Blood Drops
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| “Blood Drops (AKA If These Walls Could Talk)” | |
|---|---|
| CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 7 |
| Guest stars | Marc Vann (Conrad Ecklie), Dakota Fanning |
| Written by | Ann Donahue and Tish McCarthy |
| Directed by | Kenneth Fink |
| Original airdate | November 3, 2000 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Who Are You?" | "Anonymous" |
Blood Drops is the seventh episode from the first series of the popular American crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
[edit] Summary
When four members of a family are brutally murdered, the two daughters are the sole survivors. At first Grissom and his team suspect a cult murder, but the evidence tells an even more disturbing story.
[edit] The Plot in Detail
The opening scene shows Tina Collins screaming for help on her front lawn in the middle of the night. She runs into her next door neighbour's garden and the scene cuts to the emergency services and the CSI team arriving at the crime scene. Detective Ray O' Riley meets Gil Grissom on the way in and informs Grissom that there are four deceased and two survivors. The father, mother and two brothers of one family were all murdered but the two sisters were unharmed. Grissom sees a police officer retching and asks what's wrong with him. The detective replies that he's been inside the house, suggesting it's a gruesome crime scene. The opening credits follow.
Grissom goes into the house with a rookie called Shibley who he wants to take notes. Grissom goes through the house and up the stairs, he notices the smell of blood and tells the rookie to breathe through his mouth. Once he's reached the second floor he sees the first victim who is lying in a pool of his own blood and has stab wounds. Shibley takes notes but after a few moments tells Grissom he can't take the smell and Sara Sidle appears to take his place, the rookie runs off, probably to be sick. Grissom and Sara see a blood swirl on the wall and wonder if it's a cult killing similar to that of the Manson murders.
Grissom and Sara move forward into the main bedroom where they find the first victim's wife dead in her bed. She, too, has been stabbed and Grissom notices she was stabbed in her sleep. They also notice that her blood is dropping from her fingertips onto the floor, it being near the time of the murders so that the blood hasn't clotted. Sara says the reason the room feels so close and strange is because her soul is still in it.
Grissom then goes back to the first body and looks at the blood drops between the two. He notices that the body is next to a door which leads to the daughter, Brenda's room. He looks in and sees it undisturbed and then carries on down the corridor to another room where the bodies of the two sons are, and another shape drawn on a mirror in blood.
Grissom goes outside and tells Detective O' Riley that he wants the paramedics who went into the house to talk to him. He then tells Sara to tell the lab that, tonight, "this is the only crime scene in Las Vegas".
Reporters have arrived at the crime scene as Grissom questions Tina Collins, one of the daughters who escaped the massacre. She's asked for her clothes which may have evidence on them and Grissom tells her that everything they take to investigate will help to find who did this to her family. Grissom then talks to Brenda, the younger sister who does not talk until Grissom asks if anyone went into her room and she quietly says "the buffalo" but after she won't say anything else.
Later, Catherine Willows, Warrick Brown and Nick Stokes show up to help and they are told by Grissom not to speak to the press or the sheriff. Grissom tells Catherine that he wants her inside to map the scene and deal with blood samples and he wants Warrick and Nick to do the perimeter.
In the next scene, Grissom is in the kitchen and Detective O' Riley comes in, annoying Grissom as he disturbs the scene. Grissom sees that the knife drawer is open and there's one knife missing - the knife, potentially, used to kill the Collins family. O' Riley notes that it's the only drawer open, indicating the killer knew his/her way around. He also finds footprints on the floor that are possibly the killer's.
Grissom talks to the EMS officers and finds out that all they did was check each of the victims' pulses and he also finds out that they were both in the kitchen by comparing shoe prints. Grissom then talks to the sheriff and tells him he doesn't know enough about the case to comment, he repeats this to the media and then walks off while the sheriff speaks in more detail to the media surrounding the crime scene.
Grissom tells Sara that he wants her to take the little girl, Brenda and stay with her. This annoys Sara because she thinks she's being a "taxi service".
Warrick finds tire prints in the dirt outside the crime scene as Catherine gathers blood evidence from inside the crime scene. Also, Nick finds a cigarette stub and a match.
The bodies are removed from the house and Grissom tells David Phillips to make sure he gets their personal belongings so he can take any evidence there is from them. Nick sees one of the bodies and gets upset, punching a door in his frustration.
Catherine tells Grissom that the blood samples she collected are at the lab and they discuss whether they think it's a cult killing. Catherine says she studied the Manson murders and think this is "imitation", not "butter". They also discuss possible sequences, suggesting that the mother was killed first in her sleep and the father ran to protect his children, but was killed on the way. Grissom says they need to talk to the first suspect - the teen daughter and wonders if she has a boyfriend they nickname "buffalo".
Sara is having problems with Brenda because she perceives herself to not be good with children, and she pleads with Brass to let the girl go with social services. Brass tells her to take Brenda for a psychological examination. Sara approaches Brenda and tells her the pictures she has drawn are "pretty". Brenda scratches out the drawing with her crayon, so Sara asks if she wants to go for another car ride. Brenda's reaction is to throw the paper and crayons onto the floor and cover her ears.
Brass and Grissom question Tina Collins and finds out that she has no specific boyfriend and does not know anyone referred to as "buffalo". Brass asks why she was scared the night of the attack when she heard footsteps as she should be used to hearing footsteps in the night with such a large family. She replies that she knows what her brother and father's footsteps sound like, and these sounded different.
Nick and Warrick discuss their tire prints and the cigarette stub which is called a "bidi" because it is hand-rolled. Nick thinks it's from a teenager.
Sara waits for Brenda to come out of her examination at the hospital and when social services try to take her away she argues with them, saying she needs to collect any evidence Brenda has. Brenda makes up her own mind and holds onto Sara's jacket, showing the social service person that she is attached to Sara.
Catherine works on mapping the crime scene out, and she spends all day doing that until she realises that the whole day has gone and she is late to pick up her daughter.
Back at the lab, Grissom looks at Tina Collins's clothes and Warrick tells him that the tire prints found outside the house are a match to a '93 Honda scooter. He also tells Grissom that a boy four blocks away from the Collins house owns one, but Grissom isn't interested which annoys Warrick because he thinks he's just "blown open the case". Grissom replies that he doesn't understand why there is no blood on Tina's clothing as it's natural for someone to check if their family is alive and therefore get blood on them. Grissom compares her to Lady Macbeth and quotes from Shakespeare.
Catherine gets home to find her daughter Lindsey has been picked up from ballet class by her father Eddie. Catherine apologizes and explains that she was caught up in work. Eddie offers her pancakes, unusual for him since he's not exactly the most domesticated of men, but before Catherine can accept Grissom calls her and tells her the case is opening out and she needs to get back to work.
In the hallway, Grissom runs into Conrad Ecklie where they bicker because Ecklie thinks it would've been better if the sheriff gave this case to the day shift, his "team". Grissom says he didn't think it was a competition, but Ecklie disagrees and says his team always win. Grissom reminds him that in last year's softball game graveyard beat day shift.
Elsewhere, Warrick is questioning the boy who owns the scooter. He asks him if he knows Tina Collins and he says that "a lot of guys know her. She's a freak". He also says that he doesn't know where his scooter is because he shares it with a few other boys and one of them have it. Brass asks him to give the names of who else shares the scooter.
In the CSI meeting room the team are going over what evidence they have. They go over the suspects they have in custody, Tina's spotless pajamas, the bidi Nick found which is being processed by DNA and Brenda's catatonic state from trauma. Sara says she responds to the word "buffalo" by "freaking out" and when Grissom asks where she is Sara tells him she's in the car. He looks shocked but Sara tells him she's cracked a window and then asks for a "little credit", informing him that she's at the hospital.
Later, Catherine and Grissom question Tina Collins and remind her that she said she hugged her mother's body and tripped over her father's which doesn't explain why there is no blood on her pajamas. Tina has no valid explanation.
Meanwhile, the boys who share the scooter are being questioned and all but one is cleared. Jesse Overton has the scooter on the night of the murder but says he doesn't know where it is. During his interrogation he tries to light up a bidi, adding to Nick's suspicion and when Nick takes his cigarettes and his matches away he notices there are two matches missing from the book. Overton admits to having sex with Tina and asks for a lawyer before he'll say anymore. Brass gets a warrant to search his house.
Tina asks Catherine and Grissom if she can see her sister, but is met with accusations that she caught her boyfriend killing her family. Nick then makes a positive comparison between the match found at the crime scene and Overton's matchbook. Brass, with his warrant, searches Overton's garage and finds the scooter and a pair of jeans covered in blood. Grissom, who is with him, quotes from Macbeth again with the line "yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?"
Jesse Overton pleads guilty and goes on a lie detector test. He admits to each killing on the lie detector but it also asks for motive, and he claims that he killed them because Tina wanted to be with him and they wouldn't let her. The test shows that he was telling the truth that he had murdered them but lied when it came to the reason. Grissom wants to find out what is being hidden.
Grissom goes to find out what happened to the family's possessions that he had specifically asked for. Dr Robbins tells him he gave them to Ecklie who was supposed to give them to Grissom. Grissom goes straight to Ecklie, angry that his evidence was taken away from him and he bickers with Ecklie because Ecklie is more concerned with his career than with solving crimes.
Once Grissom has his evidence he goes through it and finds an amulet on a chain which, once the blood has been cleaned off, shows a buffalo. The amulet belongs to Tina's father, Mr Collins. He immediately calls Sara and asks if Brenda was checked for sexual abuse, she wasn't. Grissom tells Sara to take some ultraviolet pictures to find out.
Sara bonds with Brenda as she takes the pictures using a special camera, her attitude towards Brenda has changed.
Meanwhile, Catherine is examining the photographs of the crime scene and putting together a time-line. Something doesn't click when she looks at the blood drops and puts it to the theory that the killer killed the mother first and then the father tried to save his daughter but was killed in the struggle. She goes to find Grissom but is stopped by a man from social services about her own daughter, Lindsey. Eddie, Catherine's ex-husband, has filed a report saying she neglected her daughter. Catherine seems shocked.
She does eventually get through to Grissom and tells him that something is off with the blood drops. She tells him that it doesn't look like he was going into the girl's room but was (Grissom finishes her sentence for her) coming out of it. The husband was killed first and then the killer went to the mother's room, dropping blood on the floor from the knife. Sara has her pictures developed which show Brenda was being sexually abused and suddenly everything fits into place.
Grissom and Brass interrogate Tina Collins again with the knowledge that Brenda was being abused by her father. During the interview, Tina reveals that she was also abused by her father and that Brenda is actually her daughter as well as her sister. This explains the motive behind the killings, except that her mother and brothers were also killed. Tina explains that they never tried to protect her and that's why they were killed. She says that Brenda may not have liked what she did but at least she protected her from their father.
The episode ends with Grissom saying goodbye to his team and saying that in 24 hours it'll be back to normal. He picks up an apple and starts eating it, about to leave but then he notices a crossword on the table and can't help but attempt it. Warrick, standing outside, sees him working on the puzzle and smiles.
