Lady Heather

Lady Heather, real name Heather Kessler, (played by Melinda Clarke) is a fictional character in the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Lady Heather is a professional dominatrix who runs a house of domination in Las Vegas.

Fictional character biography
Lady Heather first appeared in the episode "Slaves of Las Vegas" after one of her employees is found dead. She runs a fetish club which brings in $20,000 a week, although it is implied that she only claims $10,000 on her taxes. Lady Heather has a daughter, Zoe, who was a freshman at Harvard. She told her daughter that she could give her body or her heart to a man, but never give him your power. Lady Heather claims she knows a lot about people. She thinks Catherine Willows would make a great dominatrix and takes a special interest in Gil Grissom. She even invites him for afternoon tea.

Lady Heather is the suspect in another murder case (in the episode "Lady Heather's Box") when two more of her employees get killed. They worked for her website, LadyHeather.com, which she calls "Voyeurism in a Brave New World" (the website is a genuine one, but redirects to the official CSI page at cbs.com). During her interview, Lady Heather is quick to notice Grissom is reading her lips. They later spend some time together, but it's not clear what exactly happened between them. When they are drinking tea, Gil Grissom learns that Lady Heather is a diabetic, which makes her a suspect in his case, because a specific type of insulin, as well as an uncommon type of injector were used to commit the murders, identical to the insulin and injectors used by Lady Heather. Heather is disappointed that Grissom suspects her. She is later cleared, but by then the damage to their relationship has already been done.

Lady Heather meets Gil Grissom again when her daughter, Zoe Kessler, is murdered. In the sixth season episode, "Pirates of the Third Reich," she reveals that Zoe dropped out of Harvard, began seeing a psychiatrist, slept with him and became pregnant by him. Lady Heather reported the psychiatrist to the disciplinary board, infuriating Zoe. At the time Zoe was murdered, mother and daughter were estranged. Lady Heather says she understands that having a dominatrix for a mother must have been difficult for Zoe, but she always emphasized "empowerment" when raising her daughter. Lady Heather does not know whether Zoe aborted or gave birth to her baby. The autopsy was inconclusive about whether Zoe had given birth. Zoe went to a sleep clinic for help with insomnia. Zoe's killer saw her there and targeted her for Nazi-like experiments because of an unusual physical feature -- Zoe had one brown eye and one blue eye, a condition known as heterochromia.

Lady Heather later gives Grissom a used condom, and tells him she obtained a DNA sample from the prime suspect by sleeping with him. She then abducts the man, drives him out into the desert, ties him to the front end of her car and starts lashing him with her whip until Grissom arrives to stop her. To stop her, Grissom uses the specific term or safeword "STOP". In their previous encounter, Lady Heather explained to Grissom that in a domination relation, it is the slave who is in control. This use of the domination coda by Grissom points to the mutual understanding of the characters, and perhaps to the nature of the relation once enjoyed by both, as Lady Heather alludes to such fact earlier in the episode.

Lady Heather is scheduled to appear in a May 10, 2007 episode of CSI entitled "The Good, the Bad, and the Dominatrix," according to the April 1, 2007 edition of TV Guide. It will be the character's fourth appearance in the series.