The Blue Paint Killer

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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation character

Kevin Greer, the real Blue Paint Killer
City Las Vegas, Nevada
Status Deceased
Job Reprographics technician and comic book artist
Seasons 3, 5
Portrayed by Taylor Nichols
First appearance "The Execution of Catherine Willows"
Last appearance "What's Eating Gilbert Grissom?"

The Blue Paint Killer is a fictional character featured in the third and fifth season of the CBS drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. He was portrayed by Taylor Nichols.

Contents


[edit] Victims

  • Janet Kent (1987) - an art student who was taught by, and dated, Cody Lewis
  • Marcia Reese (1987) - another student at WLVU
  • Charlene Roth (1988) - John Mathers convicted of murder and executed 15 years later
  • Debbie Reston (2002) - Killed on the day of John Mathers' execution
  • Jonathan Avery Haywood (III) (2004) - killed by mistake due to resemblance to Kaitlin Rackish
  • Kaitlin Rackish (2004) - a student of Cody Lewis'

[edit] Modus operandi

The killer's applied blue house paint to railings in the fictional Western Las Vegas University campus; the railings were chosen because they were near a water fountain. Motor oil was mixed into the paint to slow the drying process. He waited for the female victim to touch the railing and then when she attempts to wash the paint off her hand at the water fountain, he attacks her, binds her limbs, bundles her into a van and drives away from the site. He then stops the van outside an erotic boutique and sketches his victim pleading for mercy. He then sexually assaults them before strangling them to death. After he had killed his victims, he dumped them in black bin liners around Las Vegas and sold his sketches to the owner of the boutique.

The exception to this M.O. was Jonathan Avery Haywood III, killed in "What's Eating Gilbert Grissom?". As Haywood was mistaken for Kaitlin Rackish, the killer did not assault or sketch him and disposed of the body by feeding it into a wood chipper on campus.

[edit] Suspects

[edit] John Mathers

John Mathers, from his police mugshot (Capt. Jim Brass standing to the left)
John Mathers, from his police mugshot (Capt. Jim Brass standing to the left)

John Mathers was a security guard who worked at WLVU in 1987, when the killings began. He was arrested and convicted in 1988 after one of his hairs was found on Charlene Roth's body. He remained on Death Row for 15 years, until he was executed for Charlene Roth's murder ("The Execution of Catherine Willows"). However, another victim (Debbie Reston) was found on the day of the execution. Believing Mathers to be a copycat of the real killer, the CSIs tried to find the real culprit but due to a lack of evidence, the case went cold.

Following another pair of murders in "What's Eating Gilbert Grissom?", it transpired that Mathers and Greer were partners. They were clearly quite close, with Greer referring to his partner as "JM", although he also said that capture and execution was "the price you pay for being incompetent". It is assumed that Mathers was later posthumously pardoned for Charlene Roth's murder, as Grissom determines that Kevin Greer was the "alpha male" of the two partners, and Mathers only assaulted the first three victims, although he was not convicted of the murders of Janet Kent and Marcia Reese.

[edit] Cody Lewis

Lewis (David Lee Smith) is an art professor at WLVU who dated the first victim, Janet Kent, and taught art to Kaitlin Rackish and several of the other victims[1]. He was originally in the frame for the 1987-8 murders but was later exonerated by the same DNA evidence which convicted John Mathers.

[edit] Kevin Greer's background and story

Kevin Greer worked at the WLVU's campus press from 1987 (or possibly earlier, indeterminate on the show) to 2004, when he was caught. He also had a job writing explicit comic books for a sex shop, under the pseudonym of Zippy T. He committed the first murder at the approximate age of 16 prior to the events of "The Execution of Catherine Willows", estimated from the show's chronology to be in 1987. In 1988, John Mathers was arrested and placed on death row for 15 years; in that time Greer stopped his killing spree, so that Mathers would die and take the blame to his grave. On the day of Mathers' execution, Greer killed his fourth victim, Debbie Reston. Although he intended to kill one victim every year on that day, he did not do so in 2003 because unsuccessful LASIK surgery had temporarily damaged his eyesight (he needed the surgery because Debbie Reston broke his glasses in a struggle). The following year, however, he killed Jonathan Haywood, mistaking him for his intended target Kaitlin Rackish because Haywood had long hair and Greer's poor post-LASIK night vision led him to mistake Haywood for a woman. He did later track Kaitlin down and kill her, but the evidence that he left behind at the crime scene (photocopier toner from the WLVU press) led to his arrest.

After SWAT raided his house, Greer left a phone message saying that he would be waiting for Gil Grissom at the police station. When Grissom and Brass arrived, he greeted them as "Gil" and "Jim", and taunted them about their search. Greer then promised to lead the officers to the location of a sixth victim, Brit Mosscoe. However, this was a ruse (Brit Mosscoe is an anagram of "Miss October", from a calendar hanging in Greer's garage). He asked to go to the bathroom before he left, and although an officer escorted him into the facilities, he went unattended into a cubicle. After Sara Sidle called Grissom to inform him of the deception, Grissom and Brass broke into the cubicle and found Greer with a black plastic bag tied around his head. They cut the bag off and attempted CPR, but Greer was already dead.

Returning to the interrogation room, Grissom finds a drawing which, when folded, reveals a picture of Grissom and the word "goodbye".

[edit] Related pages

[edit] References

  1. ^ Season 5, episode 6, "What's Eating Gilbert Grissom?"

[edit] External links