Forensic Files
Upcoming episodes
May 15th
1100a
Journey to Justice
What does a prosecutor do when he has evidence linking a habitual drunk driver to a hit-and-run in which a child is killed, and he needs to make the crash clear to jurors? In this case, he combines the talents of an accident reconstruction expert with a video specialist to create a graphic demonstration of the moment of impact. This case was the first in which video in the courtroom withstood an appeal, and helped make “video testimony” viable in other cases.
May 15th
1130a
Video Diary
When a convenience store employee was found shot at point blank range, investigators discovered the murder had been captured on the store’s videotape security camera. But the image of the killer was so degraded it seems impossible to positively identify him... until old fashioned forensic science was combined with space age technology.
May 15th
1200p
Missing in Time
A young woman was reported missing after a fight with her husband. She was presumed dead and her husband was the prime suspect. Police were suspicious of a secondary suspect when he reported a fire in his car. Two tiny drops of blood were discovered in the burned interior. Traditional DNA testing was difficult without a body for comparison. But a tiny clue inside the suspect’s watchband, and a popular television show, helped solve the case.
May 15th
1230p
Missing Pearl
The woman seemed to have simply disappeared, and police were treating treated the case as that of a missing person. A blood trail leading to the basement of her home, and a partial excavation of the floor, yielded nothing. But a year later, with the help of groundbreaking forensic technology, police would find her body and determine who was responsible for her death.
May 18th
1100a
Hand Delivered
Anonymous letters sent through the United States mail aren’t always untraceable. One such letter, an anonymous “tip” to police about a murder, mentioned information about the crime that had been withheld from the press. It was information only the killer would know. Laser technology helped to identify the state, city, street address and even the office number from where the anonymous letter was mailed.
May 18th
1130a
Death Play
Marie Robards suffered the devastating loss of her father while she was still in high school. The death was ruled the result of cardiac arrest. One year later, she won a part in her high school production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The lines she was required to recite onstage were more than the thoughts and feelings of her character; they struck a chord, and hinted at her own inner turmoil, from the secret she had been hiding.
May 18th
1200p
Fire Dot Com
When a federal agency rules that a fire was intentionally set, the mother of the child killed in the suspicious fire was charged with murder. But are government scientists, with all of their resources, always right? The accused in this case undertook her own arson investigation, and was able to poke enough holes in the governments scientific conclusions – to raise serious questions about whether the fire was intentionally set.
May 18th
1230p
Mistaken for Dead
When a man dies unexpectedly in the office of a noted California doctor, police begin what they think will be a routine investigation. What they find throws doubt on the identity of the dead man and raises questions about the doctor’s role in his death. Soon they uncover a bizarre story of corpse stealing, faked identities, and sexual perversion -- all part of an elaborate insurance case that will center on what actually caused the victim’s death: a sex act gone wrong, or premeditated murder.
May 19th
1100a
Frozen Evidence
If a perpetrator leaves a shoe print in the mud, investigators use established techniques to made a mold of the shoe impression for later identification. But what happens if the impression is left in the snow? Here’s the story of one investigator, whose quick thinking and knowledge of science enabled him to capture a shoe impression made in snow, before the evidence melted away.
May 19th
1130a
Soft Touch
When we think of looking for fingerprints at a crime scene, we generally think of hard objects that a perpetrator may have touched… a doorknob, a drinking glass – but a fabric? Is it possible that a piece of cloth could contain a fingerprint that would identify a killer? There now exists the technology to do just that – and in this case, it meant justice for the parents of a young woman, who was killed in a senseless act of revenge.