Castle: Den Of Thieves – A Review Of The Police Procedure

Castle writers are forever coming up with creative and wacky new ways to murder—a bathtub filled with motor oil, a body inside a clothes dryer, bullets with messages written on the backs of the lead. And this week was no exception. The killer used a pair of handcuffs, jumper cables, and a car battery to electrocute his victim. Is this possible? Maybe, but unlikely. While a car battery does have enough juice to electrocute someone, it probably wouldn’t. The reason that it probably wouldn’t kill our victim is due to the skin’s resistance to the DC current. It takes about 48 volts to pass through dry skin and then get current flowing in the conductive juices inside the body. Normally, the voltage from a 12V car battery is far too low to get that current inside the body. And, by hooking the terminal to the steel handcuffs, more than likely the current would have passed between the cuffs, which would cause the metal to become very hot, burning the victim’s wrists. Still, there’s a slim possibility this scenario could have happened, but the probability would be highly unlikely. By the way, did anyone check the serial number on the handcuffs? They just might have been missing from the police department.

– Castle’s jealousy of the new detective was well deserved after his hot and steamy fling with the movie star. The shoe didn’t seem to feel very comfortable when it was placed on the other foot.

Was it just me, or did anyone else like this guy better than Beckett’s former FBI boyfriend?

– Beckett said, “You can learn a lot from a suspect’s denial.” How true. I’ve solved many cases based on the lies and denials I’ve heard in various interview rooms.

– M.E. Lanie Parrish decided to fume the victim’s body for fingerprints. Her basis for doing so was that the victim’s eyes had been closed when his body was discovered. So…she wanted to see if she could find a print on the eyelids. Well, I’ve seen many dead bodies in my day and some had their eyes open and some were closed. The fact that they were closed did not mean that the killer had closed them. However, fuming the body was a good idea. Although, I’ve never seen a fuming chamber like the one she used in this episode. Normally, the chambers are plastic, portable and tent-like. The body farm in Tennessee uses a Cyanoacrylate Blowing Contraption (CBC), a device created by Art Bohanan, a retired detective from the Knoxville Police Department. Art’s creation is portable, and consists of a heating chamber, a fan, and a long tube with a box at the end. The box is placed over the area to be fumed and then Superglue is placed in the heating chamber. The fan then blows the fumes through the tube to the box. After just a few seconds the box is removed from the body part and presto, the prints are revealed. By the way, the prints show up as white, not lime green like we saw in last night’s episode.

Lanie’s fuming chamber was impressive, but she really blew it when she ran the prints and came up with an instant match on her computer. First of all, the M.E. would not be running or comparing fingerprints. That’s the duty of a certified fingerprint examiner. And, print matches do not come back on the computer in a matter of seconds. The system sends back several possible matches and then it’s up to the examiner to compare, by hand and eye, the suspect print with the print that was lifted from the crime scene.

The Three Stooges, Castle, Esposito, and Ryan, were pretty doggone funny this week.

And Esposito played a good role of a cop standing by his partners. Sometimes, you feel that your partner is the only person you can trust. I think Ryan said it best when he expressed his sentiment to Esposito. “Partner, I’m with you until the wheels fall off.”

Lastly, the new guy, who, by the way, will be back in more episodes, said he dropped the charges against Esposito’s former partner and considered the case closed.

A police officer doesn’t have the authority to drop charges. That’s a decision that can only be made by the prosecutor.

So, what’s next for Beckett? Does she have a payback fling with Tom?

ABC photos

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