Forensic Files
Upcoming episodes
Jul 7th
1100a
Marked for Life
It was 1957, and California police were searching for a man who had committed several crimes in one night – including murder. They followed thousands of leads but, eventually, the case turned cold. Almost 50 years later, with the help of advances in computer technology and handwriting analysis, investigators proved an old adage: You can run, but you can’t hide.
Jul 7th
1130a
Plastic Puzzle
A man riding a bicycle was fatally injured, and police believed he was the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Tiny clues found at the scene created a picture of the vehicle which struck him… and led police to its driver.
Jul 7th
1200p
Up in Smoke
When an elderly couple died in a suspicious house fire, their son became the prime suspect. The son insisted he was innocent; he said he tried to extinguish the fire by pouring water on it, but that only made it worse. Investigators turned to forensic science to determine if the fire had been set deliberately, or if it was an unfortunate accident.
Jul 7th
1230p
Soiled Plan
Police instituted an intense search when the mother of two young children went missing and, less than a day later, they found her body. The evidence was little better than circumstantial, and the crime drifted to the bottom of the cold case files. Twenty years later, advances in technology enabled investigators to see the evidence in a new light, and discover it pointed directly to the killer.
Jul 8th
1100a
Headquarters
When hunters reported finding a skull in a Texas canyon, police immediately began an investigation. At the scene, they found bits of clothing, a woman’s shoe, some small bones and a strand of hair. An anthropologist determined the victim was a Caucasian woman, and that she’d been stabbed repeatedly. A forensic artist reconstructed her face, and the image was released to media. Eventually, police learned who she was. Now all they had to do was find her killer.
Jul 8th
1130a
One for the Road
A married couple decided to escape the cold of winter with a mini-vacation in Key West. The wife went missing, and police searched every square inch of the island; they found nothing but a pair of sandals which might have belonged to her. Then two important pieces of video surfaced, and investigators began to wonder if they should be searching for a missing person… or a killer.
Jul 8th
1200p
Army of Evidence
A mother of two young children was found dead in her bedroom. It appeared she had killed herself: There were suicide notes near her body, and a pistol was in her hand. Her death was ruled a suicide – but when investigators learned she had almost died in a house fire three years earlier, they decided to take another look at the evidence.
Jul 8th
1230p
"Shear" Luck
In 1991, when the wife of a serviceman was brutally murdered in the Philippines, the Air Force Office of Special Investigators swung into action. Clues led to the victim’s husband, but he insisted he was innocent. To find out if he was telling the truth, investigators would have to do something unprecedented: Reassemble a 5-1/4” computer disk which had been cut to pieces with pinking shears.
Jul 9th
1100a
Tagging a Suspect
Bombings are difficult to solve, because the perpetrator isn’t usually at the scene, and the evidence goes up in smoke. But there are clues if investigators know where to look. In this case, pieces of plastic the size of grains of sand held the key to a man’s murder.
Jul 9th
1130a
Strong Impressions
The wife of an Air Force officer was found dead in her bed, with a plastic laundry bag near her face. At first glance, it appeared she’d been doing laundry, fell asleep, rolled onto the bag, and suffocated. But further investigation proved that the scene had been staged. Her death wasn’t an accident; it was cold-blooded murder.