FilmRise True Crime

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...

A skull on a laboratory table. A forensic artist's steady hands. A face emerging from clay and data. And a killer who thought his victim would never be identified. Facial reconstruction has solved some of the most challenging cold cases in criminal history. Pioneers like Betty Pat Gatliff developed the Gatliff/Snow American tissue depth method, gluing plastic pieces corresponding to tissue depth o...

A killer who dumped bodies along highways. A predator who crossed state lines knowing that jurisdictions would not communicate. And a forensic team that linked murders across Illinois and Indiana by following a trail of fibers and a single boot print. Larry Eyler was a truck driver and part-time college instructor who murdered at least 21 young men between 1982 and 1984. He targeted hitchhikers, r...

A badge. A handcuff. A promise of authority. For four months, two cousins posing as police officers terrorized Los Angeles, abducting women from busy streets while witnesses watched. No one suspected the killers were hiding in an upholstery shop. Between October 1977 and February 1978, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono murdered ten young women ranging in age from 12 to 28 [citation:6]. Their victim...

A predator who chose victims based on hair color. Another who hunted near college campuses. A third who strangled women and kept their driver's licenses as souvenirs. Each one believed they were too smart to be caught. Each one was wrong. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, fore...

A killer who strangled women and kept their driver's licenses as trophies. Another who posed his victims in department store windows. A third who stalked college campuses, hunting for prey who reminded him of his mother. 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...

A boating accident on a remote lake. A husband who survived. A wife who drowned. The widow collected the insurance and moved on with her secret boyfriend. But the lake would not keep its secret forever. In 1987, Janice Gault drowned on Lake Wylie in North Carolina. Her husband David Gault told police they were boating when she fell overboard. He tried to save her, he claimed, but the current was t...

A shallow grave. A leather jacket soaked in blood. And twenty-nine white cat hairs that would make forensic history. In 1994, Shirley Duguay of Prince Edward Island, Canada, disappeared. Her estranged husband Douglas Beamish claimed he had no idea what happened to her [citation:1]. But when investigators searched Beamish's home, they found a leather jacket covered in Duguay's blood and over two do...

A pre-dawn raid. Ninety-nine bullets fired by police. Only one shot fired from inside the apartment. And a Black Panther leader drugged and murdered in his bed. Was Fred Hampton's death an assassination? On December 4, 1969, fourteen Chicago police officers raided the apartment of Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party [citation:1]. The police claimed the Panthe...

An innocent man behind bars. A real killer still walking free. And a team of forensic scientists determined to prove that the system got it wrong. In this episode, I uncover the most shocking cases of wrongful conviction featured on The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired the creation of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [citation:2]....

He was the reassuring face of the Glendale Fire Department, a nationally recognized arson investigator who appeared on television and taught hundreds of firefighters how to catch serial arsonists. But John Orr had a secret darker than any case he ever solved: he was the Pillow Pyro, the most prolific serial arsonist in American history, responsible for nearly 2,000 fires and four murders. In this...

A torso floating in the river. No head. No limbs. And a team of forensic scientists who had to determine gender, identity, and cause of death from almost nothing. In this episode, I uncover one of the most macabre cases featured on The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired the creation of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [citation:1]. S...