Burked (CSI)

Infobox Television episode
Title= Burked
Series=
Season = 2
Episode = 1
Guests= Scott Wilson (Sam Braun)
Joseph Will (Walt Braun)
Airdate = September 27, 2001
Production =
Writer = Anthony E. Zuiker
Carol Mendelsohn
Director = Danny Cannon
Season list = CSI season 2 episode list
Episode list =
Prev = Strip Strangler
Next = Chaos Theory

Burked is the first episode from the of the popular American crime drama , which is set in Las Vegas, Nevada.

ummary

In the opening episode of season two, the son of Las Vegas mogul Sam Braun is found dead, the victim of an apparent drug overdose. However, suspicious circumstances lead the team to believe this is a homicide investigation.

Plot

Tony Braun, notorious drug-using son of casino mogul Sam Braun is found dead by his gardener at his mansion, with circular bruising on his chest. Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle immediately begin to process the scene and realize that the incident was a homicide, not an overdose; the television was on, which would not be the case if Tony had been taking recreational drugs or attempting suicide. They also find adhesive residue on his wrists and an empty prescription bottle for Xanax near the body. Warrick finds black tar heroin in the bedroom, along with a collection of other drugs and a few balloons used to inhale heroin. Meanwhile, Catherine and Captain Brass interview Braun's obnoxious and uncooperative ex-stripper girlfriend, who reveals that she owns half of the Braun mansion.

At the lab, Greg Sanders examines the adhesive; it is typical of that used on duct tape. He also determines from Braun's toxicology panel that the cause of death was not a drug overdose. The pathologist Dr Robbins concurs: he found Xanax and red wine in Tony's stomach, but not in lethal quantities. He rules that Braun was killed by compressional asphyxia. Meanwhile, Nick and Sara find fingerprints at the scene, one on the house's doggy door and the other on a tangled piece of duct tape from Braun's bin. The duct tape print does not match any AFIS records, but the doggy door prints come back as Walt Braun, Tony's brother.

When Grissom questions Walt, he claims that the prints were the result of him opening the front door for Tony when the latter forgot his keys. With the aid of a mannequin, Grissom later deduces that the victim was "Burked": one assailant knelt on the chest of the victim while the other assailant smothered him. Suddenly, Brass calls Grissom: he has caught a man digging in the ground on Tony Braun's land in Blue Diamond, Nevada. The man is Curt Ritten, a contractor and friend of Tony's who built an underground vault for him to store silver bullion in to limit his losses when the silver market fell; this is what Curt had been digging up. Sara and Warrick compare duct tape from Curt's truck to the tape at the crime scene: the frayed edges match, and Ritten is arrested.

When Catherine and Detective Vega search the Ritten house, they get a surprise; Janine Haywood emerges from the shower. When Bonnie Ritten arrives from Carson City to bail out her husband, there is an angry confrontation between the two women. However, the CSIs lift the wife's prints from the bail cheque and found her earring stud on the carpet. Grissom also notices that Walt Braun has sustained chigger bites, which Nick had also suffered after processing the back yard at the Braun house. When Mrs Ritten's print is matched to the duct tape print and it is found out that the half of the house owned by Janine was previously promised to Walt, the story unravels: Walt and Bonnie met at a party, and they plotted to get revenge on the person who had hurt them, Bonnie by killing her husband's lover's boyfriend and Walt by killing the brother who had cut him out of his will. They are both arrested and the episode ends with Walt citing one of his father's parables as a metaphor for his motives:

""The Scorpion and the Frog". The scorpion wants to cross a river, and asks the frog to help him across. The frog replies: "I can't trust you, you're a scorpion!" The scorpion replies, "Sure you can!" and hops on the frog's back. Half way across, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog asks "Why did you do that? Now we're both gonna die." The scorpion replies: "Hey, I can't help it. I'm a scorpion.""

Critical analysis

The events in this episode closely parallel the real life murder of Ted Binion and the prosecution's case thereof; in both cases the victim was the son of a wealthly casino mogul (Lester "Benny" Binion and Sam Braun in the real and fictional cases respectively), allegedly ingested an incapacitating but non-lethal cocktail of Xanax and black tar heroin, before being "burked" - smothered by a pair of assailants, one of whom knelt on the victim's chest. Both victims also had large quantities of silver buried in an underground vault in the Nevada desert: Binion's in Pahrump, Nevada and Braun's in Blue Diamond, Nevada. The show's producers, Anthony E. Zuiker and Carol Mendelsohn acknowledged this similarity and claimed that the episode was an homage to the case. [DVD commentary on "Burked" in the UK release of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 2 Part 1.]

Continuity

This episode marks the first appearance of Catherine's father, Sam Braun (played by Scott Wilson) and his family, although at this point Catherine's parentage is not revealed. He next appears in the episode "Inside the Box" where that plot line is started.

See also

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References

External links

*imdb title|id=0534660|title=Burked
*Tv.com episode|id=75214|title=Burked
*csiguide episode|id=24|title=Burked
* [http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season2/burked.shtml "Burked"] at CSI Files