The Hot Dog in the Competition

Episode Summary





Brennan and Hodgins are called to the scene of a murder, in which a female in her early 30s was thrown through a terrarium. Her body is covered in rats and, it turns out, filled with a python (who'd eaten a rat, who'd eaten her distal phalanx). Death came as the result of a piece of glass puncturing her L1 vertebra, which would have severed the posterior spinal vein and arteries.Back at the Jeffersonian, Brennan tests the new intern, Finn Abernathy, and asks him to describe the victim. Based on theand the state of, he narrows her age to 30-31. He further discovers sharp trauma to the ribs, posterior ulna, humerus, and supraspinous fossa (of the scapula). Brennan notes that there is partially chewed food in the victim's teeth. The team further notes that the victim's mandibular fossa is shallow, allowing the condylar process to slip - she could dislocate or unhinge her jaw. Abernathy discovers an extra piece of bone in the victim's abdomen and thinks it's. Angela gets a match from her facial reconstruction to Tina Thomas, a competitive eating champion, and Saroyan finds a piece of human tissue in Tina's teeth, which she sends out for DNA analysis.Booth has narrowed down the suspects to the victim's husband, Brian Tobin (PR at Hankfurter Hot Dogs), and Mitch Clancy, Tina's coach. The husband denies killing his wife, in spite of the fact that neighbors heard them arguing all the time. Clancy noted that Tina was done with competitive eating because she would throw up, which is a no-no in the sport.This leads Brennan to check Tina's teeth, which show evidence of increased stomach acid. Rather than assuming the vomiting was the result of Tina's competitive eating, Brennan thinks that she may have been pregnant. She notes someof theand concludes that the widening of the pelvis indicated Tina was 8 weeks pregnant.Angela and Abernathy recreate the attack, estimating that the attacker would have been over 300 pounds, which rules out Tina's husband. Booth can't figure out if the attacker was Tobin or Clancy, but Brennan discovers eggs from a parasite on a distal phalanx. Hodgins finds out that the parasite was, which is endemic to freshwater crabs in Japan. While Tina hadn't been to Japan, Clancy had - he was trying to set up a tour with Tina as the star. When she told him she was out of the competitive eating game, he got mad. Clancy shoved Tina but their weight disparity did not work in her favor - she was pushed into the terrarium accidentally.