Wednesday

FBI office manager Melissa Mooney is found murdered in her home. After taking a hard look at several promising suspects, the case goes cold until two years later when a reexamination of the case leads to an unlikely killer who was hiding in plain sight.

When a severed leg is found in a dumpster, investigators are faced with the challenge of identifying the victim. Conventional methods – fingerprinting, comparison with dental records, reports of missing persons – are useless. Using anthropology, toxicology and DNA testing, police are able to determine who the victim was, and follow the trail of evidence to his killer.

It takes a long time and a very hot fire to cremate a human body, and thus destroy any evidence of foul play. But the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the badly burned body of Charles “Jack” Lynch found telltale clues. Not only had the victim been burned, he’d also been stabbed -- 24 times, with two different knives. Police knew that a person, acting alone, would probably use only one weapon. So investigators were on the lookout for a couple of killers.

In the summer of 1996, in the River Park section of South Bend, Indiana, four women had been sexually assaulted and the perpetrator was still at large. After a few months, police arrested a suspect; he was identified by some – but not all -- of the victims, and subsequently convicted of the crimes. But the story doesn’t end there. Six years later, new developments in forensic science would uncover startling facts about the case – and change the lives of three men and the women who were attacked.

A young suburban couple was murdered during what appeared to be a drug deal gone awry. But police found no drugs in the home of the victims – and there were no traces of the victims’ blood on the clothing of the suspects. The victims’ dog, Chief, eventually led police to the killer.

A young woman is found dead in Miami four days after her wedding.