CSI 12.15 "Stealing Home" Review

This was one of those CSI episodes where you don't know whether to laugh or to cry at how dismal it really was, especially considering the family feuding, done to death in CSI episodes and then this one took the prize as having the house as the killer.  Or should I say killer house comments.

Sara ((Jorga Fox) asks Nick (George Eads) if he's dating the nurse from last episode, see I said that didn't I in my last review.  The mega flirting that was going on there!  Then she asks about Doc Robbin' niece from 12.4 Maid Man and Nick's 'keeping his options open.'  Yay Nicky, we always knew he was a ladies man!  The scene doesn't show a murder or some other crime taking place as is usually the case but this time the crime's already been committed.  Dwayne (Jason Sklar)reports his wife missing and also his house has been stolen.  Nick asks if someone's "after the house or the wife?"

Finn (Elisabeth Shue) has to undergo her routine lie detector test and when asked if she's had sex with animals she replies her first husband was a dog and her second one was a pig.  DB (Ted Russell) knew she'd get that in.    At least she says the photo ID is much better than the Seattle one.  Just in case you can't recall she's from Seattle.  Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois) takes her on a tour of the lab, including unofficial tour.  Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) did I mention he was absent from the last episode, well I have now; finds the car belongs to Dwayne's wife, Debbie and Jimmy (Randy Sklar) arrives.  He being Dwayne's twin brother.  Marla (Kira Sternbach) is their sister and she's treated like dirt.  Ugh what a family.  No wonder Sara's glad she's an only child.  Nick posits if they figure out what happened to the house, they can figure out what happened to the wife.

Sara doesn't find any prints but Nick finds four sets of shoeprints.  He tells her how easily a house can be moved overnight, making him an expert on house removals too, ha.   Jimmy tells DB Debbie (Ashley Williams) loved to gamble and Dwayne says as a result they had to move in with his mother, who didn't leave a will.  Their father left ten years ago with their money.  Fred (Larry Anderson) moved in but he wouldn't steal the house, Marla says.  Dwayne threw Fred out and it was Debbie's idea.  Marla doesn't want the house and who can blame her with all the bad luck it carries.  It's definitely cursed.

Greg (Eric Szmanda) and DB are called to a CS where the Vic has been run over.  David (David Berman) doesn't find any ID on him but he has tread marks on his DB.  He lost an arm and a leg and was run over by a big rig, like the type needed to move a house but no one made that connection here!  DB notices there's not much blood and David adds his blood wasn't circulating.   Causing Greg to comment he was already dead.  Hodges (Wallace Langham) reads out the house number, '528' on the surveillance video.  Nick: "As opposed to the other houses stolen last night!"  Finn arrives and tells Hodges she heard about his tentacle fetish (revealed in 12.1 73 Seconds  And asks how he answered the sex with animals question on his lie detector test. Well, maybe he didn't have a fetish back then relating to octopus.

They map the route of the rig from the surveillance until it leads off into the desert.  Nick: "follow the destination, find the house."  He's been getting lots of those lines this episode.  He calls Brass for a helicopter to locate the house,  which was heading East.  Nick: "wrap it up, take it back to the house."  Which DB finds amusing! There's a DB under the house.  Finn says he's wearing "ruby red shoes."  Hey I was going to make the Wizard of Oz connection!  DB: "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."  The Wicked Witch of the East was killed when Dorothy's house landed on her after the tornado.

David finds the DB's chest concaved so he was crushed by the house when he was attempting to fix the jack holding it up when the house was being lowered.  Idiot!    Nick notices his shoe impression matches those he took from the house's original site.  He also recognizes him as Dennis from the surveillance photo.  Inside the house Finn notices the high velocity blood spatter and an air bubble on the wall inside the blood spatter indicating the blood was expirated.  The cast off pattern shows a short arc from beating and sharp force trauma.  The DB was stabbed four times.

Dwayne refuses to give a DNA sample and Debbie turns up alive.  She was out gambling, well lucky for her, even if she was a loser at gambling.  Now she can put up with more family feuding and join in too.  Doc Robbins (Robert David Hall) finds a piece of the murder weapon inside the Vic, the tip of the knife.  Greg says he was stabbed which makes it Finn's DB.  He's Fred as his DNA matched the blood from the house.  DB posits he fell out of the truck when it turned a corner.  Marla knew Dennis and asked him to steal the house as a favour, since he wanted to go out with her.  Sara: "that's one killer house."

Morgan and Nick search for knife in the house and Nick finds a skeleton in the closet.  The house has killed four people.  Morgan: "makes it a serial killer."  Possible blunt force trauma on the skeleton and Nick finds a dead blowfly showing the DB decomposed in the wall.  That was out of Edgar Allan Poe again.  Only he wasn't buried alive.  It's been dead ten years.  Again the clue being that's how long Walter's been gone when he left them.  So really that's a giveaway to the suspect.  Henry (Jon Wellner) comments their "mummy is a daddy."  The DB in the wall is the biological father of Marla.  Epithelials under Fred's nails match Dwayne which is why he was reluctant to give a DNA sample.  He claims they fought when he threw Fred out.

DB sends Morgan out "with boyfriend Greg" only she doesn't react to that; to look for the knife handle/blade.  They find some fragments on the road and a partial print is found after they join the pieces together.  Morgan was good at jigsaws.  It's a match for Walter (Jeff Kober) found on AFIS.  Nick sent the papers he found with the mummy to QD, which doesn't explain why he's the one who worked on them.  The DB was Tony, a handyman and he was Marla's father.  He wrote her mother letters and was her soulmate.  Tony was reported missing.  Her mother wanted to leave Walter.

Brass ran a search on Walter using his full name and found a hit.  He used his credit card in Vegas two days ago, not very clever when he could have gotten away with murder if he hadn't turned up.  Or would he?  I mean why bury the DB in the wall to begin with instead of disposing of it elsewhere.  He killed Tony and Fred caught him in the house when he was retrieving the skeleton.  He killed Fred and had to leave him behind cos the house was moving.

Finn threatens to divide the house for the siblings with a chainsaw and Marla donates it to charity since no one was willing to pay the bill for the damage the house caused.  Sara suggested Marla give it to charity to get out of paying.  Finn comments the lab is like family so why'd he want her here?  DB: "best of the best can only get better."  She doesn't want a repeat of Seattle, was that when he fired her as Greg mentions earlier on.

Even after catching the killer, not said if they found the rest of the house stealer's, surely they need to be found too and was Dennis really a dumb criminal, was he crushed by accident or killed, well it's a question no one thought of.