CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 3 - Episode 18 - Precious Metal

Written by Naren Shankar & Andrew Lipsitz
Directed by Deran Sarafian

A decomposed body is discovered in a chemical waste drum, and it’s a tough crime scene even for a seasoned CSI. The victim – could be male, could be female – looks like a wax statue that’s melted. A dead body exposed to moisture in a sealed container literally turns to soap – a condition called adipocere, what happens when fatty tissue decomposes in an alkaline environment with little oxygen. So what the team has is the remnants of jeans and a tee-shirt, traces of what were once legs and arms, and a body that now looks more like vegetable shortening than a human being.

When Dr. Robbins plops the remains out on his table, he comes up with one solid piece of evidence – a ring inscribed with Greek symbols. But the question remains – the ring could be the victim’s, or does it belong to a killer so twisted he or she would chop the victim into pieces with what appears to have been an axe and seal the body into a drum?

The team traces the drum to the highly competitive world of battle robots, and everyone involved in the battle bot contests seems to have a motive to have killed the “soap mummy,” now identified as Christian Cutler, a winning bot operator. As Catherine and Brass put it: Metal weapons, money, competition, testosterone – and a little sex, in the person of the bot boss, the very hot Ginger McCracken, who Chris came on to – and it all adds up to a warehouse full of murder suspects.

Six weeks before, Cutler had the kind of night the boys who play with bots can only dream about, but when he came up the big winner in a robot rumble free-for-all, someone obviously took exception to his bragging. When the CSIs swab some of the robots for blood, many of the parts test positive, and the only one who can explain that is Cutler’s mechanic – who, it seems, is missing a ring.

Meanwhile, a wife reports her husband missing, and ten days later, she still has received no information or help from the LVPD, who, it turns out, have not properly processed some pertinent John Doe information. The unidentified man found dead in a dumpster is, in fact, Cheryl Mercer’s husband Keith – and now she has Grissom’s attention. But it is actually Greg who provides the clue that helps unravel the case, forcing Grissom to realize that this eccentric scientist is more than a lab rat…he might have what it takes to be a CSI.