Crushed - Recap

It’s looking like her innocent high school party is getting less innocent as people fill her house. Texts go out and the number of people filling her house goes up exponentially. Every corner of every floor “jumpin.” From the front door to the wooden balcony. Kids drinking too much, dancing too much, total chaos as the party go-ers have no regard for the house that they inhabit. A couch carried to the balcony door; passed from person to person until finally it’s thrown off of the edge and into the yard. Too much weight for the wood to endure. It begins to “creak,” as it “cracks” and breaks, plummeting towards the ground; carrying the mass of people to the earth with it. It crashes under them and they lie broken in the grass. Writhing and moaning in pain. Libby Drake lies dead amongst them beneath the rubble. That morning at the scene Jo asks Don what happened; “Starts out as a group of high school juniors getting a buzz on. Party goes viral, jumps to 700 in under 2 hours.” Dr. Hammerback kneels over Libby. Jo is taking pictures of her. She is bloodied and dirty, wearing a gold heart necklace. Her greenish blue eyes stare blankly into the sky. Her cheek and forehead lacerated and most of her body covered in broken pieces of the deck that once protruded from the house above. Dr. Hammerback looks into her eyes and sees that she had been asphyxiated believing that the weight of the balcony compressed her body. She would have been unable to breath with the weight on top of her. Jo mentions that there were more than 50 people on the deck when it collapsed, plus a marble table. Danny is investigating more of the wreckage he finds an 8 imprinted on something and examines it. It looks like a fingerprint with an 8 in the middle/side of it. The pieces of wood are taken to the lab, to try to determine why it broke under the people. Sheldon and Lindsey begin by seeing how much weight the wood would have been able to support before breaking. They find that the wood would have held all of the people but the addition of the marble table was too much. The person that brought out the marble table “could be guilty of manslaughter.”

Libby’s boyfriend Jake tells Don; “It sounded like an earthquake.” “I was just praying that Libby wasn’t on the deck.” Don walks away and tells Danny that nobody knows anything or they aren’t willing to give up the people responsible. Don takes his print and goes to the hospital. He begins looking over some of the victims he comes to a boy unconscious in his bed. A girl sitting in the bed next to him, her leg sprained from the accident. She tells Danny that the boy’s name is Stephen. As the nurse is checking Stephen, Danny looks at Stephen’s hand. There is a welt on it in the shape of the number “8.” Danny asks the girl if she had known anybody “else” that had carried the table out onto the balcony. She said “no” and asked if Stephen was in trouble. “Yeah, in more ways than one.”

At the station Don sees a woman standing, just waiting. He asks her if anybody had helped her and she turns to him. Her eye badly bruised, cut and bleeding. She says “no” and Don sits her down at his desk. He asks her if she would rather speak to a female officer, she says she’s okay and begins to tell Don what had happened to her. “I was raped.” She didn’t know the guy. “I was so stupid, I should have never gone with him. I didn’t know him.” He asks her when it happened. “Last night, I must have passed out I guess. I woke up a couple of hours ago.” She ‘sniffles. Her name is Ally Rand. Don tells her that she has to go to the hospital but first any information she can give him would help them find the person that had done that to her. He asks for a description but she had something better; his name. Jo walks into Mac’s office. He tells her to sit down. She is familiar with John Curtis. A rapist she had dealt with in D.C. This man was now in New York and Ally Rand was his first victim there. “I knew this day would come…I just…” Jo is at a loss of words. “We’re gonna get him Jo.” Mac assures her. Lindsay is leaving to go and investigate the rape-scene when Jo stops her and reminds her to not leave anything behind. She tells her she must be very careful not to screw this up as her colleague did when they attempted to take him down in the first place. Lindsay sympathies with Jo, very sensitive about the subject she defends the law attempting to divert any guilt she feels. Lindsay tries to tell her that she meant no offense by it. Mac, still in his office is video conferencing with Sid. Sid is telling him that Libby had no signs of leg damage that one would incur in a fall. There was nothing to indicate that she had fallen at all. In-fact she had been strangled. The balcony collapse hadn’t caused Libby’s death. It had covered it up. Now talking to Libby’s boyfriend again; interrogating him. Mac asks about the cuts and scrapes on his hand. Jake tells them he heard the deck break and ran out to try and help people. He then tells them he tried to defend her house and had gotten into some fights with some of the guys there. Lindsay is taking pictures of Ally’s body. She tells Lindsay. She was sitting at a bar next to a man; he dropped her drink and offered to buy her another. She then got “woozy.” She admitted to Lindsay that she was a prostitute. Lindsay assured her that she was the victim and did nothing wrong to warrant the vile things he had done to her.

Sheldon and Jo figure the necklace may have been placed on Libby after she had been strangled. She, Sheldon and Danny go to Libby’s house and begin to investigate. They are tasked with looking for signs of a struggle in a house that had been destroyed by crazy under aged partiers. Jo and Danny both find a small piece of paper with “Twitter hashtags #WORDSRDEAD” printed on them.” They conclude that since they had found the small pieces of paper in a jewelry box and a bedroom that the thief was now the prime suspect. They believe he finds parties on the internet, goes to them and steals from them. His hashtags had been found in other parties that have been robbed. It was a man named Micky Nash. He was a security guard. Danny and Don see him coming out of his work and they confront him. He is a heavy-set man. He tells them they are late. The problem from before had been dealt with. Don and Danny laugh it off and tell Micky that they were there to see him. He looks at them and turns around to run, or at least try to run. His heavy frame weighing him down he was not running very fast. Danny and Don look at each other; “Rock paper scissors for it?” Danny says and Don agrees. Danny wins and goes to get the car while Don quickly catches up to Micky; out of breath leaning on a sign. Don walks up and begins questioning him. They accuse Micky of murder and he tells them he is only a robber. He gives them back what he has stolen. Necklaces that looked like Libby’s heart necklace are noticeable as they begin to look for some relevance. Adam made a montage of all the party video and pictures and found some person, a girl at her party that was also wearing the same necklace. It’s part of a game where a girl is “made over” and made to believe she is popular then the girl’s virginity is taken and the entire experience is relayed to Libby. She posts it online to her friends. They find a Kate Weber as a DNA match. They tell her that they found her DNA on the necklace that Libby was wearing. They ask if she has a necklace, she does. They ask her how she found out about the game. She tells Mac and Jo that Libby talks the girls into it. She makes them feel like they are cool. Then Jake makes them feel good and takes advantage of them. Kate had not gone to the party, she could not explain her DNA, but she would not have shown up at a place where people were making fun of her. Mac and Jo look as if they believe her.

At the lab Adam had been trying to figure out a residue that the team had found on a window in Libby’s house. Adam was having trouble until he remembered a “runner” he had dated. She had used all sorts of balms and ointments when she was getting ready to run a race. The girl, Rachael that Danny had talked to in the hospital had mentioned that she was hoping that her sprain would heal in time for a marathon. DNA shows that Rachael and Kate are half-sisters. It would explain the DNA match on Libby’s necklace. Rachael tries to come up with excuses. Mac stops her and tells her that they know. Rachael begins to tell them about what they had done psychologically to her sister. So she went to Libby’s; caught her alone in her room and confronted her about what she and Jake had done to her sister. Rachael began to fight with Libby. She took a towel and strangled her with it. Placed the necklace around her neck. She opened the window and put her body outside. Rachael is to be not remorseful.

In Mac’s office Lindsay is telling Jo and Mac that there was nothing left behind. Ally is a prostitute. It makes it very difficult to process a rape case on a prostitute, without any hard evidence. The circumstantial evidence they had; was just that. Circumstantial. Curtis placed under arrest. Jo stares him in the eyes as he is placed in the back of a police car, their eyes never separate and the car door is closed. Jo hoping the case is too.



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