Episode list

A New Orleans police officer goes undercover on a Baton Rouge riverboat casino to gain a confession from one of the ship's maintenance workers suspected of killing Marilyn Allen. A Mauston, Wisconsin man, suspected of committing the murder of Tommy Bolchen using a nunchakus, goes on trial nearly 10 years after the victim's body was found.

1992--For three months, the St. Louis metro area is seized by a string of rapes. The victims each report the same scenario to detectives at the St. Louis Metro Police Dept.: a man with his face covered breaks into their home under the guise of a burglary. With weapon in hand, the man rapes them. When finished, he tells them to bathe themselves and keep quiet or he will return to kill them. This is the Modus Operandi of what has become known as the South Side Rapist. Police believe it is the work of one man, a serial predator of women. A Task Force is established in efforts to catch the offender, but with few leads to follow up on, the cases go cold. In 1995, Det. Mark Kennedy begins working on the South Side Rapist case full-time. With the help of partner Det. Randy Sassenger, the two begin their investigation by going back into police archives and researching rapes and attempted sexual assaults. What they find is an arsenal of cases dating back to 1984--each illustrating an identical MO to that of the South Side Rapist cases of 1992. With the help of DNA criminalist Mary Beth Karr, the detectives are able to link some 29 cases to a single man dubbed in 1992 as the South Side Rapist. With only a DNA profile, the nameless man escapes from justice undetected. A fluke audit of a license plate number in 1998 leads detectives to a burglary suspect Dennis Rabbitt, who later through DNA analysis is identified as the SSR.

A killer's bite marks and a jailhouse snitch lead to a murder conviction in a case gone cold for eight years, and Bill Kurtis joins a group of super sleuths trying to solve the slaying of 18-year-old Jamie Weiss, found dead in her bathtub in 1996.

In early October 1992, in the mountains of western Virginia, hunters stumbled upon a dead body, badly decomposed and under a pile of trash. Animals have nibbled on the arms, and a shovel is still standing upright in the ground nearby. The hunters panic and leave, but eventually call police, and the Henry County Sheriff's Department comes to the scene. Some of the remaining skin is removed from a fingertip and taken to the Virginia State Crime Lab in Roanoke. At the lab, a fingerprint is made and entered into the AFIS system. They quickly get a hit -- Jerry McClendon, a sailor from Virginia Beach. Checking out McClendon's house, it looks like someone has moved out, and detectives soon discover that the pillowcase in Virginia Beach matches a sheet found with the body in the woods of western Virginia. The medical examiner now issues a belated autopsy report: Jerry McClendon died of asphyxiation. He concludes that the body had been dead about two weeks before the hunters found it. They find a very high level of a drug chemical in McClendon's system. Circumstantial evidence is pointing strongly to former roommates, David DeShazio and Roxanna Latham, now living in Henry County, VA. Detectives also discover several ATM withdrawals from Jerry's checking account, about two weeks before his remains were found. Working with a bank employee, they cue up surveillance videotape taken at the time of the ATM withdrawals; it's David and Roxanna on the tape.

TICKET TO NOWHERE: A 13-year-old girl's mother is murdered and 20 years later she helps bring the killer to justice; THE PAPER ROUTE: and a dogged policeman gets to the bottom of the brutal murder of a 63-year-old newspaper delivery woman.

In 1985, Enrique Elizarbe, a recent immigrant from Peru trying to find a better life, was robbed and beaten to death in the warehouse where he works in northern Virginia. Prince William County detectives talk to a co-worker, Rowland Wheeler, who says he came back from a lunch break, found Elizarbe barely conscious, and tried to render aid. But Wheeler's stories don't make sense, and the detectives suspect Wheeler is not a Good Samaritan but a killer. Forensic teams sweep the warehouse and find evidence implicating Wheeler, including muddy footprints, blood splatter, and a bloody crowbar. The case, however, is somewhat circumstantial and prosecutors decide not to press charges. The case goes cold. In the late 1990s, Prince William County detective Dave Watson is reviewing some of his old unsolved homicides and decides to re-open the Elizarbe case. He wants to re-test some of the forensic evidence, using newer, more sensitive scientific techniques. Three new microscopic tests of the crowbar, the footprints, and boots taken from Rowland Wheeler present a strong case that he was the killer. With modern technology, scientists can find traces of blood on Wheeler's boots, and show with scientific certainty that the footprints were his. As prosecutors gear up for trial, they get a bonus: while waiting in county jail for his trial, Wheeler tells two cellmates precisely how he killed Enrique Elizarbe in 1985. The two accounts are independent, and convincing in their detail.

A woman's fall from a cliff in the Grand Canyon leads police to uncover a series of grisly murders, and investigators smoke out a killer when they find crucial DNA evidence on his cigarette butts.

A mother's worst nightmare: Did I leave my child "In the Care of a Killer"? It was 1990 in Concordia, Missouri; three-year-old Billy dies at the babysitter's after a reported fall down the stairs; it is judged to be an accidental death. When a second child dies in her care 8 years later, the first death is re-examined--including exhuming Billy's body and a second autopsy. The second segment is set in Claremore, Oklahoma. A missing person report in 1986 gets nowhere; his abandoned car is in a parking lot; locals remember his flashing a wad of cash in a bar and leaving with Kent HIll. Though suspicious, police have no body UNTIL 4 months later when a woman hires a team of divers to try to find an antique car her brother had pushed into a lake before going off to war. The jean-clad bones they find are buried as a John Doe; seven years later an estranged girlfriend of Hill's provides a scenario, and the bones are exhumed, identified by DNA, and Frank Ross' killer is brought to justice.

LADY IN THE BOX: The murder of an Ohio woman in 1974 is solved more than 20 years later after police get a crucial clue--the woman's husband was seen building a coffin-shaped box about the time the woman disappeared.

CRIMES OF THE KKK: Klan leader Sam Bowers goes on trial for ordering the murder of an African-American store owner, Vernon Dahmer, 32 years prior, and investigators reopen the unsolved case of an African-American truck driver who was forced to leap to his death from a bridge by Klan members.

After a 20 year unsolved murder spree, drifter Joseph Donald Ture is convicted of killing at least six females. Includes a recent interview with Ture, still professing his innocence, and explores what led to the case solution in 1998.

October 23, 1983, Gertrude McCabe is found brutally murdered in her home. At first investigation, detectives pursue the case as an attempted robbery gone bad. A second glance at the crime scene shows that the scene was staged - this was not a robber gone bad, but a vicious murder of an elderly woman. Detectives comb the crime scene but lack the information to identify a suspect for the murder and the case grows cold. Uneasy about the solving of her aunt's death, Jane Alexander begins a mission to bring attention to her aunt's unsolved murder. Alexander contacts San Jose Police Detectives and urge them to look at the file and try to solve the case that has been eluding them for years, all the while, a suspect is making himself visible. That suspect, as an intensive investigation would later prove, was Alexander's then boyfriend Tom O'Donnell. The motive: money. This is something that devastates Jane, a woman, who had entrusted not only herself, but her money to O'Donnell. In 1992, San Jose Police Investigators garner enough evidence to bring charges of murder against O'Donnell. The devastated Jane tries to rebuild her life by attending advocate groups. In 1994, two years before O'Donnell will be tried and convicted for murdering Gertrude McCabe, Alexander begins her own victim's advocate group Citizens Against Homicide with partner Jan Miller.

In 1973 in the small town of Owosso, Michigan, 20-year-old Dawn Magyar is abducted from a grocery store parking lot. Six weeks later, a farmboy is checking maple syrup pails in a forest near Owosso and stumbles upon a body, later identified as Magyar. She's been shot three times, once in the back and twice in the head. Police say she's been raped, and semen is recovered. Michigan State Police pick up the case, but they have no strong leads, and the case goes cold. Two years later, another local boy is swimming in a river near Owosso when he steps on the barrel of a revolver. Police compare the gun to the slugs pulled from Dawn Magyar's body and conclude it's the likely murder weapon. They trace the gun to the last known owner, one Robert Shaw who bought it at a pawn shop in Yuma, Arizona. Police have no other information on Robert Shaw, and in the days before computers, he is nearly impossible to track. The case once again goes cold. In 1994, Michigan State Police review all cold cases where DNA can be developed. The Magyar rape kit is sent to a DNA lab, and a profile is developed. Several suspects are compared to the profile, but the DNA exonerates all of them. In 1998, MSP detective Mark Pendergraff decides that the revolver found in the river is their best lead. He begins with the last known owner of the gun, Robert Shaw. There are thousands of Robert Shaws living in the United States, so Pendergraff must narrow down the list somehow.

PERFECT MURDER: It takes nine years and the work of cutting-edge forensic toxicologists to solve the murder of a medical examiner's wife. DEATH OF THE INNOCENTS: Then, a determined Alabama sheriff reopens the case of the deaths of two babies, hoping to get their mother to confess.

May 15, 1995. 10 year old Cassie Kemp and her brother Eric are picked up after school by their stepfather, John Veysey. When they get home, Cassie races for the door of their Galena, IL home. As she walks into the kitchen, she sees her mother, Patricia Veysey, dead on the floor. An autopsy determines Patricia died of a heart defect. After John Veysey collects insurance money, Gerald and Betty DeBruyne, Patricia's parents, become suspicious that her death wasn't an accident and that Veysey may have caused it. But since they have no proof, the grieving parents have no where to turn. That is until January 14, 1998 2:17 a.m. It's a cold January night in the small northwest Chicago suburb of Cary when Deserie Beetle and her young son are rescued after being trapped in their burning home. John T. Veysey tells police and firefighters his harrowing tale of how he escaped the fire but couldn't rescue his wife and son. But within hours of the fire, the fire and police departments in Cary get phone calls from Jerry and Betty DeBruyne and others telling them that this is not John Veysey's first fire and that investigators should take a closer look at his past. Sgt. Ron Delelio takes up the scent and finds Veysey at the heart of a number of suspicious fires and even a death. Here is the history of what he finds. December 12, 1991 - A house fire guts John Veysey's gray raised ranch home perched atop a hill in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin.

"Cat and Mouse": A young woman's body is found near her car which had rolled and then burned. Because she had been in a bar recently, it was ruled an accident. Years later a probation officer feels an offender is dangerous and checks his file; he finds a letter to the sentencing judge from an ex-wife, Barbara Miller, which provides clues to the murder of Alma Nappier. He is able to trace an eyewitness to clinch the case. "Final Fare": John Orner, a Checker Cab driver's body is found face down by the side of the road, a bullet in the back of his skull. Because it fragments, it cannot conclusively be linked to the suspect's, Edward Freiburger, gun (purchased the same day as the murder). FORTY years pass before anyone is convicted of this murder.

"The Good Samaritan " refers to a helpful neighbor, Horst Eppenbach, who is shot and killed by the rapist of his neighbor when he comes to check on her. The only clue? A semen sample with no suspect. This 1989 case in New York goes cold until another reported rape in 2001 in Colorado produces a matching sample. NY detectives must travel to Junction City, KS and two little towns in Colorado to catch a killer. In the second segment, a "Gun Shy" woman in Santa Clara, California, is shot in what her husband calls an accident. Thanks to a victim support group, a persistent brother and a detective's study of crime photos which allows reconstruction of the incident, justice is done after more than a dozen years.

"A Map to Murder": A newspaper story about a murdered prostitute prompts a perpetrator's letter, including a map to another body. Police get the home address where the map was downloaded and find evidence of torture and murder in the basement.

Part 1: Chula Vista,CA. In 1995, a prostitute is shot. By 2006, DNA and fingerprints involve two sailor "johns". Part 2: KC,MO has 900 cold cases, but their Crime Lab uses DNA and AFIS to aid the Cold Case unit clear them.

A quarter of a century after the murders of two nurses, Doreen Moorby and Helen Ferguson, Canadian police suspect that a former Toronto cop committed the crimes. A blow to the head of a garbage collector in San Jose leaves strange markings, and decades later a detective, with help from forensic science, matches the markings to the etchings of a vintage bar sign. California police hope that DNA will help them track down the man who stabbed and killed a woman as she sat in her parked car in front of a supermarket in 1985.

A mother is suspected in the murders of two of her daughters, when her third daughter finally convinces police to reopen two cold cases.

A murderer's saliva, found on envelopes that he sealed, helps seal his doom 37 years after his first killing. And Colorado police crack a cold case 24 years later when they take a DNA sample from the victim's son that proves that his father murdered his mother.