- Nick accidentally stumbles upon a badly decomposing dead body in the home of a mother with a severe hoarding disorder, but that is only the first of a number of grisly surprises the team finds in the house.
- After stench complaints from the neighbors, the home of pathological hoarder Marta Santiago, who was ordered by the court to vacate the premises in a few days, helped by one daughter, it's searched. Nick's shoes become evidence by stepping into a terribly decomposing corpse, later identified as the missing other daughter. After everything is thoroughly searched, more remains are found while the team and a psychologist look into the dysfunctional family, which also includes son Julian Santiago.—KGF Vissers
- Two LVPD officers feel a bad smell in a house and summon the CSI. The house belongs to the hoarder Mrs. Marta Santiago and while walking along the accumulated garbage, Nick steps on a decomposed body. Soon they identify the corpse with the help of Mrs. Santiago as her daughter Diana, who was helping her to clean the house due to a court order. They interview her son Julian Santiago and her social assistant Dr. Priscilla Prescott and learn that she is a hoarder, but works normally. Further, her other daughter Alisa is missing. Nick, Greg and Sara continue to process the house and find a skeleton inside the house and then Sara finds three other skeletons buried outside the house. Now they have to find who the victims are to solve the mystery.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- "CSI" - "House of Hoarders" - Oct. 21, 2010
The CSIs are charged with investigating a house owned by a hoarder, Mrs. Santiago.
When they arrive the place is so jam-packed with stuff and filth that rats are running around and Nick literally steps inside a dead body. The body turns out to be Mrs. Santiago's daughter Diana who was killed by blunt force trauma and left for dead on the floor where her body essentially melted into the rug. Yuck.
Nick thinks the whole thing is bat guano crazy but for some reason Sara keeps defending the behavior of Mrs. Santiago as stemming from sort of amazing trauma.
After interviewing Mrs. Santiago, who is clearly mentally ill, the gang calls in her case worker Dr. Prescott who can't believe that she's a killer and thinks that the dead body was overlooked by Mrs. Santiago due to something called "clutter blindness."
They find out that Mrs. S. has two other kids, a son Julian and daughter Alisa. When Julian is told the news about Diana he is truly shocked-- a really nice piece of acting in fact-- and says he hasn't heard from his other sister in awhile.
The plot thickens when they realize that Diana was killed accidentally by Mrs. S. when she uncovered something in the clutter that she was trying to clean up in time for a court ordered clean up deadline.
The gang finds out what she uncovered as they continue to declutter: four more bodies, one in the house and three in a shallow grave in the backyard, all killed by massive arsenic poisoning.
It turns out that they're all runaways who just happened to go through the halfway house where Julian Santiago is a social worker. Apparently, before she went missing his sister Alisa also worked there and got friendly with some of the boys and Julian didn't care for that. He denies doing anything to his sister or killing the boys and lawyers up and does the same for his mother so the gang goes back to the house to dig around some more.
What they find shocks them: Alisa chained up in a room behind a wall of tubs of her belongings. In the hospital she tells Nick her mother, not her brother, did this to her. Even though the only physical evidence points to the mother, Sara still likes the brother, thinking he dominated the mother and used the house as a cover for his murders. Nick still likes the mother and he and Sara get frosty with each other about it.
When they can't find anymore good evidence they realize that all of the boys were tied up with Christmas ribbon in the same fashion and it was torn by teeth. Since they know Mrs. S. didn't throw anything away the ribbon must still be in the house. They find it and it turns out that the murderer is... Alisa. She was killing the boys and using the house as a cover. When her mother discovered what she was doing she tied her up to protect her from herself.
Alisa continues to claim that her mother's illness made her this way but Sara realizes she's just a monster. She tries to explain this to Julian who also believes that it was growing up in that house that did this to Alisa. Sara tells him that her mother was a schizophrenic and one night she woke up, went to the kitchen, got a butcher knife and stabbed Sara's dad in the heart repeatedly. Yes, she had a screwed up childhood but instead of becoming a monster like Alisa, she turned into a stand up person who wants to help other people just like Julian. She lets him know the police aren't going to press charges against his mother if she's willing to get help and he's willing to help her. He is.
Later, Nick is cleaning out his desk, inspired by the case. Sara comes in and he shows her a blue marble that Grissom once gave him. Grissom told him that if life ever got to hard... and Sara finishes for him "roll with it." She smiles and says Grissom gave her the same blue marble. They are okay.
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