CSI: Miami

Season 5 - Episode 6 - Curse of the Coffin

Written by Sunil Nayar & Krystal Houghton
Directed by Joe Chappelle

At the scene of Alissa Valone’s murder, Horatio asks Danielle Madison why her shirt is covered in her best friend’s blood and why she tried to steal a bomb-ridden police bait car used to catch car thieves.  Delko watches Alexx examine Alissa’s dead, blood soaked, golf club-pummeled body.  Delko jumps back after noticing a miniature Santeria (Voodoo) coffin on the floor next to Alissa.  Wolfe discovers a bloody goat’s head, candles, urns, chicken bones and bags of blood in her closet.  Wolfe teases Delko about his voodoo superstitions. 

 Horatio determines the fatal golf club blows were struck by a man, clearing Danielle for now.  Horatio grills the golf clubs’ owner, Alissa’s ex- husband Dr. Trevor Valone.  Alissa and Valone were fighting over their pre-paid coffins and burial plots, but he says he didn’t kill her.  DNA from Valone’s best friend, ex-con Ed Smith, is found under Alissa’s fingernails.  Robbery victim and businessman Alan Solner wants the gold bars back that Ed Smith stole.  But Ed is dead. 

 Wolfe nervously watches Ed’s body rise and fall while parked on a gurney outside the morgue.  Wolfe begins to believe the voodoo curse might be real when his hands suffer temporary paralysis after touching the mini coffin.   Calleigh and Delko tell Wolfe the coffin is covered in d Tetrodotoxin powder (aka blowfish poison) which causes temporary paralysis and also mimics death for a period of days.  That explains Ed’s death and “resurrection.”

 Alissa’s boyfriend and Danielle’s new lover, Jeremy Fordam, is discovered to be Ed’s killer – offing him for the gold bars buried in the pre-paid cemetery plots Alissa and Trevor were fighting over.  Jeremy is arrested while Danille sells gold bars back to Solner.  Now wealthy, and clearly the one who murdered Alissa, Danielle disappears to a tropical island.  Javier Ravez, who was seeking revenge for his brother, a convicted car thief, is arrested for rigging the police car bomb.