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Saturday 11 April 2015

CSI 15.12 "Dead Woods" Review

                                            Image result for csi dead-woods photos
As a girl, Abby (Ashley Fuss) walks with a boy. Slade (Tyler Forrest) trough a seedy part of town, they're stopped by a homeless man who pulls a gun on them wanting his phone and money.  Slade struggles with him and the man is shot as Slade runs away.  Abby recalls some memories from her past.  Officer Akers (Larry Sullivan) approaches and finds Abby still there, she asks for Sara (Jorga Fox).  She arrives and tells Akers about the case where she was the sole survivor after her family were shot and killed.  Abby tells her she smelled something on the man and that's the same smell she recalled from that night.  Sara tries to tell her that it was her father who shot them all and then killed himself.  That it was a man with a beard that shot her family.

Her prospective adoptive mother, Joanna (Clare Carey) is at the station and Sara's grateful that Abby has her.  Sara notices Slade being brought in and warns him to stay away from Abby as she's not his girlfriend anymore or her face will be the last one he sees.  Akers doesn't see any kind of threat against Slade from Sara.  Greg (Eric Szmanda) finds David (David Berman) processing the DB and he reaches down to smell him.  There's too many odours coming from him and David can't distinguish any from him either.  Greg tells him about the smell that Abby recalled and thinks that the machine will detect odours.  He isolates the smells and one he comes up with is gun cleaner.  Sara goes through the evidence again and has a flashback to processing Abby when she was in hospital and having to tell her that her parents are dead.

Sara mentions kerosene and Greg tells her gun cleaner was found on the DB.  She knows what it's like for one parent to kill another and that's what her mother did to her father.  He doesn't know the whole story and he's not meaning to pry, but he would like to know.  Sara's called and has to leave to see DB (Ted Danson).  She's got 12 open cases and tells her she doesn't have time for this old case. Sara is adamant and how in the Tox report of her father, there was one significant trace that wasn't identified.  DB reminds her that Doc (Robert David Hall) signed off on the case as a suicide and he'd have to change his findings.  He'll also have to deal with Ecklie and she'd better be able to bring him some more evidence.

Doc's not too happy and his report shows that the father had GSR on his hand and a GSW to his head. DB reminds him of the one unidentified trace and he pulls up the blood samples but they were destroyed three years ago.  The only other way they can analyze the Tox is to exhume the father's body.  Abby tells Sara she didn't go to his funeral or the rest of the family's and asks Sara about her father.  Sara wasn't allowed to go.  Doc tells Nick (George Eads) he won't have to do a full autopsy on the father's body cos the funeral home kept the organs in a plastic bag inside the body, when he was buried, so the formaldehyde wasn't affecting them either.  Inside the liver he finds traces of  a drug which knocked him out.  Doc changes his ruling to undetermined.  Sara is given permission to reopen the case and she kept all the evidence boxed and unprocessed cos of the suicide ruling.  So what would've happened all those years ago if Doc had analyzed that trace, or more rather, had it analyzed.

Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois) and Finn (Elisabeth Shue) process the evidence since Sara is too close to Abby.  They analyze the tent for prints and the sleeping bags and Finn takes samples of each blood spatter.  Abby and her sister Hannah were both placed back into their sleeping bags after they were shot.  Morgan gets a hit on the DNA from the sleeping bag to a Garth Fogel (Dean McDermott).  He was released after serving a sentence for being a paedophile.  He tells Nick he wanted to see his daughter, Hannah.  He went to see them at the house when they were leaving, but the mother wouldn't let him see her.  He touched the sleeping bag, but he didn't follow them to the campsite. Fogel's alibi was his mother, but she died five years ago.

Greg has an idea that'll make Abby remember and sets up the entire scene at the campsite, videoing the scene for court purposes.  She recalls Hannah getting shot and seeing the man with an arm patch and a logo with antlers or some animal.  Of course for our purposes, the camera shows us already that it's Legend Creek on the patch.  Henry (Jon Wellner) identified animal blood as belonging to an elk. Morgan tries to identify the hunting clubs in the area and matches one with the logo of an elk.  Sara and Morgan pay a visit to the club and ask the owner, Randy (Ben Browder) for his records.  Well he's a suspect if ever there was one.  He refuses and they see stuffed animals everywhere, he's into taxidermy.  Sara hands him the warrant and he hands them the file from 2004.

Abby goes through the photos and IDs Donald Wraith.  When Nick finds him out in the woods, he's been shot inside his truck.  David is glad to be outdoors in the wilderness for once and he says that it couldn't have been suicide as Nick tells him the gun would've fallen out of his hand.  Sara tells DB Fogel could've had hep from Donald.  Hodges (Wallace Langham) tells  Morgan about traces of resin he found on Donald and she jumps the gun thinking it could come from a construction site where Fogel worked.  He tells her it's used in taxidermy.  Which is what I said, see my suspect again.  Aside from the fact that he was played by Ben Browder and that he was also guilty in the CSI:Miami ep he came in.

Sara tells Randy his prints were found in the tent and he says how Donald wanted to have some fun with the mother when they stopped by asking for directions.  They followed them to the site and drugged the father.  Donald took the gun to subdue her, but she fought back and shot her.  Also shooting Hannah cos she saw his face.  Sara tells him Abby believes Donald was there but it was Randy who killed them.

Abby can now move on as Sara tells her to and Joanna picks her up.  Greg looks at Sara's photo with her father and tells her she looks like him.  Her mother told her he was abusive but she doesn't believe he was.  Her mother was an alcoholic and had mental problems, which is why they were "volatile" together.  Also admitting she's a little jealous of Abby as she can 'rewrite' her history.  Greg tells her that was her past but Sara still has a future.  Her mother's alive and she can still make it up with her.  Sara isn't quite sure though.

Another CSI ep which delves back into Sara's past and the story that we are very familiar with by now.  Which is why such cases are so very close to home for Sara.  It was good to see how Sara and Greg can talk to each other about everything really and last time she spoke to him this season.
The CSI:Miami ep with Ben Browder was 1.22 Tinderbox.  Where he set fire to a club since he wanted to become a fireman but was rejected.

Elisabeth Harnois would've had another on set Point Pleasant reunion with Clare Carey as they starred in the show together, but didn't have any scenes in this CSI ep.

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