Fahrenheit 932
A man is in the slammer for the arson murders of his wife and son, and contacts the CSI's top forensic investigator, Grissom, to help him. The man was known to have purchased gasoline the week before the fire, and he was observed fleeing the scene. While these two facts alone seemed to be flimsy evidence for a conviction, there he was in jail. Amazingly enough though, with each passing commercial the guy looked more guilty. A half dozen 'arson investigators' had already turned the accused down for help (maybe for good reason?). Grissom, by the way, was not a fire investigator, so it's unclear why CSI would even be involved in an origin and cause investigation in the first place.

The man explains to Grissom that the fire began late at night in the couple's bedroom closet in his nice large suburban house. He at first claims that he came home from buying ice cream to find smoke billowing out the back of the house. He explains that a 'flashover' had occurred in the bedroom (he's a volunteer firefighter, you see, and he knows these things). Although he tried to hide it from Grissom, the man had burned his hand horribly ('third degree burns' we learn - hey, that's charred skin!) on the door knob and was blown back by a fireball as he opened the bedroom door from the hallway. The 'flashover' prevented him from entering and saving his wife and young son. He even knew the temperature of the fire - 932 degrees Fahrenheit, because that's the temperature, we're told, that flashover occurs!

Flashover, in real life, is a transitional phase in fire development and does not occur at such a specific temperature, though research has shown that flashover typically occurs when temperatures in a room reach or exceed approximately 1100 degrees Fahrenheit. Generally speaking, flashover is defined as the stage of the fire when every exposed combustible in a room has caught on fire.

Investigators found remains of a flammable liquid in the closet. With a good analysis a chemist will be able to tell specifically what was used (whether it be gasoline, kerosene, diesel, methanol, acetone, etc.). The script mentioned gasoline, but on the show the more generic term 'hydrocarbons' was used so that viewers would be kept in the dark about what the fuel really was.

Enter our forensic heroes, the CSI team, to the rescue. They discover a mysteriously charred board at the top of the bedroom door frame, and a burned 'industrial grade high voltage' electric space heater discarded and thrown into the living room during overhaul by the fire department. Displaying his amazing skill in logical deduction, Grissom reasons that the heater had to have been plugged in to the closet outlet in the couple's bedroom because "that's the one closest to her bed". Yes, that's what he said.

Why he assumed that the heater had to be plugged in at all, anywhere, we're not told. And Grissom never questioned why, if it was so cold that using a heater was necessary, the accused would be out buying ice cream at midnight.

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