Kidnapping 2.0


Kidnapping 2.0

Season	1
Number	1
Writer	Carol Mendelsohn, Ann Donahue, Anthony E. Zuiker
Director	Eagle Egilsson
Original Airdate	March 4, 2015
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Kidnapping 2.0 is the first episode in Season One of CSI: Cyber

Synopsis[]

The Cyber Crime Division of the FBI investigates a series of hacked baby monitors, but Avery believes it may be only a small part of a wider kidnapping conspiracy.

Plot[]

Victim: Caleb Reynolds (missing)

On the case: entire team

Six-month-old Caleb Reynolds is kidnapped from his crib in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents, Fran and Steve, hear “foreign voices” coming out of the Natal-Cam baby monitor. Since technology is involved, FBI Special Agent Avery Ryan insists that the case belongs to the Cyber Crime Division. Via teleconference, the detective in charge in Baltimore relays that no ransom calls have been made to the house. To Avery's surprise, he adds that the baby monitor has been unplugged and secured. She instructs him to touch nothing else until she arrives on the scene.

Avery heads to Baltimore with Agent Elijah Mundo, Agent Daniel Krumitz and Brody Nelson, a black hat hacker Avery hopes to reform by using him to catch fellow criminals. In the baby's bedroom, Krumitz theorizes that the kidnappers hacked into the baby monitor in order to figure out the perfect time to strike; learning the family's habits would help them do so. Outside, Elijah checks the fuse box and discovers that the wire to the house's security system was cut. The boy next door, Denny Metz, tells him that he heard a woman’s voice and a car peeling out after the kidnapping, proving they’re looking for a team of two.

Steve Reynolds reiterates that he heard several foreign voices talking over each other. Avery believes that this is positive information; since those voices weren't supposed to be heard, someone made a mistake. Upstairs, Krumitz examines the baby monitor and discovers that the kidnappers removed the SD memory card from it.

Every device in the Reynolds house is collected, save for the phone Fran is using to talk with her mother. Avery questions Fran after the call and grows suspicious of her behavior, catching subtle eye movements and facial expressions when answering questions. She compares Steve’s DNA to Caleb’s DNA and discovers that Steve isn't Caleb’s father. Back in the lab, malware is found on Fran's laptop; the end user tagged the words "Caleb" and "baby" on every email Fran sent. Someone outside the family is way too interested in baby Caleb. Remembering the phone call, Avery has a reverse lookup run on Fran's phone; it reveals that Fran called the same number 21 times over the last two weeks, all after midnight. It's also the same number she called when speaking with her "mother," which was obviously a lie. The number traces to a boat restoration company in Baltimore. As it turns out, Caleb's biological father, Bill Hookstraten, works at the same company.

When Avery and Elijah head to the boat restoration shop, they hear a baby crying. They rush inside and find Bill holding a little boy. While Bill is handcuffed, Avery takes a closer look at the baby and realizes they have a problem—this isn't Caleb. Under questioning, Bill admits that he had an affair with Fran, which resulted in a pregnancy. He has been using malware to get access to photos of Caleb from Fran’s computer, as there was no other way he could see his son. Bill adds that the kidnappers, who had clear American accents, contacted him three hours ago; they promised him his son in exchange for $75,000 in cash, which he paid. The question remains: how would two complete strangers be aware of Bill's affair and know that he's never seen his son before?

Avery teleconferences with FBI assistant director Simon Sifter. His theory about a "bait and switch" gone wrong doesn't add up, as nobody has reported a second missing baby. Avery wonders if someone in law enforcement dropped the ball, and Simon offers to cast a wider net and cover the whole country to find Baby Doe's parents.

Ryan changes Baby Doe’s diaper and gets a fingerprint from the tape. The print belongs to Victoria Shala, who has priors for prostitution and DUIs, When shown a photo of Victoria, Bill positively identifies her as one of the kidnappers. Back in the lab, Nelson works with another member of the Cyber Crimes unit, Raven Ramirez, to search Victoria's Friend Agenda page for clues about where she might've gone. There are a lot of photos of Ricky Scaggs, including several of his blue Camaro, which likely has the same tires heard squealing away at the Reynolds house. Avery predicts that because the pair are alcoholics, they would likely be looking for a bar. With $75,000 in the trunk, they would also be more likely to stick to smaller roads and drive under the speed limit to avoid police detection. Furthermore, evolutionary survival skills will take the pair to higher ground. Sure enough, Avery and Elijah find Vicky and Ricky at a bar in Five Forks, and the money is in the trunk of the Camaro. Caleb is nowhere to be found, but before they can get more information out of their kidnappers, a man shoots them from on top of a hill. Elijah pursues the man as he jumps onto a motorcycle to get away. He shoots the sniper dead and soon discovers that his fingerprints have been burned off—it might be difficult to figure out who was calling the shots in this scheme.

Vicky has a brand new burner phone, and Avery figures the sniper used the phone's GPS to track down the kidnappers. There are three new entries on the phone. One of them is the call to Bill Hookstraten, which confirms his story. The GPS on the phone has two entries: one to Bill's boat restoration shop and one to an address in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Elijah soon pulls the missing SD card from the baby monitor out of Ricky's pocket.

Avery and Elijah play the footage from the baby monitor, which includes the foreign voices all talking over each other. Elijah can distinctly hear Chinese, Arabic, and German voices, and one of the voices mentions Riyal, which is Saudi currency. Based on the conversation, the German and the Saudi go back and forth throwing different numbers around. When Elijah hears the Arabic word for "sold," he and Avery realize they're investigating something much bigger—an online baby auction. This fear is confirmed when the voices on the tape are translated to English. The thought is that the mastermind targeted desperate parents online and lured them into his own private network.

Simon gets a call that alerts him to two more kidnapped baby boys who were taken from families who had Natal-Cam baby monitors. Krumitz is sent to the Natal-Cam headquarters in Chicago and discovers a problem with their source code that allowed the mastermind behind this plot to get easy access to the baby monitors. The technician alerts Krumitz that there are 45,000 monitors out there, and Avery demands that the network be shut down; this will force the mastermind to make the next move. Meanwhile, a virtual autopsy of Vicky reveals that she was a drug trafficker as well as a kidnapper. The running theory is that she wanted out of the game, which led to her and Ricky going rogue. They were killed in retaliation for crossing their boss, who will clearly stop at nothing to keep his business going.

While playing his video game, Denny Metz gets interrupted by the kidnapper, who sends a video of a crying Caleb. The man claims he'll kill the baby if they don’t turn Natal-Cam back online. Avery sends the kidnapper a message ensuring him that Natal-Cam will be back online in 30 minutes, which gives the team a small window of time to operate in. Fortunately, contacting them through the game console gives them a lead—there’s a safeguard in place to prevent children from being harassed by predators while playing online. Each console contains a unique set of identifiers that can track the perpetrator down to a specific console. This leads them straight to their suspect in Paterson, New Jersey.

The FBI storms the warehouse and rounds up the large group of perpetrators. Avery and Krumitz find the computers used to keep track of the missing children; however, they have to figure out the 20-character password. Knowing that the criminals aren't smart enough to memorize such a long and complicated password, Avery figures it's written down somewhere. Memorial tattoos on the leader include sets of numbers representing dates. Nelson rearranges the numbers by date, starting with the earliest; the password is accepted and the team is granted access. Three cars are located on the map via their GPS units; two of the three are in areas adjacent to where the babies were kidnapped, while the outlier is assumed to be baby Caleb.

Two kidnappers are then seen driving somewhere in upstate New York. While the female kidnapper tries to unsuccessfully contact the warehouse, Caleb cries in the backseat. Police cars soon arrive and block every possible route. Cornered, the kidnappers soon fly off the road and into a lake. Elijah jumps in and dives toward the sinking car to retrieve Caleb. The baby is unconscious when they get to the surface, but Avery performs CPR to revive him. They're able to hand him over to his grateful parents, and Avery suggests to Fran that perhaps there’s another person who might like to spend time with his son.

Back in the lab, Simon informs the team that the other two kidnapping units were located and detained; the missing babies are fine and back home with their parents.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

Michael Irby as Navy Captain David Ortega M.D.
Susan May Pratt as Fran Reynolds
Kenneth Mitchell as Steve Reynolds
Rae Gray as Hooded Figure/Vicky McDale
Nelson Lee as Detective Cho
Brady Smith as Bill Hookstraten
Jake Richardson as Ricky Scaggs
James Sayess as Saudi Bidder
Jim Boeven as German Bidder
Rustom Cyrus as System Administrator
Judah Lewis as Denny Metz
Pavllo Zengo as Kovach
Mo Darwiche as Vovan
Marco Martinez as NYPD Officer

Music[]

I Can See For Miles by The Who

Notes[]

Avery informs Nelson that she used to be a behavioral psychologist in New York until a hacker stole her files and made the patients' secrets public. She lost her career and practice, and the hacking led to the murder of one of her patients. To compound things further, the hacker was never caught. Avery would later identify and confront the hacker in the Season One finale, Family Secrets.
- Her speech is also summarized and played at the beginning of each episode in Season One.
While Vicky, the female kidnapper, is identified as Vicky Shala in the episode, the character's last name on IMDb is listed as "McDale."

Trivia[]

The theme song is "I Can See for Miles" by The Who. All other previous installments of the CSI franchise also used a song by the Who as their theme (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - "Who Are You," CSI: Miami - "Won't Get Fooled Again," CSI: NY - "Baba O'Reilly").
The character of Avery Ryan, played by Patricia Arquette, previously appeared in two episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, starting with Season 14's Kitty.
James Van Der Beek, who plays Special Agent Elijah Mundo, is most famous for his role in the show Dawson's Creek.