Forensic Files
Upcoming episodes
Feb 17th
1100a
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.
Feb 17th
1130a
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.
Feb 17th
1200p
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.
Feb 17th
1230p
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.
Feb 18th
1100a
"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.
Feb 18th
1130a
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.
Feb 18th
1200p
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.
Feb 18th
1230p
Cereal Killer
When a fire destroyed most of a home and a young boy went missing, police organized the largest search in the history of their small town. First the boy’s backpack was discovered five miles from home, and then his body was found 50 miles away. But the killer had been careless, and the evidence he left behind would lead police directly to him.
Feb 19th
1100a
Crush Course
A highway patrolman was dispatched to what he thought would be a routine traffic accident… until he looked in the car. While he had no formal training in forensic science, he had seen hundreds of accidents -- but never as much blood as this. He was shocked by the coroner’s ruling of “accidental death,” and then an anonymous phone call breathed new life into his investigation.
Feb 19th
1130a
A Leg Up on Crime
The decomposed body of a young woman was discovered in a Bakersfield irrigation canal. If there was trace evidence, it had been washed away. Another victim was found in that same canal a year later; this time, the perpetrator had been careless. The shoe prints found at the scene would lead police to the most unlikely of killers.