I-15 Murders

Infobox Television episode
Title= I-15 Murders
Series=
Season = 1
Episode = 11
Guests= Krista Allen (Kristy Hopkins)
Airdate = January 12, 2001
Production = 102
Writer = Carol Mendelsohn
Director = Oz Scott
Season list = CSI season 1 episode list
Episode list =
Prev = Sex, Lies and Larvae
Next = Fahrenheit 932

I-15 Murders is the eleventh episode of the American crime drama which is set in Las Vegas, Nevada. It originally aired as Episode 11 of on January 12, 2001.

Plot

Margaret Shorey is kidnapped from a grocery store, and Grissom and Brass arrive to investigate. Grissom notices a smear of mustard on the bottom of the shopping cart and realizes that Margaret must have dropped a bottle of mustard and gone to the restroom to clean up. He notices a freshly cleaned toilet stall door, and using a black light reads the message, "Iv'e killed five women. Catch me if you can." A graphologist analyzes the handwriting and learns that the writer was a poorly educated, left-handed female.

Catherine discovers four other crime scenes at grocery stores in three different states; at each scene, a bathroom stall door bore a message declaring that the killer had murdered one to four women. Grissom realizes that these stores are all on Interstate 15.

Grissom, Catherine, and Brass are called to Moapa, where they find the body of Joan Sims, who was last seen at one of the grocery store crime scenes. Autopsy shows that she died of strangulation and that she was refrigerated until very recently. Grissom realizes that the women are being kept in a refrigerated truck that is traveling I-15. They search for refrigerated trucks that delivered to the store where Margaret was kidnapped, and they narrow the field to one truck.

Brass arrives at the truck stop with police backup and takes the driver and his girlfriend into custody. Grissom and Catherine then inspect the trailer. Inside, they find the refrigerated bodies of three women; none of them is Margaret. They interrogate the trucker and his girlfriend, and realize that the girl lured out the victims and wrote the notes on the stall doors. Grissom and Catherine tear apart the truck cab and find Margaret in a locked compartment underneath the bed.

Nick is called to a casino and is surprised to find Kristy Hopkins there. She accuses a security guard of spitting on her, and Nick takes her shirt as evidence. Greg finds amylase on the shirt in a quantity that indicates that someone intentionally spit on her. Nick convinces the guard to write a formal statement against Kristy and seal it in an envelope; he uses the DNA from the saliva to prove that the guard did spit on Kristy. Kristy thanks Nick enthusiastically and declares that she owes him.

Sara arrives at a house where Jeff Berlin lies dead in the living room. His brother Kenny says that he arrived at the house just after it had been burglarized and found Jeff dead in the living room. Sara notices the cash and the electronics still in the house and realizes that something is not right.

Sara finds glass in the cuff of Kenny’s pants and matches it to glass from a broken window at the house. She and Warrick also discover that the window was broken from the inside, discrediting Kenny’s claim that the house was broken into. They become increasingly suspicious of Kenny but cannot find a motive for his killing his brother; they check his computer for clues. However, it does not boot up, and when they inspect the computer, they find a gun hidden in it. A shard of glass in the gun matches the broken window, and soon Sara and Warrick learn that Kenny killed his brother in order to control a trust fund Jeff was managing.

Grissom asks Warrick why he missed his court date and confronts him with the surveillance footage from the casino that Sara gave him. Later, Warrick tells Sara that he went to the casino to collect a debt in order to pay a friend’s bail, and says that the next time she has questions, she should ask him instead of going behind his back.

Continuity

Kristy Hopkins first appeared in "The Pilot" and would return, for a final time, in "Boom".

Tony Amendola appears as a hand-writing expert and would later return as a landlord in "Viva Las Vegas" and as Professor Rambar in "Secrets and Flies" and "Pirates of the Third Reich".

See also

*

External links

*imdb title|id= 0534703|title=I-15 Murders
*Tv.com episode|id= 14596|title=I-15 Murders
*csiguide episode|id=11|title=I-15 Murders
* [http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season1/i_15_murders.shtml "I-15 Murders"] at CSI Files