Episode 2.11 'Complications' (airdate: 1/5/2004)
Jason O'Mara as Dr. Keith Winters
Season 2 Episode 11: Complications
| CSI: Miami, 2002 -
Episode 2.11 'Complications' (airdate: 1/5/2004) |
Dr. Keith Winters
|
Jason's role in this episode totaled approximately 6 minutes.
Dr. Keith Winters (38) ... Jason O'Mara
Debbie Morbach (35) ... Elizabeth Lackey
Roxanne Price ... Kristy Swanson
Process Server ... Jason McCune
Brad Foster ... Leonard Roberts
Carlos Garza ... Randy Lewis Hernandez
Sara Foster ... Sundra Oakley
Lt. Horatio Caine ... David Caruso
Calleigh Duquesne ... Emily Proctor
Tim Speedle ... Rory Cochrane
Eric Delko ... Adam Rodriguez
Alexx Woods MD ... Khandi Alexander
Det. Yelina Salas ... Sofia Milos
Paula Muro (records) ... Shelli Bergh
Valera (lab tech) ... Boti Bliss
Randy ... Russell Howard
ME Glenn Monroe ... Joseph Kell
Case 47 'Complications'
Miami Police Code: 31 Homicide
CSI Personnel:
Horatio Caine, Tim Speedle, Eric Delko, Calleigh Duquesne, Alexx Woods
Crime Scene:
A man is found hanging in his upscale condominium.
Investigation:
Dr. Carlos Garza, 37, is discovered hanging in front of the wall-to-ceiling windows of his condo. Neighbors report seeing a steady stream of beautiful women coming and going from his residence. Near the body Caine finds a lipstick-stained cigarette. Caine and Salas immediately suspect that this is not a suicide, because suicides typically kill themselves in private, not in full view.
Duquesne learns that Garza is an anesthesiologist at the Winters Beauty Clinic. Delko examines the knot in the noose and finds that it is very snug, too tight for someone who did it himself. The rope clearly came from one of the condo's loft windows, indiating that the killer knew the residence well. Speedle finds that the front door has been violently kicked open, leaving scuff marks. While he is taking a sample of the scuff, Speedle notes the presence of a sticky substance on one of the tiles in the entrance hall.
Woods finds that cause of death is asphyxiation, but not suicide. There are dual ligature marks; one is consistent with hanging, but the other is horizontal, across the larynx. She theorizes that the victim was strangles first, and then hanged.
Woods finds a small amount of silicon gel on Garza's thigh. The gel is typically used to prevent scarring after liposuction. Garza's patient list reveals that one of his patients, Roxanne Price, 28, had liposuction two days earlier.
Price states that she and Garza were engaged in sexual relations for the past 24 hours and that she had reapplied the gel to her body that morning. She states that she felt sorry for the decedent, who had a patient die on him the previous week. The lipstick on the cigarette is also hers, as she acknowledges.
Delko uses a mag light to discover two strands of hair sticking out from Garza's woven leather belt. He notes that the knots in the murder weapon are nautical bowline knots. Duquesne informs him that Brad Foster, 28, the husband of Garza's dead patient, works at a marina. When the CSIs question Foster, they see that his shoes are scuffed.
Foster admits that he went to Garza's condominium to demand answers as to why his wife died during a routine breast-implant operation. He states that he did not touch Garza, who was obviously scared and who begged not to be hurt. Foster immediately agrees to surrender a sample of his DNA in exchange for Caine's promise to have the Medical Examiner look into the cause of Sara Foster's death.
Woods reviews the autopsy papers and finds that Sara Foster apparently died of hemorrhagic shock, but that the medical examiner who prepared the report has given no reason for the shock to have occurred in the first place. The surgical team also made a mistake. The typical protocol for cardiac arrhythmia is to hang a bag of epinephrine and introduce it into the body with an IV. The surgeons, however, injected it directly into Foster's heart.
Caine interviews Dr. Keith Winters, 38, the chief surgeon at the Beauty Clinic, who insinuates that Garza made a mistake during surgery. Debbie Morbach, 35, Winters' assistant, produces Foster's case records.
Woods analyzes the records and finds that, although arrhythmia set in at 11:03, the epinephrine did not reach the heart until 11:08.
The CSIs find wool carpet fibers on the victim's clothing and in his hair; they feature an asymmetrical loop pattern typical of fibers used to make Persian carpets. The victim's condo contains several such rugs.
While they are processing the crime scene, Delko and Speedle are met by a process server who informs them that Brad Foster has launched a civil suit against Garza for wrongful death of spouse. The server had attempted to serve the papers a day earlier, but when he knocked on Garza's door at around 5 PM, there was no answer.
During Sara Foster's autopsy, Woods finds that the woman's silicone implants were leaking. She hypothesizes that, when the doctors attempted to scrape it all out of her chest cavity, Foster went into shock. She also finds that the IV in Foster's hand was infiltrated, falling out of the vein and flooding the victim's hand tissue with epinephrine. Woods officialy changes the mode of death from 'accident' to 'homicide.' The person responsible for inserting the IV is typically the surgical nurse, in this instance Debbie Morbach.
Morbach claims that Winters nicked the implant, causing the fatal leak.
Winters claims that at the time Garza was killed, he was with Roxanne Price; she confirms this, claiming that she was receiving a Botox treatment. However, Caine notices that she is able to wrinkle her forehead, which means that she did not, in fact, receive Botox.
The hair found in Garza's belt matches Brad Foster's. Under questioning, Foster changes his story and claims that he entered Garza's condo forcibly, and found the man hanging. His first instinct was to try and get him down but then someone (the process server) came to the door and scared him off the task.
In the Trace Lab, Speedle finds that the sticky substance found in the hallway is honeydew, sap excreted by aphids. The tree on which they were crawling is a Brazilian Pepper Tree, one of which is planted at the Winters Beauty Clinic.
Roxanne Price admits that Winters offered her unlimited free procedures in exchange for providing him with an alibi.
Epithelials taken from the rope test positive for amelogenin, although no match is found on any criminal database.
The fibers from Garza's body match those of the carpet at the base of the railing; the killer apparently rolled the victim in the rug before hanging him.
Winters and Morbach both admit that they went to Garza's condo the day he died; they hoped to convince him to lie about what happened to Sara Foster.
Crime Scene Reconstruction:
The amelogenin on the rope fibers is from female DNA. Debbie Morbach admits that she killed Garza, but not to avoid being sued. When she came to the condo with Winters, she noted the lipstick-smeared cigarette and realized this meant that Garza had continued to cheat on her. She and Garza had been seeing one another for one year.
Winters is cleared of negligence in the death of Sara Foster; Woods determines that the breast implant that was leaking was doing so because of a significant impact to the decedent's chest area. Brad Foster confirms that his wife had recently been struck by the boom on a sailing vessel.
Case Status: Closed
Terminology
hemorrhagic shock:
State caused by extreme blood loss, usually as a result of trauma but also, infrequently, as a result of childbirth or surgery, among other things.
epinephrine (adrenaline):
Hormone produced by the adrenal gland under stressful or strenuous situations to increase heart rate and turn glycogen into glucose. Synthesized, epinephrine is used to counter cardiac arrest, shock, asthma, and glaucoma.
Botox (botulin toxin):
Neurotoxin used to treat neurological disorders and to relax facial muscles.
epithelial cells:
Membranous tissue that covers most internal and external surfaces of the body and its organs.
amelogenin:
A protein, produced by specialized ameloblast cells, found in tooth enamel. Distinctive in that the genes for it can befound on both the X and the Y chromosome. Chromosomal location: Xp22, 1-22,3 and Y.
petechia:
a minute, rounded spot of hemmorrhage on a surface such as skin, mucous membrane, serous membrane, or on a cross-sectional surface of an organ.