The Good Samaritan (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode
Title = The Good Samaritan
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 1
Episode = 14


Airdate = February 17, 2004
Production = 1x14
Writer = Jack Bernstein
Director = Alan J. Levi
Guests = Kirk B.R. Woller as Lt. Commander Julius Stephanie Hodge as Sheriff Charlene Dupray
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = One Shot, One Kill
Next = Enigma"The Good Samaritan" is an episode of the drama television series "NCIS".

Plot

The episode begins with a Navy lieutenant commander who stops to help a woman, who is stopped in her car at the side of the road. When she seems nervous about him volunteering to help, he shows her his Navy identification and says that he is a dentist; "I don't carry a gun." Unfortunately, the woman in the car "is" carrying a gun. She lowers her window and shoots him.

Sheriff Charley of Grayson County, where the murder took place, is reluctant to cede jurisdiction to NCIS because she is concerned about politics and power. She finally says she will take charge of the local investigation. Charley flirts with Gibbs, asking him if she likes her perfume. Ducky notes that Commander Julius died of a single gunshot wound to the back, which did not exit. While it appears the body was not moved, his hands were bound postmortem. Ducky later finds that the lieutenant was shot by a dum-dum bullet from a distance of 3-5 feet.

Charley tells the team that there was a very similar murder 2 counties away. The victim, David Truly, was a civilian who had connections to the naval base, so she believes that they have a serial killer on their hands. The team finds urine at the scene.

Abby discovers that someone let the air out of the commander's tires to make it look like he had a flat tire. She found some unidentified prints on his car, which AFIS did not recognize.

Charley brings evidence from the previous case to the NCIS office. She tells Gibbs that she deserves dinner with him for bringing the evidence over, so he takes her to the cafeteria while Kate and DiNozzo turn away, embarrassed by Charley's brash style.

Charley calls the team to notify them of another similar murder of Lt. James Seeger. All three victims were associated with Oceana, a naval air station. Ducky finds that this victim was killed earlier and then moved, so the team suspects that this is the work of a copycat. Gibbs feels that the murderer is a woman because the murders are hands-off as opposed to strangulation or stabbing.

A friend of Lt. Seeger suspects Seeger's wife of killing him because they were going through an ugly divorce. Gibbs and Kate visit Laura, the widow. She says that they fought often and eventually grew apart. She says that she is innocent and agrees to give a DNA sample.

Ducky finds sawdust in Seeger's nose, but Laura said that he had not used his saw in over a month. Ducky says he also found dog hair, and Laura has a dog. Suspicion of Laura grows, and while Kate wonders why she volunteered her DNA, Gibbs says that she didn't know they had anything to compare it to. Meanwhile, the bullets from all three cases have been matched, so there is no copycat. Kate is skeptical that Laura killed her husband and 2 other men just to make it look like a serial killing spree.

The team finds that Laura was at a bank at 2:33pm, which is right in the middle of the time when Seeger probably died, 2-3pm. This rules her out as a suspect because she could not have made it to the murder scene quickly enough.

Gibbs visits Laura again and asks her if Seeger visited her recently. She denies it and maintains her innocence. However, surprisingly, Abby matches Laura's DNA to DNA found in urine at David Truly's crime scene. Laura again says that she was not there and that she gave 2 urine samples to Commander Julius' commanding officer for her physical and for a drug test.

The commanding officer, Amanda Green, is not helpful when Gibbs confronts her. She says she was at a medical conference at the time of Seeger's death.

The team is stymied by their best suspects both having alibis, but Kate makes a discovery that explains the mystery. One night, Gibbs tracks a car that is parked on a bridge. He arrests the woman in the car, who is the identical twin of Laura Seeger. Laura Seeger herself is already handcuffed in the police car. Both women were killers.