Tonight on CBS NCIS returns with an all-new Tuesday, March 10, 2020, season 17 episode 17 called, “In A Nutshell” and we have your weekly NCIS recap below. On tonight’s NCIS season 17 episode 17, “In A Nutshell,” as per the CBS synopsis, “The NCIS team investigates the death of a Navy officer murdered the same way as his parents a decade ago.
They stumble across a storage container filled with dollhouses that display recreations of murder scenes. Also, the team agrees to clean out their living spaces, but some have a harder time saying goodbye to their possessions than others.”
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A teenager ran someone over. She was arguing with her friend about something on his cell phone and neither of them saw anyone or were even sure what they hit. They merely felt the bump in the road. They were at least responsible for it and they later got out of the car to check on what they hit. They thought it would be Bambi and instead it was Petty Officer Third Class Noah O’Donnell. He had been dead long before the car road over him. A later examination proved he had been shot twice in the chest and once in the head. He had been executed. The team brought in to investigate the why and they started out by checking up on their victim.
O’Donnell was an Intelligence Expert with Quantico. He also taught self-defense during his off-hours at the community center. He seemed like a good guy and the only family he had left was his sister Claire. His sister’s cell phone last pinged mere moments before O’Donnell’s murder. There hasn’t been anything since then and so the sister was considered missing. The team wanted to find her. They also wanted to solve another mystery that occurred. There was a detective poking around and he told O’Donnell to keep the man’s murder a secret. The detective that did this was John Fischer. He also worked a murder investigation involving O’Donnell’s parents.
His parents were murdered years ago. They were murdered by a homeless man who was mentally ill and the crime itself had rocked their small community. The detective didn’t want the circus to happen again just because there was a third murder within the same family. Fischer had wanted to bury what happened and so the team wrought him off. They thought he was being too cautious. It wasn’t until they looked into the parents’ murder that they could found a connection. The parents were killed at their house and both O’Donnell and wandered the streets afterward. They were found in the same location where O’Donnell’s body was later found.
The team had gone looking for Claire. They figured she knew what happened that night better than anyone else and unfortunately they couldn’t find her. Claire was an odd one. She would haunt her parents’ old home and the team went there. They found the house condemned. It had been bought and sold several times with no one choosing to stay. It also didn’t help that Claire kept visiting the house. She would haunt the place and sometimes she used it as a studio. She created dollhouses there. The dollhouses she created were pretty unusual. They depicted gruesome murders and so the team turned to Sloane for help.
The team assumed Claire was unwell. The truth is she was using these scenes to help her understand murder. There was a genuine study behind this and Claire was using it because she wanted to understand her own parents’ murder. Her parents were killed in the same way as her brother O’Donnell. It could have been a copycat or the real killer could have killed again. The team wasn’t sure of which and they needed to speak to Claire. She was either their suspect or a possible target. Her disappearance wasn’t looking good for her and everyone in her former town had assumed she was their killer.
They were staking out her old house. They knew she always returned to the crime scene and so they went there because they thought Claire would show up at her old home. Except they were wrong. Claire has a new place to haunt and so the team went to where her brother’s body was found. They found Claire stalking the place as usual. She was trying to talk to her brother and the team had no idea if she was expecting a response or not. They were still trying to talk to Claire. They told her that they wanted to help and they got her to come in. They later asked her if she killed her brother.
Claire said “yes”. She said she couldn’t stop thinking about their parents’ murder and she thought if she created a “nutshell” about it that she would find peace. She even enlisted her brother’s help. She thinks her brother found something and that’s what got him killed. She also blames herself for what happened. She thought if she had just let it go that her brother would still be alive and so the team looked into it. They found out that O’Donnell was investigating his parents’ murder. He must have found something because he was later killed over it and so the team was retracing his steps. They wanted to find what he found.
The homeless that were suspected of murdering the parents had died. He died in federal custody and so no one wanted to pay for his body to be exhumed for DNA. It was never proven this homeless man murdered the parents. The detective working the case was never able to close it and yet the team knew the killer was still out there. Claire had an alibi for her brother’s murder. She was spotted miles away and so that didn’t explain why the tweezers that were used on her brother’s dead body was found in her studio. It looked like someone was trying to frame Claire for her brother’s murder.
Claire was also at risk. Her whole family was murdered and she could just as easily be next. The team moved to protect her. They also tried to get her to come out of her shell. Claire was a very quiet person. She didn’t really come alive until she was talking about her dollhouses and so Gibbs and Sloane used them to connect to Claire. They solved the murders that the doll represented. They also found out her brother had created one of them. O’Donnell recreated a supposed electrical fire that was an actual murder. He must have figured that out and so the team came to suspect he was murdered because of it.
The team suddenly found themselves investigating a scene created out of dolls. The victim in this scene was Louise Fitzgerald. She was a former neighbor of the brother and sister. She used to cook meals for them after their parents died. She had been a very good friend and she had supposedly died in the electrical fire. Even the fire investigator thought it was an accident. No one other than O’Donnell took a closer look at her case and so the team did. They found out she had been robbed before killed. She was attending self-defense at the community center and it had been O’Donnell as well co-teacher.
He was stealing from her. He was heavily in debt and he killed her to hide what he did. O’Donnell must have found about it. He confronted his friend and his friend killed him. He then made it look like O’Donnell was killed by the same person who murdered his parents. The friend was trying to frame Claire for it and so the team arrested their guy before he could hurt her any further.
Claire was finally given closure and she agreed to meet with the detective who had never given up on her parents’ case.
The team also donated a bunch of their old stuff to VA and everyone was surprised when Bishop gave away things she genuinely.
It didn’t seem like her and so they were concerned.
THE END!