A Boy in a Tree

"A Boy in a Tree"
Bones episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 3
Directed by	Patrick Norris
Written by	Hart Hanson
Production code	1AKY01
Original air date	September 27, 2005
Guest appearance(s)
Toby Hemingway as Tucker Pattison Kayla Mae Maloney as Camden Destry Avis Wrentmore as Melodee Destry Marlene Forte as Ambassador Olivos Tom Dugan as Headmaster Ronson José Zúñiga as Mickey Santana Samual Carman as Nestor Olivos
Episode chronology
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List of Bones episodes

"A Boy in a Tree" is the third episode of the first season of the television series, Bones. Originally aired on September 27, 2005 on Fox network, the episode is written by Hart Hanson and directed by Patrick Norris. The plot features FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth and Dr. Temperance Brennan's investigation of a teenage boy's remains found inside an exclusive private school.

Booth brings Brennan and her assistant Zack Addy to the exclusive Hanover Preparatory School, where a decomposing body has been found hanging from a tree. They retrieve the body and return to their lab at the Jeffersonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where they confirm that the body belongs to a teenage boy, most likely a student. Dr. Jack Hodgins determines that the boy died 10 to 14 days earlier.

As Booth asks for a list of students from the headmaster of the school, Brennan calls to tell him of the cochlear implant she found in the victim's ear. She informs him that they will be able to identify the victim by tracing the serial number on the device. The victim is Nestor Olivos, a student of the school and the only son of the Venezuelan ambassador. The team finds it odd that Nestor's hyoid bone is broken, as the hyoid of an adolescent should be flexible and almost unbreakable.

While the school's headmaster and its head of security are adamant that Nestor had committed suicide, Nestor's mother, the Venezuelan ambassador, urges Dr. Brennan to find the truth and believes that Nestor had been murdered. The central mystery of the case is whether Nestor killed himself or was murdered.

Based on the Tabinid maggots's pupal casing, Hodgins determines that Nestor ingested a heavy dose of ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic, before he died. However, the team cannot be certain if the boy had taken the drug involuntarily but Dr. Brennan is able to give a scenario of Nestor's death involving the ketamine. Combined with the ketamine, the choking would have caused Nestor to regurgitate stomach acids, which would have been trapped in the throat and weakened the hyoid bone. The weight of Nestor's body could then break his hyoid.

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Wikipedia