CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 5 - Episode 17 - Compulsion

Written  by Josh Berman and Richard Catalani
Directed by Duane Clark

A flight attendant is found raped and stabbed to death in her hotel room, but despite the fact that she struggled valiantly to live, there is a dearth of evidence to be found – the room has been cleaned, wiped, swiped and sanitized.

This rings a bell with Conrad Ecklie (Marc Vann), and he matches signatures with a dayshift case from 1999, when another flight attendant was stabbed to death. In the earlier case, the victim’s suitcase and clothing was missing, and the room, which had been disinfected, was immaculate. Semen was found, and one fingerprint, which could not be identified. “That was then,” Sara says, “this is now.” When the lab IDs the semen in both murders as coming from the same perpetrator, the CSIs wonder if they are now tracking a serial rapist and killer.

Meanwhile, Catherine and Nick investigate the beating death of twelve-year-old boy found dead in his bed, with no signs of forced entry in the house where he and his parents and older brother lived. Outside, Nick takes a cast of a footprint, and finds some graffiti on the window of the boy’s room that spells out “brat;” inside, Catherine has bagged bloody sheets and boxers stained with urine. Clearly, whoever killed the boy knew how to get in and out of the house in the middle of the night without waking the family.

The police question the mother, father, but are convinced by the parents’ genuine grief that they had nothing to do with their younger son’s murder. They zero in on the brother, Matt, pushing him to confess, which Nick thinks is wrong. He is then charged with either proving that the boy didn’t bludgeon his own brother so the police will release him, or minding his own business and letting the police proceed as they see fit. When fibers and footprints found underneath the dead boy’s window match Matt’s, Nick realizes his instincts may be wrong. Then Matt confesses to the murder, which Nick thinks might have been coerced, especially since the young man has given the police no reason for why he would commit such a horrific crime. Now all Nick has to do is prove that the real killer is out there, and prevent the police from making a rush-to-judgment arrest that could destroy a fourteen-year-old boy’s life.