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F-T-F
F-T-F
Season 9
Number 11
Writer Melissa Scrivner-Love,
K. David Bena
Director David Arquette
Original Airdate January 9, 2011
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Previous Episode: Match Made in Hell
Next Episode: Wheels Up

F-T-F is the eleventh episode in season nine of CSI: Miami.

Synopsis[]

When a fire hydrant washes away all of the evidence at a crime scene, the CSIs must recreate a very bizarre double murder.

Plot[]

Walter, Horatio and Ryan arrive at the crime scene where two people have been shot and killed. Marvin Hill is on a bench, and Rebecca West is behind the wheel of a car. The car hit a fire hydrant, and water is destroying the scene. They work to preserve as much of the crime scene as possible before the water washes it away.

Marvin was shot in the temple, which suggests that he shot himself. The team wonders if this is a murder/suicide, but there’s no obvious connection between the victims. Horatio retrieves a gun that was washed into the drain on the street, and Ryan takes it to Calleigh to compare to the shell casing Natalia found at the scene. Dr Loman retrieves a bullet from Rebecca’s neck, which was stuck beneath the skin. It was a low velocity gunshot. There’s no exit wound on Marvin Hill’s head, so Tom says he’ll look inside to dig out the bullet.

Calleigh confirms that the bullet came from the gun found at the scene, so it’s definitely the murder weapon. Natalia and Eric look at Marvin and Rebecca’s clothes, and they notice that the clothes smell bad. The purple fire hydrant at the scene uses non-potable water, which isn’t fit for human consumption. Natalia finds a black lace thong in the pocket of Marvin’s jeans, and Eric asks Marvin’s widow whether he was having an affair. She doesn’t know anything about a possible affair, and she’s never seen Rebecca before. Marvin told her he was going on his morning walk.

When he analyzes Marvin’s skull, Loman discovers that the entry wound is also the exit wound. The bullet ricocheted in Marvin’s skull and exited his head before traveling over to kill Rebecca as well. Walter recreates the scene, and he proves that Marvin was killed while standing, and he was shot by a previously unknown third person at the scene. This person shot Marvin, and Rebecca was merely an innocent bystander who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Eric and Ryan talk to Marvin’s wife again, telling her he was the intended target. She admits that he’d been spending a lot of time online, but she tried not to think about it because at least he was coming home instead of spending time with women in motels. Calleigh looks through Marvin’s computer and finds a hidden partition on the hard drive. Marvin created a fake profile and pretended to be a 19 year old Marine named Sean, and he was having an online relationship with a teenage girl named Ashley. They were planning to meet in person in Miami. They find more pictures of Ashley on Marvin’s computer, including a picture of her in a cheerleading uniform that helps them identify the young woman.

Horatio and Eric speak to Ashley Chandler and her parents, but Ashley says she doesn’t know ‘Sean’ and doesn’t chat online because she’s only allowed to use the computer for schoolwork. Ashley’s father Larry gets upset by all of the questioning, so they test him for gunshot residue and find out that he recently fired a gun. The man says he used it to shoot armadillos in the yard. He shows them his guns, but one is missing from the safe.

Larry has an alibi—he was at the DMV all day. However, he has a gun missing, so they need to figure out if he knew about the relationship to establish a motive. They find teen tracking software on the family computer, which kept track of everything Ashley did online. They find a chat log with Sean, where they were planning to meet face to face. After Ashley stopped chatting with Sean, a guy named Justin Carson logged on. He said Sean wasn’t good enough for Ashley and told her she deserved better. He also threatened Sean’s life. Walter tries to set up a meeting with Justin, but the younger man sends a decoy when he realizes it’s a trap. The decoy tells the team that Justin was driving a car with New Mexico plates, which helps them track him down and arrest him.

Justin says he was just trying to protect Ashley. She met up with Marvin already, and she found out he was an old man. He kept harassing her, and she was scared, so Justin took care of it. He regrets killing Rebecca, but not Marvin for a girl he’s never met because he says they’re soulmates, and she told him they could meet in real life once Marvin was out of the picture. Justin says Ashley left her father’s gun in his motel room after he got to Miami, so Walter looks through the surveillance footage and sees Ashley’s mother dropping off the gun. Diana Chandler was the one chatting with Marvin online, posing as her now upset daughter. She manipulated Justin, and the team arrests her and forces her to face the consequences for what she’s done. She finally meets Justin, who's so disgusted by her deceit that he screams at her while all she can do is sit back and take it in shame.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

Trivia[]

  • The title is text speak for "face-to-face", which is in reference to online chatting.
  • The episode is inspired by the “Internet Chat Murder” case, where Thomas Montgomery shot his work colleague Brian Barrett out of jealousy over a reported “teenager” online nicknamed “Jessi”, who was really the middle-aged mother of the girl whose photos were posted online. The case is covered in the documentary Talhotblond.
  • The episode is also inspired by the case of "John" and "Mark" and the related fictionalized film Uwantme2killhim?. Two boys were communicating online, one pretending to be a girl who was being abused by a boyfriend. That boy then tried to pretend to be the "boyfriend" so the other boy was made enough to nearly stab him to death.
  • Richmond Arquette made a special guest as Marvin Hill, then his brother David became director in this episode and Patricia who portrayed as Avery Ryan from CSI: Cyber.

See Also[]

CSI:Miami Season 9
FallenSudden DeathSee No EvilManhuntSleepless in MiamiReality KillsOn the HookHappy BirthdayBlood SugarMatch Made in HellF-T-FWheels UpLast StandStoned ColdBlood Lust (Miami)Hunting GroundSpecial DeliveryAbout FaceCaged (Miami)Paint It BlackG.O.Mayday


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