Forensic Files - Season 5

For more than a decade, women in a small Louisiana city lived in fear of a serial rapist. Fortunately, computer technology and behavioral science combined to give police a new forensic tool: geographical profiling. Police narrow their search to one man, but to prove he’s the perpetrator they turn to an unlikely piece of evidence--- a discarded cigarette butt.

When the wife of a well-known dentist is found dead, police are unsure who killed her. Some fibers and a study of the weather patterns on the night of the murder break the case open and reveal the real killer.

When a young mother and her infant son are found dead in a cornfield, the obvious suspect is the husband and father of the victims. But some insects found on the bodies reveal a vital clue, as does a long, blonde hair found on the victims.

When a decomposed body is discovered inside a barrel, police immediately suspect foul play. But the body had been placed there 30 years earlier. One of the few clues was an address book found along with the body but years of moisture had washed away the ink. Scientists desperately searched for a way to unlock the secrets of that address book.

In this classic episode of Forensic Files, the longest running true crime series in television history, a Seattle policeman’s home is destroyed by an arsonist. One month later, the officer arrests a low-level drug dealer, who confesses to the arson. But when the suspect vanishes, investigators begin to question the authenticity of his confession.

Dianna Green was just 20 years-old and pregnant when she was brutally raped and beaten in her apartment. The assault caused the death of her unborn baby. When Dianna came out of a coma 3 weeks later, she told police she knew the identity of her attacker. But was her memory accurate?

A mother and her two young daughters are found brutally murdered. The crime scene yielded a good deal of evidence, but no conclusive link to the prime suspect. To solve the puzzle, an FBI analyst designs a unique experiment.

A young girl is found dead, the victim of an apparent sex-killer. Authorities are intrigued by unusual orange fibers embedded in clothing found near the victim. Months pass and the case goes cold, until a van turns up with what appear to be the same orange fibers.

In the back woods of Georgia, in a dilapidated house, a 49 year old recluse named Virginia Ridley was found dead. A medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. But who would murder someone who seldom ventured out of her home? Investigators found some clues in the notes she had written shortly before her death.

Why do children at a Texas hospital seem to be dying at a higher rate than at any other hospital in the country? Medical investigators have no answers until they discover that one nurse seems to be on-duty in almost all the fatal cases. But proving the connection seems impossible until an international team of doctors uncovers an unlikely murder weapon.

When the decomposed body of a young girl is discovered, police have no clues to her identity. But days earlier, a stabbing victim told them she thought she might have witnessed a murder. Police think the cases might be related, and to prove it, they turn to an unusual piece of evidence: a tiny wad of chewing gum found near the victim’s body.

At the age of 12, a boy's testimony helped convict the man who murdered his mother. Five years later, discrepancies in the autopsy lead him to question if the murdered woman really was his mother. If it wasn't, an innocent man had been sent to prison.

Some of the refugees who sought asylum in the United States after World War II lied about the atrocities in which they’d participated. Years later, when a high-ranking religious figure was suspected of war crimes, there seemed to be no way to prove his guilt or innocence... until a postcard allegedly written by him 40 years earlier was found in a German archive.

When 23-year-old college co-ed Tina Biggar goes missing, her boyfriend and family fear she has been murdered. A police investigation reveals details about her past that no one, not even her closest friends, suspected: She was a student by day and a $100-an-hour call-girl by night. Her many clients were all suspects in her disappearance, as was her boyfriend. But when her body is discovered, investigators gather evidence that implicates her killer.

When Russ Stager, a popular gym teacher, is found dead of what appears to be an accidental gunshot wound, his family becomes suspicious. They think his wife may have planned his murder. When police find that her previous husband died in questionable circumstances, they re-examine the crime scene and uncover evidence that the death was no accident.

A Canadian financier assumed the name of a co-worker as part of a money-laundering scheme. The man turned up dead in the ocean, with an anchor tied around his torso. Police hoped to identify him with a tattoo and the watch he was wearing. But it would be the ten-pound anchor which enabled them to crack the case.

Cincinnati heart surgeon Dr. Darryl Sutorius had a second chance at love when he married a pretty, young divorcee, but happiness is sometimes elusive. Dr. Sutoruis fell into a serious depression and apparently commited suicide with a .38-caliber pistol. But why did he fire a test shot into the sofa cushion before killing himself?

When a prosecutor discovers evidence linking a habitual drunk driver to a hit-and-run in which a child is killed, he combines the talents of an accident reconstruction expert with a video specialist. This case was the first in which video in the courtroom withstood an appeal, and helped make “video testimony” viable in other cases.

In 1998, a convience store clerk in Lansing, Michigan, was shot to death during a robbery. No one else was in the store at the time. But there was an eye witness, a security camera. Unfortunately, the story it told was far from clear.