CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 5 - Episode 18 - Spark of Life

Written by Allen MacDonald
Directed by Ken Fink

Grissom and Sara report to the scene of a fast-moving arson brush fire, where they find a man burnt to death. As they scope out the scene, Grissom comes upon a woman burnt beyond recognition, and he assumes she is dead until she opens her eyes.

Greg is assigned to process the Jane Doe, and he is horrified to find her in the hospital clinging to life. The victim, soon identified by her husband as Tara Matthews, was doused in alcohol, which leads Grissom to believe that she wasn’t caught in the fire – he thinks she started it.

Meanwhile, Catherine and Warrick investigate a triple homicide – a little girl drowned in the family pool, her mother and father dead inside, making it appear to be a double murder-suicide. But Warrick thinks that the crime scene at the Morgan household has been staged, so the team sets out to prove it.

They first discover a brown hair in the father’s bed – and since his child and wife were both blonde, suspicion lands on the daughter’s brunette babysitter. They also determine that Mr. Morgan was deep in debt, in danger of losing his home. But then Dr. Robbins comes up with the wild card – the little girl’s rib was broken before the paramedics responding to the scene gave her CPR – which might mean someone else may have tried to save her life. Could the child’s accidental drowning have caused an unstable father to destroy his entire family?

Then the double whammy – the brown hair found in Mr. Morgan’s bed doesn’t match the babysitter’s, it matches Tara Matthews’ DNA, which puts her in Morgan’s bed, places her at the murder scene, and means that the dayshift and the graveyard shift are, in fact, working the same case.