See Also: 'Shooting Stars' Episode Guide

In the fourth episode of this season, the entire CSI team will have to cooperate to deal with the gruesome fallout of a cult of religious fanatics.

According to CSI Files sources, "Shooting Stars" will open with Grissom and Catherine arriving in a normally quiet suburb at the edge of the desert, where a young couple have found a badly mutilated corpse in their backyard. The agitated husband tells the CSIs that they were woken by a sound from downstairs, which when he went down to check things out turned to come from a ragged man raiding his fridge. Pointing his gun at the intruder, the husband told him to freeze, but instead he just bolted to the backyard. The husband followed him, only to run into a dozen young men and women huddled around something in the back of the garden, all looking like scared animals. When they fled, the husband started to follow, until he noticed exactly what it was they were gathered around -- the dead man.

When the CSIs see the corpse is covered with dried-up blood and dust, they realise he must have been killed somewhere else, before being transported to the backyard. Rather than wait for Brass and his men, Grissom and Catherine decide to try and catch up with the group of young people before they get too far away. The two head into the desert, and soon come across an underground bunker. The CSIs go in, sporting both flashlights and guns, but the place seems completely abandoned. Then Grissom and Catherine reach a large open area, where they make the sickening discovery this is the right place after all -- they just arrived too late. Lining the walls are twelve cots, eleven of which are occupied by the dead bodies of the young people the CSIs were chasing.

Catherine and Grissom find no signs of struggle or coercion, only an empty plastic bottle next to each cot. With what looks like a second Heaven's Gate on his hands, Grissom brings in the entire CSI team to try and solve the case. It looks like it's going to be hard to even find out who the victims are, as none of them carry ID, and it seems like they've been out of touch with society for at least several months. And at first, things only grow more complicated, as during their sweep of the area the CSIs find a man's corpse hidden in the trunk of a car -- with $40,000 and a plane ticket to Australia strapped to his body.

It's the fridge of the young suburban couple that provides the first lead. Fingerprints on it trace back to a Matthew Dickens, former student at WLVU, so Sofia Curtis heads to the university campus. There she finds Ryan and Dexter, two of his former dormmates, who don't paint a very flattering picture of Matthew. He was a religious studies major, but mostly spent his time watching Star Trek, eating junk food, and smoking a lot of weed. Eventually, he fell under the spell of a girl named Emma, who'd already tried to seduce half the school -- including Dexter, who dumped her the minute she started talking about an outer-space utopia they could all join. But Matthew was defenseless against the beautiful Emma, and soon dropped out of school to join her religious cult.

The CSIs also manage to find out who the mutilated man in the backyard is when they find the company card of a local travel agency on him. The agency's manager identifies him as Ty Bentley, one of her best employees, until two days ago he got into a big fight with a customer. The customer wanted to book a flight to Australia, but in response Ty shoved him into a wall, and demanded to speak with his ex-girlfriend -- Emma. The customer just smiled and said Emma had moved on, then left the agency -- only to be followed by Ty. If this customer was the leader of the cult, then what did he need a plane ticket for, and how did he end up in the trunk of a car? And if Ty wasn't even a member of the cult, how did he wind up dead?

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.

"Shooting Stars" is expected to air on the 13th of October, 2005.

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