Lindsey Willows

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Lindsey Willows (played first by actress Madison McReynolds and now by actress Kay Panabaker) is a fictional secondary character on the CBS television program CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She is the teenage daughter of CSI Catherine Willows (played by actress Marg Helgenberger) and her deceased ex-husband Eddie Willows (Timothy Carhart). Lindsey's first appearance was in the pilot episode.

Primarily, the character's function is to highlight the difficulties faced by Catherine Willows in being a single mother while holding down a demanding law-enforcement job and trying to maintain a social life. Lindsey's appearances have typically been in episodes where she was used as a pawn by Eddie, before that character's death, or afterward proving to be a rebellious (but not implausibly so) teenager. One episode featured Lindsey getting caught fighting at school; another after she was detained for hitchhiking. This latter incident prompted a scene where Catherine takes Lindsey to a morgue to show her the corpse of an adult female assault victim, to impress upon her the risks in her behavior. In more recent episodes, Lindsey has been enrolled in a private school. Lindsey was abducted and briefly held captive by enemies of her maternal grandfather, Sam Braun, in a seventh season episode.