Tonight on CBS FBI: International airs with an all-new Tuesday, October 29, 2024 season 4 episode 3, “Nothing Sudden About It” and we have your FBI: International recap below. In tonight’s FBI season 4 episode 3 as per the CBS synopsis,
“When an American teenager disappears from a beach party during her senior year trip to Portugal, the Fly Team heads up the search, which is further complicated by the missing teen’s parents’ differing opinions.”
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In tonight’s FBI International, there was a birthday trip to Lisbon, Portugal. Leah Cardwell was about to turn eighteen. She turned her birthday into a girls trip and things were fine at first.
The girls loved being at the pool. They loved sightseeing. They were a little too gun-ho about the lower drinking age. They tried ordering drinks at the pool when they were stopped. Leah’s mother put a stop to it. She was supposed to be their guardian on the trip. Only she had been drinking herself. The girls later used that to their advantage.
They said they were just going shopping. The mom agreed to let them go by themselves. The girls actually went out partying and it would’ve been fine if a drunk Leah hadn’t gone off with a complete stranger. The stranger claimed his name was Nico. He convinced Leah to go for a swim.
He got her away from the group. He ditched her bag on the beach. The two disappeared and Leah never returned. Leah’s friend Olivia reported what happened. There was a third friend named Zoe. Zoe was too busy making out with another drunk at the party to care about Leah.
Zoe saw Leah leave with Nico. Leah told her what she was about to do. Her friend didn’t stop her. Olivia and Leah’s mother both blame Zoe for not protecting Leah.
Things also didn’t look great for the seventeen year old. Olivia noticed that this Nico was feeding Leah drinks. He wasn’t drinking himself. He was also constantly on his phone and he wasn’t using it to take pictures. It seemed odd to Olivia. If it had been Olivia that Leah told about her midnight swim, she would have stopped her friend.
The fly team was brought in to track down the teenager. Leah’s parents were at each other’s throats. They were divorced and they needed someone to blame for their missing child.
Leah’s mother Mindy even alerted the media. The local cops told her it was too soon for that. She ignored them because she wanted to get ahead of the bad press. She was feeding them her sob story about how she’ll do anything to find her missing daughter. Something about the whole case seemed off to the feds.
They tracked down Nico. Nico wasn’t his real name. It was Duarte de Sousa. He claimed that he found out Leah was underage and that he ditched her. He was seen on security footage getting pizza then going to a club. The pizzeria just had the one security camera. Duarte made sure to stay in frame the whole time he was there.
Like he was creating an alibi for himself. There was a seven minute window from when he left with Leah to when he showed up at the pizzeria. It seemed like a tight window, but not if he had a partner.
Then the oddest thing happened. Leah suddenly shows up. She had restraint marks on her wrists and ankles and she had the strangest story. Leah said she was abducted from the beach.
She said Nico ditched her. There was a man with a gun that showed up a minute later after Nico left. The guy with the gun wore a ski mask. He took Leah away on the water. Then they went to a building where he handcuffed her to the toilet. Leah left her wristband in the toilet tank to prove she was there. She also heard her mom on the news.
Leah said the guy let her go after he saw the news. She was walking by the side of the road when a good Samaritan picked her up and called the police. Leah claimed she wasn’t abused in any way.
She didn’t even suspect Nico of being involved in the kidnapping. Leah’s story was so strange that some questioned if it was real. The feds as well as the local cops thought this was a hoax. There’s no way a man grabs a teenage girl and does nothing. He didn’t ask for a ransom. He didn’t assault Leah. It was just odd.
The fly team still investigated the case. They tracked down the motel she was taken to. They found her wristband in the toilet like she said. They also found out who rented that room.
It was Luis Alves. He was seen drinking with Mindy earlier at the pool. He saw the moment the girls went off on their own and he didn’t leave right away. He stayed drinking with Mindy. Which made everyone want to question Mindy. Mindy was claiming she didn’t remember Luis all that much. Mindy’s ex-husband however suspected his wife of staging the kidnapping.
Craig claimed Mindy has a fixation with their children. She doesn’t want to take her eyes off them. She tries to keep them as close as possible and it was one of the reasons they got divorced.
There was a chance that Mindy staged this kidnapping to force her daughter into going to school near her. Leah was headed for college. She wanted to be her own person. Mindy might have resented that. Only Craig’s story was also strange. Craig was pursuing full custody of the younger children. He filed for it the day after his daughter was rescued.
He also was claiming that Mindy was guilty of parental negligence. He was using the situation with their daughter to make Mindy look like an unfit parent and the truth was something else. Leah was about to drop her father’s last name. She filed paperwork to change it. She wanted to cut ties with her father.
It might have something to do with him assaulting Mindy and that being the real reason they got divorced. There were an investigation into domestic violence. Mindy didn’t pursue it. The three kids lived with her and that was that.
Things were different now that Craig wanted full custody of the younger children. Craig has a connection to Luis. They both work in the same field and have met before.
Luis refused to flip on Craig. Craig couldn’t wait to flip on Luis. He talked in exchange for serving time in the Staes rather than Portugal. That way his kids could still come to visit him. If they want to visit him, that is. Leah was going ahead with the name change. Mindy kept custody of the younger boys and there’s no telling their reaction when they heard what their father did.
Smitty got asked out by the Portugal detective, but she turned her down because she gave up on dating. And she’s completely devoted to work.
Wes meanwhile added to his remembrance tattoo for his friend that died recently.
THE END!