Wednesday

Handwriting analysis: We’ve all heard that our handwriting tells more about our personalities than we think. Are we risk-takers, have low-esteem, fun loving, or are we capable of murder? While our handwriting may not reveal the nuances of our personalities, the dotting of the "i's and crossing of the "t"s is an important business in criminal investigation. Apparent suicide notes, letters from suspected offenders and signatures are scrutinized down to the last dot. Handwriting comparisons can tell if the victim really did sign that new life insurance policy, or if the person who had everything to live for actually wrote the eloquent suicide note.

In the 1980s the drug trade ravaged Chicago’s inner city neighborhoods. Heroin and cocaine sales soared. Violent crime threatened to destroy the community.

In the 1970’s South America faced a surge of political kidnappings and assassinations. When the killings spilled onto U.S. soil it was time for the FBI to step in.

At first it seemed like a horrible teenage tragedy when the car with 3 friends careened into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour, killing two of them. But after a lengthy investigation police charged the young driver MacKenzie Shirilla with murder.

In suburban Boston, college students find a teenage boy dead in the street. Bloodstain experts rule out a hit-and-run, and his trail from North Carolina forces detectives to test a bizarre, almost impossible explanation for how he died.

Nicole Abusharif, 26, murders her partner Rebecca Klein for the insurance money, then leaves her body in the boot of her car for a night of drinking with her young lover, Rose.

Law student Adrienne Hickson fatally stabs her boyfriend Shawn Washington with the knife for her birthday cake when he helps his friends move instead of spending the day with her.

When questionable abuse allegations are proven false, Greg and Diana divorce. Shortly after, one of them is contacted by a private investigator and lured out to a dirt road. Is the sniper in the bushes there to commit a murder, or not?

Outside the small town of Verdigre, Nebraska, a domestic altercation ends in death. Frances Thompson claims to have killed Dean Frank in self-defense, but as investigators dig deeper, they’re not so sure.

When the days-old corpse of a tenacious female pilot is found in her ransacked house trailer, police are stumped; until Lt Joe Kenda learns of a startling connection between the victim and her killer. Then… Kenda is called to the scene of a bloody barroom shooting, only to discover that the murder victim is an old family friend.

When emergency services arrived at the office of respected neurologist richard boggs following the report of a patient's death, they had their suspicions regarding the circumstances, but an autopsy found that the man died of natural causes. A few months later, after a million-dollar payout on the man's life insurance, a diligent insurance agent noticed an irregularity that ultimately caused california authorities to get to the bottom of the twisted case. In the end, three men, including the “dead” patient, were found guilty of murdering an innocent man for insurance money.

When a popular young woman turns up murdered in Lancaster County, PA, investigators must piece together the last few moments of her life to determine who killed her.