‘CSI’ Investigates Santa’s Death In ‘The Lost Reindeer’

The CSIs are on the case when Kris Kringle meets his untimely demise, in the eleventh episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s fourteenth season. (Major spoilers after the jump!)

According to CSI Files sources, “The Lost Reindeer” opens with a reindeer wandering down a Las Vegas street while holiday partiers look on in surprise. There is blood in the animal’s fur, which leads back to a crime scene in a front yard that has been turned into a winter wonderland. There’s real snow on the ground and a blood-spattered sled for the man dressed like Santa who is lying dead on the ground. One leg has been completely severed, and the other is badly cut. Empty glasses and wine bottles indicate that there was a party here, but it ended long ago.

The house belongs to Ryan, but the victim is Brad. He worked for Ryan’s real estate company, and he died after both of his femoral arteries were slashed by the runners of Santa’s sled. However, those aren’t his only injuries. David Phillips discovers that Brad was stabbed five times in the back—this is no accident.

Ryan was with his son upstairs, and he fell asleep in the boy’s room before the party was over. Morgan speaks to the six year old, wondering if he saw anything the night before. He says he saw a reindeer, but it wasn’t the one outside. This reindeer was inside the house. They think the kid might have been dreaming, but Morgan checks the hallway just in case. She finds a contact lens that leads back to Rachel, a stripper Brad hired to wear a reindeer suit and entertain the party-goers. Brad got too forward with her, and she punched him—but she couldn’t have killed him because another guest drove her home, and surveillance footage proves they were at a diner during the time of the murder.

The investigation takes a turn when the team discovers traces of cocaine in the snow. If Brad hired a stripper, perhaps he paid for entertainment of a different sort as well. If he angered the dealer the way he angered Rachel, it might have gotten him killed.

Please note that the above plot details have not been confirmed by CBS, Alliance Atlantis or Bruckheimer Films, and until such time you should treat this information as you would any other rumour. The above information comes from early script drafts and the details of the episodes are liable to change before the episodes are shown.

“The Lost Reindeer” is expected to air on CBS.