FilmRise True Crime

A brother kills his sister for a house. A wife poisons her husband for a life insurance payout. A business partner murders his colleague for a patent. No passion. No revenge. Just the coldest motive of all: money. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic experts examine murd...

A blue-handled screwdriver found in a killer's toolbox. A matching indentation on a victim's skull. And a forensic scientist who spent hours matching tool marks under a microscope. An ordinary hardware store tool became the evidence that sent a serial killer to death row. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CS...

A husband shot dead in his bed. A staged burglary with a broken window and overturned drawers. A typed note left beside the body blaming a jailed burglar. And a mother and son who claimed they were at the VA hospital when the murder happened. The son's fingerprint on the fracture line of the broken window told a different story. On February 6, 1995, Minneapolis police found Theotis Mills shot in t...

A $4 million Beverly Hills mansion. Two brothers who bought shotguns days before. Twelve blasts from twelve-gauge shotguns that shredded their parents while they watched television. And a story of sexual abuse that the jury in the second trial was never allowed to hear. On August 20, 1989, Jose and Kitty Menendez sat watching a movie when their sons Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, walked into the den with...

A city held its breath while a shadow slipped through unlocked windows. A pentagram scrawled in lipstick. Eyes ritualistically gouged out. And a killer who shouted "Hail Satan" as he was dragged from the courtroom in chains. From June 1984 to August 1985, Richard Ramirez terrorized California, randomly selecting homes from San Francisco to Mission Viejo [citation:1][citation:9]. He murdered at lea...

A conveyor belt of steel gurneys. Rows of refrigerated compartments holding the unidentified, the unclaimed, and the unsolved. A team of forensic pathologists racing to determine cause and manner of death before the next body arrives. This is 24 hours inside America's largest morgue. The day begins at 8:00 AM with the Morning Mortality Meeting, where pathologists review each new case and decide wh...

A family of wealthy socialites. A daughter who refused to follow the rules. A son-in-law who disappeared without a trace. And an FBI investigation that uncovered a conspiracy so dark, so calculated, that even seasoned agents struggled to believe what the evidence revealed. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired C...

A serial killer who buried his victims beneath the floor of his own home. Another who scattered bone fragments across an eighteen-acre estate. A third who dug up corpses to desecrate them again and again. These are the cemetery killers—predators who turned graves into dumping grounds. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 an...

A serial killer strangled prostitutes for years in San Diego, disposing of their bodies in dumpsters wrapped in garbage bags and tape. He thought he was untouchable. Then a Canadian lab used an advanced technique to lift prints from a plastic bag six years after the murder. The killer was finally identified. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that ai...

A man hires a killer to murder his wife. The hitman brings two accomplices. The victim is beaten, stabbed, and shot multiple times in her own kitchen. The crime scene is so brutal that veteran detectives cannot look at it without flinching. And the man who paid for it all sat in the courtroom pretending to grieve. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series t...

A mother appears on television, tears streaming down her face, begging for the return of her kidnapped children. The nation prays for their safe return. Then police discover the truth: there was no kidnapper. The mother rolled her car into a lake with her sons strapped inside, then watched them drown to get revenge on her husband. On October 25, 1994, 23-year-old Susan Smith reported to Union, Sou...

A forensic odontologist walked into a Miami courtroom and changed American legal history forever. The evidence was a bruise on the buttock of a murdered college student. The weapon was Ted Bundy's crooked teeth. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic experts examine how bi...

A woman is dead. A suspicious husband claims she smoked a poisoned cigar. But toxicology tells a different story, and a single oversight in his alibi unravels an entire murder plot. Poison is an invisible weapon, often mistaken for heart attacks or natural causes [citation:5]. In this episode of The New Detectives, forensic toxicologists demonstrate how they look for hidden clues in blood and tiss...

A woman poisons her partner with a single kiss. A husband smothers his wife in their bed and stages a home invasion. These lovers used intimacy as a weapon, hiding murder behind the mask of affection. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic experts investigate cases where t...

A dying woman is wheeled into an emergency room. Within minutes, nurses faint, doctors struggle to breathe, and the entire department is evacuated. The cause appears to be the patient herself. Her name was Gloria Ramirez, and the media called her the Toxic Lady. On February 19, 1994, Ramirez arrived at Riverside General Hospital suffering from advanced cervical cancer. As medical staff drew blood,...

A lens pointed at the world's biggest stars. A darkroom that hid a nightmare. And a piece of forensic evidence so unexpected that even seasoned investigators paused when they saw it. This is the story of a celebrity photographer whose double life was exposed by the most insane clue imaginable. He had access to glamorous events, private parties, and the homes of the rich and famous. But beneath the...

A detective sleeps with a gun under his pillow. A city of millions locks its windows in August. A killer who worships Satan and carves pentagrams on his victims roams free. This is the hunt for the Night Stalker. From April 1984 to August 1985, Richard Ramirez terrorized Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area [citation:3]. He broke into homes after midnight, shot husbands, raped wives,...

A mother of four is stabbed to death inside a van. Her husband reports her missing, wipes tears for the cameras, and vanishes into thin air. For eighteen years, he lives a free man. Then cold case detectives reopen the file. In December 2007, 33-year-old Delia Lerma left her South Bend, Indiana home to visit a grocery store. She never returned. Days later, her body was found stabbed to death insid...

A 15-year-old in Texas starts a chat room. He calls it 764 after his zip code. Within four years, the FBI has opened 250 investigations linked to his creation, and teens across America are being extorted into murder, torture, and suicide. This is not a horror movie. This is the largest teen murder network in U.S. history. The network preys on children as young as nine, using love bombing and sexto...

A single tooth identifies a body. A bite mark sends a killer to prison. A dental impression closes a cold case years after the crime. These are the cases where teeth became the star witness. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic odontologists examine dental evidence to ca...

A utility pole repairman looks down an embankment and sees a blue trash barrel. Inside, a body wrapped in garbage bags, tied with a knot only a military paratrooper would know. The victim had been missing for nearly three years. The killer lived just a few miles away. On March 25, 2002, the body of Tammy Karen was discovered in a trash barrel dumped over a steep embankment in Wurtsboro, New York [...

A wedding ring on one hand and a murder weapon in the other. These are the cases where romance curdled into obsession and lovers became killers. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic experts examine cases where the closest relationships turned deadly. Season 5 Episode 7,...

A family slaughtered in their sleep. A survivor who called 911. And a friend who helped with the investigation. The killer was the last person anyone suspected. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic investigators examine a case where the perpetrator hid behind a mask of f...

No forced entry. No defensive wounds. No witnesses. Some killers leave no evidence of violence on the outside. The murder happens in silence, and the victim simply stops breathing. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic investigators examine cases where the cause of death...

A trail of blood drops. A single glove left behind. A footprint from shoes Simpson claimed he never owned. And a crime scene so compromised that the defense would tear it apart piece by piece. On July 8, 1997, The New Detectives aired its Season 2 finale titled Trial of the Century, dedicated entirely to the forensic evidence in the O.J. Simpson murder trial [citation:1][citation:5]. The episode e...