Investigators: The Real CSI
In a small office hidden in the hills outside Los Angeles, a murder mystery is unfolding.
But these aren't detectives. They're television writers, and for them, murder comes easy.
Who are they? The folks of "CSI" - one of the most familiar shows on television. This band of crime-solving scientists have made geek the new chic, and made heroes out of people like Liz Devine. Correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports on a story that originally aired last October.
"I've been able to tap into a creative side of me that I didn't know that I had and that's been kind of interesting," says Devine, 42, a single mother of three.
She worked for 15 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as a real-life crime scene investigator before becoming a technical advisor for "CSI."
"I really thought I would always be in law enforcement and not do anything but that," she says, "so to make a switch was kind of a shock."
William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger, stars of "CSI," both rely on Devine to make them look like scientists.
"She does everything for us," says Peterson. "We had to have someone around when we first started out to make sure that we knew what we were doing, that we were doing it right."
In just two years, Devine has earned the title of executive story editor. "It's a very different sort of adrenaline rush," she says. "You know, actors the caliber of Billy and Marg, saying words that you write, it's very exciting stuff."
Her years as a criminalist have taken a toll: "It's a hard thing to do every day," she says. "You're dealing with people on the worst day of their lives."
The popularity of "CSI" has sparked a nationwide fascination with forensic science, a largely unappreciated field.
"People like puzzles and mysteries," Devine says. "And I think the reason our show has been so successful is because we're showing them the science and we're making it cool."
"CSI" is the brainchild of Anthony Zuiker, a rookie writer from Las Vegas, and a pair of Hollywood professionals, executive producers Carol Mendelssohn and Ann Donahue.
"We're enthralled by murder," says Donahue. "When other people look away, we keep looking. That's how we get our scripts."
And Devine has had ample opportunity to acquire her own peculiar expertise; she estimates that she has investigated between 750 and 800 murders.
Several episodes of "CSI" have been based on cases she worked on, including a brutal and challenging murder that she says "haunts me to this day."
On Mother's Day in 1995, Paul Carasi was found covered with blood in a parking lot, his ex-girlfriend, Sonia Salinas, and his mother dead nearby and his 2-year-old son uninjured in the back seat of his car.
Carasi claimed they had been robbed. But what Devine and her colleagues found at the crime scene told a very different story.
"Paul Carasi and his girlfriend, Donna Kay Lee, together planned a murder and they brutally stabbed these two women and left them for dead and did it in front of his own son," says Devine.
One critical piece of evidence solved this case, in the "CSI" version and in reality: a handprint that indicated that one victim put up a fight.
Since a bloody handprint on his shirt was consistent with injuries of one victim, police believed Carasi committed the murders because his ex-girlfriend wanted money for child support.
Devine worked on this investigation for three years and it finally paid off when Paul Carasi received the death penalty.
However, she's found that she also had a price to pay for this work.
"I'm a lot more skeptical," she says. "I'm a lot more suspicious. I mean, I've got blood from my kids in my freezer because if anything happens to them, I wanna be able to identify them. I mean, that's not normal. And I know that. But that's what this business did to me."
Today, Devine still deals with crime scenes on a daily basis, but at the end of the day, there's one big difference.
"You see people get up from the autopsy table and wipe off the makeup, and you go home," she says.