FilmRise True Crime

He wore a badge. He carried a gun. He was trusted to protect the vulnerable. But behind the uniform hid a predator driven by jealousy and forbidden desire. When the object of his obsession refused him, he turned his service weapon on an innocent woman. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired CSI: Crime Scene Inves...

A young mother is found strangled in her own apartment. The killer leaves no witnesses, no confession, and almost no trace. For two decades, the case sits on a shelf, growing colder with each passing year. Then a forensic scientist opens an evidence locker and finds the one clue that was waiting to be read. This episode of The New Detectives examines the painstaking process of solving cold case ho...

A woman found hanging in her closet. A man discovered in a locked room with a gun in his hand. A body at the bottom of the stairs. Three scenes that looked like suicide. Three killers who thought they had committed the perfect crime. Three forensic experts who proved them wrong. In this episode of The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and insp...

Twenty-nine Black children and young adults vanished from Atlanta’s streets between 1979 and 1981. Police were under immense pressure. The break in the case did not come from a witness or a confession. It came from a carpet fiber and a dog hair examined in a quiet Georgia laboratory. The evidence was microscopic but damning. Investigators discovered fibers on the victims that matched the carpet an...

A body hidden for eighteen months. Flesh reduced to bone and dust. No witnesses. No confession. But the insects left behind told a story that would put a killer in prison. For the forensic entomologist, insects that nest in corpses are like witnesses to the crime. By studying their behavior, scientists learn everything from when a murder was committed to what sort of weapon was used [citation:4]....

A woman walks to the office water cooler, fills her cup, and takes a sip. The taste is bitter, metallic. She sets the cup down. Within hours, she is dead. Her name is Julie Williams. She was never the target. In March 1986, Lewis Allen Harry Jr., a 32-year-old equipment manager at a Phoenix community college, decided to kill his wife Sandra [citation:1]. He tried poisoning her Scotch bottle first....

She managed his motorcycle shop. She shared his home for years. Then she vanished. The boyfriend told police she ran away. Her sister never believed him. Fourteen years later, a private investigator found Ava DeHart's skeleton at the bottom of a dry well. In July 1982, 26-year-old Ava DeHart disappeared from Stafford County, Virginia. Her live-in boyfriend, George Christ Sparta, owned the Jokers W...

A tree stump holding three dismembered bodies. A thirteen-year-old girl tied up in a basement. A Walmart bag that cracked the case wide open. The most wanted man in Ohio was hiding in plain sight. Matthew Hoffman did not wake up planning to become a multiple murderer. He was burglarizing a home in Knox County when the residents returned unexpectedly. Tina Herrmann, her eleven-year-old son Kody, an...

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...