Any crime drama revolves around the misdeeds that the main cast investigates, and CSI is no different. Murder is commonplace on such programs, and that is bad enough. But some crimes go far beyond the mere taking of life. Sometimes the cast runs across the truly diabolical, the kind of horrors that only the most depraved mind (or a creative writer) could think of.
CSI had no shortage of antagonists capable of committing evil deeds beyond the pale of the average villain of the week. The following are ten of the worst crimes ever perpetrated on the show. Be warned, this isn’t going to be pretty.
Grave Danger
The fear of being buried alive is one of the oldest and most primal known to mankind. It’s right up there with fire, darkness, and running out of things to binge-watch on Netflix. One unfortunate member of the CSI team knows exactly how terrifying such a scenario can be.
In the season five episode Grave Danger, Nick Stokes is abducted and placed in a Plexiglas coffin by the father of a suspect he helped put in jail. Fortunately, the team is able to rescue him, but not before ants begin to eat him alive, and he hallucinates his own autopsy.
Unleashed
Sometimes the worst crimes on a show aren’t the ones dreamed up by a creative writer, but the ones that we know can happen in reality. Cyber-bullying is a very real problem for many teenagers, and one unfortunate victim on the show suffered the same kind of torment.
In this eleventh season episode, a pregnant girl named Maria is the target of a hate website created by a group of vindictive cheerleaders. Even after the girls were suspended, the harassment continued. Eventually the poor girl is driven to take her own life. Thankfully her baby survives, but will never know her mother.
No Humans Involved
The mistreatment of children is horrific enough in the real world, and it’s just as disturbing on the screen as it is in real life. There’s just something intrinsically horrible about the most innocent among us being victimized by those they should be able to trust. This fifth season episode features one of the most tragic cases of mistreatment of a child on the show.
A child’s body is found in a dumpster. The investigation reveals that he and his brothers had been left with their mother’s cousin so she could get a job to provide for them. Fortunately, the other two boys are rescued from her basement before they meet a similar fate.
The Irradiator
Serial killers are the boogeymen of modern society, so of course they are going to show up in our popular media. CSI has had more than a few of these killers menace the city of Las Vegas during its run. Dr. Jekyll certainly stands out as one of the cruelest.
In this episode, he sedated a man and put radioactive seeds used for cancer treatment inside his head. The radiation caused brain damage, which ultimately caused him to go on a killing spree that included his own aunt. Causing a man to do such horrible things earns him a place on this list.
Assume Nothing
Many of the killers on the show act alone, but sometimes the villains team up to wreak havoc upon those unfortunate enough to cross their paths. The Kinefelds from this fourth season episode were a husband and wife team of serial killers who shared a penchant for sadism. After seducing other couples, they would take them back to their hotel room, where they would force the male partner to kill the female under the pretense of sparing her from further torture before killing him as well.
While the pair were eventually caught, they were able to claim the lives of four people before their murderous spree came to an end.
Check In And Check Out
The idea that someone could be watching us without our knowledge is pure paranoia fuel. Not only is it an invasion of our privacy, but because you never know when the watcher might decide to cross the line between watching an acting. One killer showed exactly why such fears exist.
Trent Reager was a motel owner who liked to spy on his guests. Eventually he decided to take things further, and dosed the occupants of his rooms with LSD. Through this method he would claim the lives of multiple people, including a homeless man, and a student and teacher. Reager never showed any remorse for his crimes.
Cello And Goodbye
Almost all of the main characters on CSI have at some point made an enemy of a vicious criminal. Raymond Langston, who replaced Gil Grissom as main character, met his archenemy in the form of Nate Haskell. A sadistic serial killer, Haskell went out of his way to make things personal with Langston.
For his final act of cruelty, Haskell abducted Langston’s ex-wife Gloria, torturing and raping her during the course of her captivity. Once Ray rescues her and captures Haskell, the killer goads the CSI into killing him. This ends up being the end of Langston’s career as a CSI.
Appendicitement
Cannibalistic killers have long held the imagination of the public; with murderers like Jeffery Dhamer and Armin Meiwes being some of the most infamous killers around. Crime fiction has no shortage of such killers, but sometimes there’s an interesting twist. Sometimes it’s not the murderer who engages in cannibalism, but their unwitting victims.
Such was the case in this episode, where the CSI team attempt to take a colleague out for lunch on his birthday. The find the place abandoned. Through a bizarre series of events, they find that the owner of the shop was killed by his wife, and then fed to unsuspecting patrons.
Compulsion
Fratricide is as old as mankind itself, at least if you believe the bible. The story of Cain tells us that even bonds of blood are not always enough to keep someone from committing the ultimate crime. CSI has a few such cases, but this one stands out because of its brutality and cruelty.
When a young boy is found beaten to death with a pipe in his own bedroom, the team investigates and finds no shortage of suspects in the victims life. Eventually, they find that the killer was the boys brother. His reason? The other boy had told others that he still wet the bed.
Feeling The Heat
What at first seems to be a terrible accident that we are all too familiar with nowadays turns out to have been a deliberate act. But the mother and father did not kill their child out of cruelty. The child which was left in the hot car is actually their second, their first having died from a terrible birth defect. When the second child showed signs of the disease, they decided to spare him the agony of slowly wasting away by killing him.
What makes this especially tragic is that the boy was perfectly healthy. His symptoms were caused by a reaction to a fertilizer used by his mother in her gardening business. The truth naturally destroys his parents. A true tragedy.
