FilmRise True Crime

A woman vanishes after a date. Two weeks later, a motorist spots something on the side of Interstate 65. A body wrapped in a sleeping bag, dumped like trash. The killer believed the highway would hide his secret. He forgot about traffic cameras, tire treads, and a receipt found in the victim's pocket. The New Detectives covered the case of Kimberly Yvette Smith, a young mother whose body was found...

The Marine Corps sergeant reported his wife missing. He appeared on television, pleading for her return. The NCIS discovered he was the one who killed her. The badge does not protect you from forensic science. The New Detectives devoted an entire episode to crimes committed within military communities. Season 7 Episode 8, titled Military Justice, examined how the law enforcement agency of the Unit...

A house fire kills a family of four. The firefighters call it a tragic accident. A space heater near the Christmas tree. The insurance company pays the claim. Then a forensic pathologist notices something wrong with the children's airways. They did not die from smoke. They died from suffocation hours before the fire started. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Chann...

A city of angels became a city of death. Over twenty serial killers stalked the same streets at the same time, miles apart, murdering without mercy. The detectives had no DNA, no computers, and no time to rest. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles experienced an unprecedented wave of serial murder. The Hillside Strangler, the Freeway Killer, the Sunset Strip Killer, the Tool Box Killers, an...

A 15-month-old boy stops breathing while choking on food. The autopsy reveals something far darker: intentional asphyxia. His mother had set fire to his bedroom one month earlier. Forensic investigators uncovered a pattern of abuse that turned a tragedy into a homicide. Child homicides are among the most distressing cases for forensic experts. Children are uniquely vulnerable due to their physical...

A former Raiders cheerleader and aspiring actress leaves for a modeling assignment on a November morning. She tells her mother she will call back that night. The phone never rings. Eight days later, a photographer leads police to a shallow grave in the Angeles National Forest. On November 16, 1995, 27-year-old Linda Sobek vanished after leaving her Hermosa Beach home for a photo shoot with freelan...

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...