CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 5 - Episode 21 - Committed

Teleplay by Richard J. Lewis
Story by Sarah Goldfinger & Uttam Narsu
Directed by Richard J. Lewis

Grissom, Sara and Brass are called to Sparks State Psychiatric Hospital when a nurse discovers one patient murdered with his skull smashed in, another huddled in the opposite corner, covered in blood. “We have two types of patients here,” the head of administration tells the CSI team, “crazy and more crazy…these are the inmates the prisons can’t handle.”

Kenny Valdez may be the number-one suspect but Grissom doesn’t think Kenny murdered Robbie Gartner, based on the fact there is blood spatter all over the victim’s room, but none on Kenny. Since the hospital is secure, the team knows they will have a finite number of suspects, and so the patient interviews begin. “They’re not going to give you a straight answer,” one of the doctors tells them. “No one ever does,” replies Brass.

 Meanwhile, Sara finds semen in the victim’s room. Since Gartner was chemically castrated, that means the semen came from someone else. “Sex is the foreplay, violence is the climax,” Grissom says.

During Gartner’s autopsy, Dr. Robbins proves that the victim was suffocated first and then his skull was beaten in. And when the DNA found in Robbie’s bed matches that of a serial rapist, Adam Trent, the CSIs are stumped. According to the doctors at Sparks, Adam, the victim of mother-son incest, who began raping women to retaliate against his mother, don’t think Adam would’ve veered from his pattern, had sex with Robbie and then killed him.

But the doctors could be wrong. Adam, seeing Sara alone, attacks her, holding a shard of glass to her throat. A locked door with no key stands separates Sara and the madman from Grissom, who can only watch the horror through a window, helpless to save her.