he doesn’t kill his models, he only captures images of models who look dead. Brass dismisses Skaggs offer to paint him in the nude.

Brass: “Where would I put the badge?”

Alwick says she’d like to meet with Grissom, but he says he’s busy. He does say that he’d like to talk to her about issues he’s been having lately with Hank.

Grissom, Willows, Nick, and Riley go over the blood gas tests, and tests on the lice indicate carbon monoxide, as well as sulfur and simple hydrocarbons: engine exhaust. Lividity on all three indicate that they died in their poses. So, somehow the killer is luring the victims to his place, sedating them, dressing and posing them in his gas chamber, and waiting for rigor to set in. Grissom adds that he has ten hours to place the bodies to be discovered.

A birdwatcher discovers an older couple on a trail, posed as bird-watchers. Nick tells Grissom that they had both suffered from alzheimer’s, and were on a field trip away from their care facility, two days earlier. The staff hadn’t noticed them missing until bedcheck. A witness had noticed an average height white male in a white panel van near the trail, about an hour before dawn.

Riley has found a local art blog where the blogger Langston Weller discusses the madness and the “art” created by the killer. The posts have drawn in lots of comments, including some anonymous ones that could be from the killer.

Greg tells Grissom that the dust on the homeless man match jute fibers on the other victims. They seem to indicate that the killer was wrapping the victims in burlap, at some point in the process.

Alwick confronts Grissom about his apparent contempt toward her work. She reveals that she asked around about “Hank”, gathering mostly snickers, until Hodges revealed Hank to be Grissom’s dog. Grissom apologizes, and says he had a serious question. He says his dog had been listless recently, and wondered if this could be an indication of Grissom’s own affect. She says that companion animals do emulate the mental state of their owners, and asks how he’s been feeling. She encourages him to talk to someone about what’s going on.

Brass calls Grissom to tell him about Harley Soon’s juvenile record. It reveals that he was arrested, five years earlier, in a raid on a party in the studio of Jerzy Skaggs.

Brass questions Skaggs. Skaggs maintains that he never knew Harley Soon. When Brass shows him photos of all three victims, Skaggs remembers the poses. A few months earlier, a man asked him to look at some sketches matching the photos’ poses. The man was a laborer working on renovations to Skaggs’ studio, and said he was entering in some art contest that was open to the public. He doesn’t remember the name of the man or the contractor.

A Las Vegas Parks Department site yields contest entries for sculptures to be used in public spaces. One entrant, Arthur Blisterman, had submitted sketches that matched the victims’ poses. Grissom, Willows, and Nick are disturbed at seeing an additional sketch, one of a little boy. So, they must find the killer before he gets victim number six.

They have Blisterman’s house staked out. Brass tells Grissom that neighbors haven’t seen Blisterman for weeks, he’s unmarried, and is an independent plumbing contractor. He isn’t answering his phone. They have circulated photos of Blisterman to schools and child services, and have a call out on his white panel van. They have no word on a possible workspace.

Nick and Riley notice that one of the photos linked in a comment to Langston Weller’s blog is of Peretti. Image data shows the photo was taken a couple hours before police were alerted.

Telling him that his blog has encouraged a killer, Detective Vartann convinces Langston Weller to lure Blisterman into commenting on his blog again. They plan to get an IP trace, as soon as Blisterman comments, and locate him.

A woman in the station tells Vartann that her son is missing. The school told her about the special alert that is out, and she’s afraid he is the killers next victim. Meanwhile, Blisterman hits Weller’s blog.

Police find Blisterman at the library. On his laptop, they find dust similar to that on the victims. Willows, Riley, and Sanders look for any old warehouses around the library, that would likely contain dust from burlap bags.

Brass calls Grissom in to talk to a very evasive Blisterman. Grissom complies when Blisterman directs the composition of the video taken of him in the interview. Blisterman goes on and on about his work, and his message. He is resistant to being rushed, and goes on about life, humanity, beauty, aesthetics, and art. Grissom asks about the child. Blisterman is outraged that no one has ever appreciated his work. He isn’t afraid of dying, but of being forgotten.

Willows finds a nearby warehouse that once stored industrial burlap hags.

Blisterman won’t tell where the boy is, because he doesn’t want the camera turned off, and needs the boy to complete his work. When Grissom reads the warehouse address from a text message, Blisterman says he’s too late anyway.

Police and the team find the boy, suspended in an exhaust-filled plastic enclosure. Riley frantically tries to revive him, continuing CPR until the boy moves, opens his eyes, and gasps a breath.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

July 7, David Weddle and Bradley Thompson, writers for the SciFi Channel series Battlestar Galactica begin their new jobs writing for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The pair make the move from the void of deep space to the hot sands of Vegas, after being released from writing the SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica movie. Apparently, the CSI offer was just too good to pass up.

Read the original story at SyFy Portal.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

Gil Grissom knows tough situations. William Petersen, though, isn’t accustomed to being in the airport when a bomb comes into the building. Apparently, while Petersen was at LA International Airport, last Wednesday, a man, Scott Juhun Lee, approached authorities, and told them he was a terrorist. The police arrested the man when he said he had a bomb inside his black bag. The upper and lower roads at the airport were immediately shut down and the LAPD bomb squad examined the black bag. They found only “junk”.

The CSI star probably kept his cool, but gave kudos to the police and fire personnel who handled the scene. In the video linked below, he said they heard the bomb being detonated in the distance. There are lots of loud noises at an airport, though.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

Watch the TMZ Video of the guy trying to get William Petersen to say that this was fairly normal in LA, or for actors. Said Petersen, “When I deal with it… it’s pretend.” Well said.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

Get Grissom on the horn! Las Vegas, the hometown of the critically acclaimed, original CSI series is no longer home to a university forensic science program. Administrators at UNLV pulled the plug on the program, citing the need for budget cuts. The administration also points to the financial inability to appoint a program director and the faculty required to attain accreditation for the program.

Background Check

Creating the program was a brilliant move, actually. Build upon the mystique, and the fact that the country already associates forensic science with Las Vegas. Less than five years ago, the university began the program, hoping to build upon this association. Currently, the program, though, has a mere 80 students. Perhaps this is fewer than they would have liked.

The Mystery

Las Vegas Metro Crime Scene Analyst Daniel Holstein, who inspired one of CSI’s characters, spoke to the Las Vegas Sun. According to Holstein, Metro has hired many graduates of the program. This seems contrary to university staff claims that you need an accredited program to get a job. In fact, the Metro has no such requirement. Certainly, you would see accreditation as a positive, but Metro’s acting director of crime scene investigation Randy McLaughlin told the Sun that they would love to have locally trained potentials to select from, when hiring new analysts. “People that grew up here, people that were raised here, are more likely to stay around…”, he adds.

The Proof, The Rub, The Rebuttal

One former student, Lisa Ford, graduated in December 2007. She now has a lucrative job gathering evidence at the scene, interviewing witnesses, and writing crime scene reports. One would believe that a program that allows a graduate to land a $40,000-plus first job would be a good selling point.

That’s great for field specialists, perhaps. Is accreditation, however, necessary for laboratory analysis work? It might help, but Linda Krueger, Las Vegas Metro’s director of laboratory service, told the Sun that she looks for workers with strong science backgrounds. Accredited programs are not a requirement.

In the end, it would appear that UNLV fell into that trap of following pop culture to create buzz, but didn’t do the homework. From the evidence, it seems that the university never looked into the requirements of furthering the program, or even think about where they wanted the program to go. Perhaps, though, it’s just the harsh reality of running a university, and facing reduced enrollment and income. Either way, it seems a horrible shame.

Read the Sun article, Amid budget cuts, UNLV pronounces its CSI program dead, for more details.

What do you think about the UNLV closing of its forensic science program? Did you attend this program? Do you know anyone who has?

Post from: CSI Fanatic

The producers have put forward their Primetime Emmy submissions for the CSI franchise. There are plenty of proposed accolades to go around in all three hit series.

Episodes

• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Dead Doll (season eight premiere)
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Who and What (Without a Trace crossover)
• CSI: Miami All In
• CSI: Miami Ambush
• CSI: New York Right Next Door

Leading Men

• William Petersen (Gil Grissom) for Dead Doll
• David Caruso (Horatio Caine) for All In
• Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor) for The Thing About Heroes

Leading Women

• Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows) for A Thousand Days on Earth
• Emily Procter (Calleigh Duquesne) for All In

Supporting Actor

• Gary Dourdan (Warrick Brown) for For Gedda
• Paul Guilfoyle (Jim Brass) for Grissom’s Divine Comedy
• Robert David Hall (Dr Al Robbins) for The Theory of Everything
• Wallace Langham (David Hodges) for You Kill Me
• Eric Szmanda (Greg Sanders) for The Theory of Everything
• George Eads (Nick Stokes) for “unlisted episode”.
• Jonathan Togo (Ryan Wolfe) for Cyber-lebrity
• Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny Messer) for Child’s Play
• AJ Buckley (Adam Ross) for Down the Rabbit Hole

Supporting Actress

• Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle) for Goodbye and Good Luck

Guest actor and actress

• Dennis Christopher for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Lying Down with Dogs
• Anthony LaPaglia for CSI Who and What
• Harold Perrineau for CSI Go to Hell
• Bonnie Bedelia for CSI Grissom’s Divine Comedy
• Peter James Smith for CSI: Miami To Kill a Predator
• Elizabeth Berkley for CSI: Miami Ambush

Watch for more information, as the final nominations come out.

Who do you think will make the cut?

Source: Gold Derby Forums at LATimes.com.

Post from: CSI Fanatic