Csi

10 tonight CHANNEL 3 You'll find echoes of the Alfred Hitchcock classic "Rear Window" in this clever episode that finds Mac (Gary Sinise, right) witnessing mysterious activity by neighbors that leads to a murder while he is home recuperating from an injury.

Mark Walton's been dead for three years and no trace of his body has been found. He was seen helping out his ex-wife, loading some plants into a truck, but then he seemed to have vanished. Then, one clear day, a hiker looks down in the desert and finds what is apparently a human skeleton with what is unmistakably a bullet hole in the head. Visitors to the Franklin Institute, where most of the exhibits tend to be a little less violent, are getting a chance this fall to see if they can solve cases like this in "CSI: The Experience," a visiting interactive showcase based on the popular TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Nothing can match the Mutter Museum's sheer volume of bodily curiosities, but the wonderful little Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum, a block from the El tracks in Frankford, more than holds its own for the quality of its quease-factor artifacts. One display case contains both a patch of skin removed from President James Garfield's back during his autopsy, sealed in a delicate jar, and a darkened sliver of fabric that's evocatively labeled as "a fragment of Lincoln's Bloody Pillowcase.

WITH JUST a first glance, it looks as if the alleged six-year kidnapping of Delimar Vera was made possible through a series of errors - and maybe neglect. In the first place, the Philadelphia Fire Department declared the fire accidental when it apparently wasn't. Even though a team from medical examiner's office spent two days combing the debris of the house at 4410 Hurley St., it found no human remains. The biological mother of the child, Luzaida Cuevas, says she was certain the baby had been taken, but no investigation was begun.

We have disquieting news for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fans. Jorja Fox and George Eads, two of the stars of CBS's hyper-literate police drama, have been fired for breach of contract. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the actors had been in a dispute over their salaries. We find CBS's move particularly lame, not only because we find Fox to be charming (she's got an exquisitely complex face whose slightest gesture tells a whole story), but also because her character, Sara Sidle, has had some serious chemistry with head CSI dude Gil Grissom (William L. Petersen)

CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION. 9 tonight, Channel 3. MAMAS (AND papas), don't let your babies stay up to watch Justin Bieber tonight. I don't usually go all Parents Television Council on shows that air after I believe most younger kids belong in bed, but I know there are people who'll see that Bieber's on CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and think it might just get them out of a second trip to the multiplex to sit among screaming little girls...

William Petersen is as bowlegged as an old saddle tramp. "Part of that is genetic," he says. "A lot of it is bad knees from football and baseball. I spent the better part of 50 years trying to ruin my body. " Another explanation for his distinctive rolling gait may be a life spent, in one fashion or another, trying to straddle two worlds. Petersen, 50, belongs to the old, quixotic, let's-put-on-a-show-in-the-barn school of performing. His fondest showbiz memories are of running a modest theater company in Chicago for 16 years, till 1995.

They are the eyes and ears of death. A small team of Philadelphia Police Department investigators who possess uncommon curiosity, extraordinary patience - and strong stomachs. For that, they were sent to ground zero a decade ago to help at the largest crime scene in American history. And for that, they are left, a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, full of memories that refuse to be tamed. Most Americans revisit images they saw on TV. These five men, as they dare to remember, wrestle with ground-level scenes so vivid, so jarring, they have been buried for years.

Unlike real estate, the TV world does not rely on location for success - provided CSI is part of the title. Whether set in Las Vegas, Miami or New York, the widely watched police investigative show proves that crime pays handsomely, at least in Nielsen ratings. Last week, the Chester County Library capitalized on that popularity with a lecture in which a county detective compared his job routine with his TV counterparts. Mike McGinnis, whose law-enforcement career began in 1986 as a West Chester police officer, discussed the factors in crime-scene investigations that he believes spark public interest - and promote widespread misconceptions.

"Dead men tell no tales," wrote the late American poet Haniel Long. He never saw CSI. The CBS series has become prime time's most watched show precisely because nowadays corpses generate all kinds of compelling stories, based on evidence left behind at the scene of the crime. Previously relegated in the popular imagination to walk-on roles, forensic scientists (and their trusty costar, DNA) have recently stepped out of the lab and into the limelight via more than a dozen TV series.

IN THE EIGHT months since armed robbers first burst into the TriStar Market, in Yeadon, store owner Patel Bharat has turned his counter and sandwich station into a $15,000 bulletproof glass cage. Yet the State Police's Bureau of Forensic Services still hasn't processed three pieces of evidence - a gun, clothing and gloves - that were left behind at the scene and may hold the DNA clues to solving the case. In the meantime, Bharat's store has been robbed twice more at gunpoint, including less than a month after the first robbery - and by the same two men, he believes.

Mark Walton's been dead for three years and no trace of his body has been found. He was seen helping out his ex-wife, loading some plants into a truck, but then he seemed to have vanished. Then, one clear day, a hiker looks down in the desert and finds what is apparently a human skeleton with what is unmistakably a bullet hole in the head. Visitors to the Franklin Institute, where most of the exhibits tend to be a little less violent, are getting a chance this fall to see if they can solve cases like this in "CSI: The Experience," a visiting interactive showcase based on the popular TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

At the end of Premiere Week, CBS does what it does best, offering a new murder-and-mayhem series on Thursday and a medical entry with a ghost on Friday. Both tweak the network's time-tested formula of open-and-shut cases every night, wrapped up in the ongoing saga of the lead characters' lives. Thursday's Person of Interest , a cyber-assisted crime-prevention study, is the more compelling show, but Friday's A Gifted Man has relatable actors, including double Tony Award-winner Jennifer Ehle as a very down-to-Earth visitor from beyond the veil.

They are the eyes and ears of death. A small team of Philadelphia Police Department investigators who possess uncommon curiosity, extraordinary patience - and strong stomachs. For that, they were sent to ground zero a decade ago to help at the largest crime scene in American history. And for that, they are left, a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, full of memories that refuse to be tamed. Most Americans revisit images they saw on TV. These five men, as they dare to remember, wrestle with ground-level scenes so vivid, so jarring, they have been buried for years.

Did you feel the Earth move? CBS Wednesday announced it would shift CSI: Crime Scene Investigation from Thursdays at 9 p.m., where it has resided for 10 years and was once TV's most dominant scripted series. CSI will air Wednesdays at 10, following Criminal Minds , which has passed it in the ratings. The network picked up both CSI spin-offs ( New York and Miami ), but dropped Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior , which had filled the 10 p.m. Wednesday slot.

John P. Denmark peered at a hole in a metal security door drawn over a storefront on Mount Ephraim Avenue in Camden. A bullet had pierced it - possibly one intended for the 26-year-old man lying dead at his feet. "You never can tell in Camden," said Denmark, 47, a gregarious crime-scene investigator with the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. Lights from a Camden police cruiser flashed blue on the sidewalk and walls as Denmark pointed toward two other spots on the block where he had worked homicides.

CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION. 9 tonight, Channel 3. MAMAS (AND papas), don't let your babies stay up to watch Justin Bieber tonight. I don't usually go all Parents Television Council on shows that air after I believe most younger kids belong in bed, but I know there are people who'll see that Bieber's on CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and think it might just get them out of a second trip to the multiplex to sit among screaming little girls...

10 tonight CHANNEL 3 When a beautiful star quarterback in the Lingerie Football League is murdered in a locker room with traces of lidocaine in her system, Mac (Gary Sinise, right) and the CSIs are summoned.

The story that emerged from the excavation of ancient Mesopotamian burial pits caused an international sensation: a bevy of sacrificial maidens drinking poison to join their ruler in the afterlife. A lurid tale, but now, according to new evidence by University of Pennsylvania researchers, a false one. An analysis of CT scans indicates the ladies-in-waiting and other funereal attendants were simply cracked on the head with a pickax. This oldest of cold cases represents just some of the fresh research that Penn's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is highlighting in an exhibit of royal treasures from the city of Ur, opening tomorrow.