List of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation characters
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The following is a list of principal and recurring characters from the CBS television series, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
| Main characters | ||
|---|---|---|
| Role | Actor | Description |
| Dr. Gilbert (Gil) Grissom | William Petersen | The night shift team supervisor for the Las Vegas CSI unit, and a forensic entomologist with a degree in biology from UCLA. Nicknamed "The Bug Man," Grissom knows American sign language (ASL) and inherited his mother's otosclerosis, a disease which was causing him to slowly go deaf which developed into a major plot thread throughout the third season. The surgery (and subsequent recovery) required to correct this onset of otosclerosis symptoms occurred in the unshown period between the third and fourth seasons. His hobbies include his work, cockroach racing, reading, solving crossword puzzles, and riding roller coasters.
His original team was made up of four main CSIs, with assistance from a team of technicians. During the first four seasons, his team included Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes, Warrick Brown, and Sara Sidle. With the creation of the swing shift team in the middle of the fifth season, his team consisted of Sara Sidle, Sofia Curtis, and Greg Sanders. In the season five finale, he says that he wants his team back. At the start of season six, the team is brought back together. The details of Grissom's personal life are largely a mystery to the audience, but some information is known about the character's life. For instance, he uses the Rimowa Combi-Pilot case for his kit, and it was revealed that Grissom's father died when he was nine years old. As well, Grissom was a Catholic earlier in life, but as he aged, he became an agnostic. At the end of the season six season finale, the writers of the show have decided to disclose to the audience that Grissom is romantically involved with fellow CSI Sara Sidle. Grissom is not interested in a promotion he was offered before; he is happy being a supervisor of LVPD's graveyard shift. |
| Catherine Willows | Marg Helgenberger | A blood spatter analyst. She is second-in-command of the nightshift for the first four seasons, assuming command when Grissom is out of town or otherwise on leave. She recently moved teams to become supervisor of the new swing shift team. Willows, originally from Bozeman, Montana, first worked as a stripper in order to pay her way through college at UNLV where she studied medical technology. She has a young daughter, Lindsey. Tragically, after her ex-husband's murder, she is unable to find evidence to assist in convicting his killer. She accidentally causes an explosion in the lab near the end of the third season, injuring Greg Sanders. |
| Sara Sidle | Jorja Fox | A materials and element analyst. A physics major at Harvard University, Sidle previously worked for the San Francisco coroner and crime lab. She is recruited by Grissom, a man she sees as more than just a boss. At the end of the season six finale, it is revealed that she and Grissom are romantically involved.
Sidle sometimes takes her assignments a bit too personally, especially if the victim is a woman. She was raised in a violent and abusive family, and lived in foster care after her mother killed her father. The details of this unpleasant past only start to be explicitly revealed during the latter part of the fourth season with a pattern of alcoholism seen to emerge. This culminates in a somewhat fortuitous escape from a driving under the influence (DUI) charge. |
| Warrick Brown | Gary Dourdan | A Las Vegas native and a chemistry major from UNLV, is an audio/visual analyst. A major theme of the first season (and especially the pilot episode) is his addiction to gambling and his subsequent attempts at recovery. He is also blackmailed by a judge over this issue, but he eventually tells Grissom about it, and the judge is arrested.
He is part of Grissom's team for the first four seasons, but is transferred to the swing shift team under Willows in the middle of the fifth season. In the season five finale, we see how close he is to his best friend, Nick Stokes. He has recently been married, between the fifth and sixth seasons, to a doctor named Tina. In season six, we see the couple's married bliss may not be so sound, as Warrick accuses Tina of cheating on him. |
| Nick Stokes | George Eads | An easygoing and friendly former college baseball player and fraternity member with a degree in criminal justice from Rice University, is a hair and fiber analyst from Dallas, Texas. In Episode 203, "Overload," it is revealed that when Nick was 9 years old, he was sexually abused by a last-minute female babysitter.
He is part of Grissom's team for the first four seasons, but is transferred to the swing shift team under Willows in the middle of the fifth season. Unlike other CSIs, Nick has many troubles with suspects: In episode 106, "Who are You", he has a gun placed in his face. In episode 220, "Stalker", he is thrown out of a second-story window, and is stalked by the murderer, being held at gunpoint by his stalker. In the season five finale "Grave Danger", he is kidnapped by Walter Gordon and buried alive for a ransom of one million dollars. Nick is also nearly arrested when a prostitute is found dead in her house only hours after he'd been there for a one-night stand. In season six, it is discovered that the daughter of Walter Gordon, Kelly Gordon, is involved in the murder of a lawyer who was handling her father's assets. |
| Captain Jim Brass | Paul Guilfoyle | Brass was the head of the CSI unit in Las Vegas until he was moved back to the police homicide division in the pilot episode. He was originally from New Jersey. He's now Captain in the homicide division and works usually with the CSI team. He's divorced and has a daughter named Ellie. It is revealed in episode 208, "Ellie," that she is not biologically related to Brass.
In the Season 6 episode "Bang-Bang", Jim Brass is shot during a hostage situation by a through-and-through bullet through his right chest. The summary of the Season 6 finale "Way to Go" indicates that the wound, while not immediately fatal, still put him in a critical condition. He ends up surviving. |
| Greg Sanders | Eric Szmanda | A young lab technician and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University who idolizes Grissom and has been endeavoring to get out in the field since episode 218, "Chasing the Bus." Near the end of the third season, he is injured in a lab explosion when an unknown substance is placed next to an active heat source by Catherine Willows. He recovers fully from the incident.
He sporadically works in the field throughout the third and fourth seasons, and officially becomes a CSI Level 1 in the fifth season, joining Grissom's night shift. He fails his exam the first time around after urinating in the toilet at a crime scene. Ironically, he later passes his exam when his wrong conclusion drawn at a crime scene sets Grissom on the right track in the episode "Who Shot Sherlock?". In the fourth episode of season 7, Fannysmackin', he is brutally beaten when he becomes a witness to a crime. He is sent to the hospital and fully recovers, with several bruising marks still on his face. |
| Dr. Al Robbins | Robert David Hall | The head county coroner. Married with three children, he's often the only one who understands Grissom. He has two prosthetic legs, and it has been implied that he lost them in an accident while trying to dig up a floor at a crime scene. For fun, he likes playing in rock bands. The prosthetic legs and rock band are actually traits "borrowed" from the actor (Hall) himself. |
| Detective Sofia Curtis | Louise Lombard | A CSI who becomes part of Gil's team after the mid-season 5 split, courtesy of Ecklie. She soon considers resignation, upset at the fact that she has been demoted from acting day-shift supervisor.
A recurring character in season five, but in season six she moves from being a CSI to a Detective. She experiences emotional problems in the episode "A Bullet Runs Through It," after it appears she shot a fellow police officer during a shoot out. |
| Recurring characters | ||
| Role | Actor | Description |
| David Hodges | Wallace Langham | A lab tech who first appears on season 3. Trace Evidence tech for the Graveyard Shift. He always tries hard to succeed, and often sucks up to Gil and Catherine, ignoring the lower CSIs. Hodges also seems to have (or pretends to have) narcissistic personality disorder. He has a cat named Kobayashi Maru. |
| Archie Johnson | Archie Kao | A lab tech who's a computer and audio/video technical expert. He is also a Science-Fiction Fan. |
| Wendy Simms | Liz Vassey | DNA Evidence tech for the Graveyard Shift. Appears in seasons 6 and7. |
| Bobby Dawson | Gerald McCullouch | Originally from Kentucky, he is a lab tech who's also a ballistics expert. |
| The Miniature Killer | Unknown | The Miniature Serial Killer first appeared in the first episode of Season 7, and is the most involved character in CSI:. The Miniature serial killer's murders are not set or staged like most serials, but his only and interesting M.O. are creating 1/2 inch scale models of the room of the crime scene, which each one shows 100% accuracy. After three murders, the so-called killer confessed sent a confessional e-mail with a direct video attatchment, and after his speech commits suicide with Grissom watching. Sometime later, After Grissom goes on sabbatical, a package arrives on his table in his office. Four weeks later, he returns and opens the package, to find another miniature model of a crime scene. |
| David Phillips | David Berman | Assistant Coroner who's sometimes called "Super Dave" - a nickname he receives on the first episode of the fifth season. |
| Conrad Ecklie | Marc Vann | Former dayshift supervisor who becomes Assistant Director of the Crime Lab in season 5. He is known for his strict regulations and sticks to them at all times. Conrad and Gil have a very rocky relationship and it was Conrad, in his pursuit to try to spite Gil, who splits the CSI team in the middle of season 5. But in Grave Danger (Season 5 finale), he sets aside their personal differences and helps the team locate and rescue Nick. |
| Detective Sergeant Sam Vega | Geoffrey Rivas | A homicide detective. |
| Detective Vartann | Alex Carter | A homicide detective. |
| Detective Cavaliere | Jose Zuniga | A homicide detective. |
| Former characters | ||
| Role | Actor | Description |
| Holly Gribbs | Chandra West | Holly is a brand-new CSI in "Pilot." She does not appear to do well under pressure and does not react well to her first autopsy. Warrick leaves her alone on her first case to go gambling. The murderer returns to the scene, takes her gun from her, and shoots her 3 times. She subsequently dies in surgery. |
| Cyrus Lockwood | Jeffrey D. Sams | Detective Lockwood appears in a number of episodes throughout seasons two and three. He is killed in the episode "Inside the Box", when he walks into an armed robbery. |
| Paul Millander | Matt O'Toole | Paul Millander appears over a three episode arc, "Pilot," "Anonymous" and "Identity Crisis" as a transgender serial killer who compulsively re-enacts his own father's murder, a staged suicide, and forces his victims to record a suicide note stating their name, address, that they "cannot do it anymore" and that they love their mother. He uses a rubber mold of his own hand to plant his own fingerprints at each crime scene, and later, in "Anonymous", plants a print of Grissom's at a crime scene. Millander taunts Grissom by visiting the CSI offices after Grissom discovers that Millander is the real killer at the end of "Anonymous" and then disappears until later showing up as a Judge (with a wife and adopted son) in "Identity Crisis." Each victim has the same birthday, August 17th, and each victim in sequence counts back one year starting with 1958. August 17th is also Grissom's birthdate, and his is the next year in line in "Identity Crisis". Millander commits suicide in his mother's house after stabbing her and recording the same format of suicide note. |
| Ray O'Riley | Skip O'Brien | Homicide detective; status unknown |
| Lady Heather | Melinda Clarke | Dominatrix, proprietress of the fetish club "Lady Heather's Domain". Appears in "Slaves of Las Vegas" (Season 2, Episode 8), "Lady Heather's Box" (Season 3, Episode 15) and "Pirates of the Third Reich" (Season 6, Episode 15). Lady Heather is one of the few people who seems to understand Grissom, perhaps even better than he understands himself. She has long been rumored as a possible love interest for Grissom, but that seems unlikely after the events of "Pirates of the Third Reich" and "Way to Go" (Season 6, Episode 24). Her current status is unknown, but she is presumably being investigated on charges of kidnapping and aggravated assault. |
| Michael Keppler | Liev Schreiber | CSI, formerly of Trenton, New Jersey; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Baltimore, Maryland. A new hire on the day shift, he soon becomes Grissom's replacement when Grissom is on a four-week teaching sabbatical (Season 7, episode 12 - Sweet Jane). A very insular and mysterious man, he's also somewhat unorthodox in his methods for solving cases, such as when he suggests to Catherine, Brass and the Under-Sheriff to fake a crime scene and hide the "evidence" from the other CSIs (Season 7, episode 13 - Redrum) in order to catch a drug-trafficking killer. By episode 15 (Law Of Gravity), his dark past is revealed: back in Trenton, he murdered the man he thought had raped and killed his (Keppler's) lover, which, in itself, had haunted his conscience for years. Eventually, however, he discovers that his girlfriend's own father had been the culprit. As his life comes crashing down around him, Keppler tracks him down before he could murder a witness to another crime, and they end up fatally shooting each other. He appeared in four seventh season episodes (712-715: Sweet Jane, Redrum, Meet Market, and Law of Gravity). |
