CSI: Fact Or Fiction

  Nothing makes for a better story than when fact and fiction come face to face.  Except for when it happens twice…in one week.

  And that’s just what happened—first last Tuesday, and then again on Friday—on the sets of CSI: New York and CSI: Miami.  In stories that were almost too startlingly similar to be chalked up to coincidence, dead bodies were found on or near the production sites of the sister shows.

  It started last Tuesday, while the cast and crew of CSI: New York shot on location at an apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles.  (Oh, come on.  You didn’t think it was actually filmed in New York, did you?)  As cameras rolled two floors above him, a building engineer knocked on the door of a fifth-floor tenant who was late paying his rent.  When there was no answer, the engineer let himself in and discovered, according to press reports, the tenant’s “mummified” remains. 

  Weird, right?  But then on Friday, as crew members for CSI: Miami filmed helicopter shots near Biscayne Bay, just outside of Miami, another dead body washed up on the bay’s shore.  A homeless man discovered the body and alerted an off-duty cop who was working as security on the set.  No signs of trauma or foul play were evident.  According to Detective Delrish Moss, who responded to the scene, “Unfortunately, it’s not unusual during certain times of the year that people who have fallen into the bay, either homeless or people who were asleep or in some cases boaters who had a mishap, fall into the bay and turn up days later.”

  Needless to say, there has already been a lot of speculation as to whether or not this might be a publicity stunt.  As a rule, conspiracy theorists are wack-jobs.  But consider if you will that, by the time the news really broke, it was Monday.  And CSI: Miami’s fifth-season premier was Monday night.  Hmmm.

  Now I know it’s far-fetched.  And I know that the World Wide Web is a seedy place, replete with lies and rumors, like the world’s largest water-cooler surrounded by unreliable halfwits and gossip-mongers.  That being said, according to a post on the L.A.-based online gossip rag, Defamer.com, the apartment-building “mummy” is bogus.  A so-called “informant” claims that CSI producers contacted his friend, who is in charge of developing a Beverly Hills condominium site.  “They said they wanted to shoot on the site and when asked what it was they’d be shooting, they said they wanted to plant a dead body and ‘discover’ it,” says the source.  “Because the fear was that the location would receive a bad rap and potentially dissuade investors, they said absolutely not and sent CSI on their way.”  According to the source, the CSI producers offered to pay the complex $2,000 to use the site.

  You can make what you want of this.  I think it seems strangely coincidental, but, as they say, fact is stranger than fiction.  And of course, it’s so obviously a publicity stunt that it just might not be.

-From Pulse
   September 21, 2006