CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

The episode starts off with a ritual involving a luchador jumping through a flaming ring. It then cuts to a scene where a young blonde woman takes drinks and appears to be drugged. She drops the drink and stumbles out of the bar. After unsuccessfully hailing a taxi due to the fact that she is still drugged, a large man in black with a skull mask gives chase. The woman runs down stairs and through desolate areas under overpasses and through alleys before losing her footing in a waterway. After tripping several times, losing her footing, she is frozen in fear before the large man catches up to her simply by walking. The large man grabs her by the neck and struggles with her before snapping her neck, instantly killing her.

Hours later, a janitor finds the body and calls the police. Detective Jim Brass is on the scene to take her statement while CSIs Raymond Langston and Catherine Willows investigate the murder scene. Langston uncovers her face under her hair and identifies her as Silvia Mallick, his former graduate student studying Criminal Pathology at West Las Vegas University.

Flashback: At a cafe, Langston is having breakfast with Silvia. He is announcing his resignation from WLVU to become a CSI. She is disappointed in the news because she wanted Langston to be her thesis advisor and she has a lot of ideas for her thesis. He talked with a Professor Jamison to be her new thesis advisor and Jamison was excited about the prospect. Langston promises her that he will always be available to her if she needs help with anything.

Present Day: Silvia's body is brought back to the morgue where Langston is photographing her. Catherine found no signs of sexual trauma on her. Wet mount results came back as negative. Langston finds a piece of leather clasped in her left hand, indicating that she ripped off a piece of her eventual murderer's mask.

Lab Technician David Hodges process the mask with fellow Technician Wendy Simms and confirms it to be leather material. The material is cracked and the pattern indicates its old age. They discuss possible sources of the leather material, believing it to come from a purse, glove, or a dead cow, but nothing definitive.

Medical Examiner Al Robbins rules Silvia's cause of death as being spinal shock. The spinal cord was ripped at discs C3, C4, and C5. The killer severed the spinal cord from the body, causing the sudden drop in blood pressure, which led to Silvia's death. The death was quick. Although Robbins sent a blood sample to Tox, Langston is certain they will not find any narcotics in her bloodstream "unless she's a party girl."

Langston investigates the footage of the streets Silvia was at the night of her murder. CSI Riley Adams pulls up Silvia's phone records for Langston. A few hours before she died, she received over a half dozen phone calls from one person: Dan Forrester, a Las Vegas resident. Langston recognizes Dan.

Langston visits Dan at his place of employment, a casino bar. From the conversation, it appears that Dan is Silvia's boyfriend and they live together. Dan is upset at Silvia for spending too much time with her research and spent a night at one of her girlfriends' house. After Langston tells her that Silvia died, Dan is visibly shaken, but is unable to give Langston anything other than that Silvia kept all of her research notes at the graduate office in the Criminal Pathology Department.

Langston visits the Criminal Pathology Department and puts on latex gloves before having an attending police officer clear Silvia's office. He walks into the office to see that it is strewn with papers scatter all over the floor, the couches, the shelves, and the desk. A copy of his book, "In Front of My Eyes," is found buried underneath the papers on the floor. He opens the book and turns to the introductory page where he autographed "To Silvia when you get published...I will expect your autograph. Your fan, Raymond Langston." He smiles for a little bit before thumbing through more pages. He discovers a folded piece of paper that is actually a picture of another woman who appeared to have been killed in the same manner as she was.

Flashback: Silvia walks into the cafe another morning to meet Langston. At this time, Langston has officially become a CSI. Despite this, Langston still cherishes the cafe as the place where he got to drink lattes and chat with students on their school projects. Silvia's life has been complicated due to the amount of time she spends on her thesis and her advisor, Mr. Jamison, has gone on sabbatical, so she has been alone the whole time. She was about to call him, but found him at the cafe instead. Silvia needed a favor from him to obtain crime scene photos from unsolved crimes as part of her research. When asked about her subject, Silvia told him that because Langston is no longer her advisor, she is not obligated to tell him what it is, but promises to let him know the moment she figures it out, pending he helps her get her thesis published with JFS. After Langston promises to help, Silvia orders a coffee.

Present Day: Langston and Catherine discuss the case. Langston compares Silvia's murder photo to other photos from her research project. The female victims were killed eleven years ago: two from Los Angeles (a manicurist and a dental hygienist) and one from Las Vegas (a blackjack dealer). All of them were Hispanic and of similar build with severed C3, C4, and C5 vertebrae. LVPD labeled the killer as "The Southwest Stalker," who fell off their radar when the bodies stopped turning up. Langston believes that Silvia was killed because she got close to solving the serial case. No purse was found at her murder scene, deducing that the killer took it and stole all her research at her office to cover his tracks.

The piece of leather found in Silvia's hand had multiple DNA contributors, making it unable to run the sample through CODIS. All of the female victims had traces of Atropine, Scopolomine, and Hyoscyamine, which make up Datura (or Genus Datura), a strong plant-based hallucinogen. Ingested, Datura is stronger than LSD. Hodges had discovered powder traces of Datura on the leather piece. Langston knows of few uses of the drug, mainly used in voodoo ritualistic practices within religions like Santeria. Willows tells Langston to check into Narcotics for known places of Santeria practice.

Nick and Brass run down a lead to a house that is used for Santeria practices, which also deals in Datura. No answers at the door, but the two hear some screaming so they bang it harder. Eventually, an elder woman lets them in and the two observe the ritual.

During the ritual, the practitioners can be heard chanting Ogun's name. A woman is seen struggling against a visage of Ogun in her mind. Nick spots the brown Datura powder in a ritual jar. Brass and Nick eventually end the ritual.

Nick interrogates the Santeria priest about Silvia and the piece of leather in Spanish. So far, they are unable to produce any new information.

Greg and Langston view the surveillance footage of Silvia the night of the murder. She was previously seen at the Golden Gate Motel. Silvia was visibly struggling to hail a taxi home and nearly got run over by one. They eventually discover where she left from and find a building with the words "Lucha Libre" on the billboard. The men decide to investigate the building, located on the corner of Harmon and Pinchard.

Langston and Nick arrive at the wrestling ring in time to view tonight's luchador match. The Master of Ceremonies (M.C.) is vocal in his excitement during the match and briefly glances at the CSIs.

Brass and several other police officers join the CSIs moments later. They interview the luchadors about their knowledge of Silvia Mallick. Some refuse to volunteer their DNA samples out of fear that their DNA can be mishandled. They eventually question the M.C., who describes his experience as a former luchador. He gets defensive about the assault charges made against him. When asked about Silvia, he remembers she wanted to learn about the life of lucha libre. He was also questioned about the murder victims connected to The Southwest Stalker. Like most of the luchadors, he refused to volunteer a DNA sample.

At the lab, Langston deduces with Hodges that the leather fragment was a piece of a luchador's mask. If they can match the fragment to any one of the masks, then they can find the killer.

Riley and Langston begin searching through the luchadors' masks to match with the leather fragment. They eventually find the mask's owner, whose dad was a luchador before his time. He loved the lifestyle and handled himself well with Brass and Langston. The wrestler is known as Phantasmo (real name Jesus). He was the only suspect who willingly volunteered his DNA sample.

Wendy reexamined the DNA from the leather fragment. She subtracted Jesus's DNA and isolated the one DNA sample she needed. Wendy called in Catherine and matched the unknown sample to an arrestee whose DNA was taken on an old assault case. It is a match to the M.C., Esteban Fellipe.

At the luchador locker room, Jesus confronts Esteban about his missing mask and Silvia. Jesus tells him the mask had been missing since she was killed and just recently found it in Esteban's bag. Esteban questions Jesus about his theories, but Jesus retorts by bringing up his behavior around Silvia and the women from Albuquerque and Los Angeles. Jesus blames him for bringing the police down to investigate them with the weight of their unsavory reputations dragging them down. Esteban continues to reason with Jesus, but is unsuccessful and is told to leave them forever.

After Esteban walks away, Jesus takes his shirt off and relaxes in a tanning booth. Outside of it, Esteban turns on the showers to muffle the noises. After Jesus finishes his tan and opens, Esteban appears in front of him, appearing possessed by Ogun, and fires on him twice with a .38-caliber revolver. Jesus has enough strength to fight Esteban for a few moments, but is unsuccessful in strangling him due to his gunshot wounds. Esteban is able to grab the revolver and fires on a weakened Jesus one more time to finish him off.

Esteban cleans himself up as Brass and Langston arrive to take him in. He flees and tries to escape. Eventually, Esteban is cornered at a sealed exit door and tries to pry it open, but Brass catches up with him and holds him at gunpoint. Langston arrives in time to see Esteban handcuffed.

Esteban denies any involvement in Silvia's murder and frantically tries to tell Langston and Brass that he tried to help them. Even faced with hard evidence pointing the finger on Esteban, he continues to deny her murder as well as the murders of the other three women. After being asked who did it, Esteban confesses he was possessed by Ogun, the Latin god of violence and brute force. According to him, Ogun chose him as his conduit to inflict deaths on the victims. He tried to go to a Santeria priest to ward Ogun off. Langston does not believe him and in a fit of rage, anger, and vengeance, assaults Esteban for lying. Brass separates him and Langston shows himself out of the interrogation room.

Langston remembers the conversation he had with Silvia and acts on his promise to get her thesis published. It starts with Silvia's words: "I dedicate each chapter to the unsolved cold cases LVPD has deemed related by evidence or method of killing. Hopefully, by the time I'm done, we will have a better idea why these serial killers got away and others did not. I intend to write in detail about the ones who did not."