Lies and deceit can often throw investigators off the trail of justice. But when hard evidence contradicts a killer's story, police must use the clues to piece together the truth.
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The tread of a tire, a single shoe print and even the shape of a bruise help investigators track down killers, based solely on their patterns of guilt.
Lies and deceit can often throw investigators off the trail of justice. But when hard evidence contradicts a killer's story, police must use the clues to piece together the truth.
Fingerprinting: The identification Division of the FBI relies on fingerprints as one of the most effective ways to identify criminals.
Philadelphia's Vidocq Society, named after an 18th Century French detective, is one of the world's most unusual crime-solving organizations.
When killers hide or destroy the remains of their victims, it becomes the mission of forensic scientists to reconstruct the scenes and prove murder for an absent witness.
Sometimes killers are careful to leave no fingerprints behind. But methods of the murder itself can leave a lasting impression on police, especially when the tools (or weapons) of a killer's trade leave an innocent victim marked for death.
A New York homebuyer gets more than he bargained for when a house inspection turns up a mummified corpse. For decades, the crime had gone undiscovered. The victim unmissed, and the killer unpunished.
Toxicology: While drugs can cure disease and ease pain, they can also be agents of murder. Toxicologists can examine blood and tissue to uncover cases where death is not as natural as it may seemfrom slow arsenic poisoning to quick cocaine overdoses.
When there's a difficult case to crack whether it involves drugs, arson, or weapons the investigators and scientists of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have the means to crack it.
Every family has its secrets, and sometimes blood relations lead to bloodshed. When money is the motive, murder can rip at the very foundation of marriage and family.
When teenagers are driven to kill, their victims are but the first to fall. In three such cases, the families of the killers, as well as their communities, become the victims of violent crime.
911 receives a desperate call in Fort Worth, Texas. A man's wife is shot. Forensic investigators search for clues in unlikely places, hoping the victim herself could provide information needed to determine how and why she died.
Forensic psychologists delve into the minds of serial killers, explaining why, most often, they can be a friendly neighbor or the tenacious co-worker the one who hides his or her dark side better than anyone else.
CI: Coroner Investigator will reveal the most in-depth look to date into the science of death.
For a price, anything's possible. Contract killings arose out of the need to establish the perfect alibi. By hiring someone else to do the dirty work, a person can deflect guilt, at least in theory.
Sometimes the scales of justice are balanced by just a few milligrams of evidence a couple of fibers, a tooth filling, or a smudge on a piece of tape. The biggest cases are often solved by the smallest clues.
Psychological Profiling: Journey into the dark recesses and calculated madness present only in our worst nightmares and in the minds of serial killers.
DNA analysis overturns the convictions of three men who have spent years behind bars, paying for crimes they did not commit.
Explosives Investigations: The crime lab is the place where science meets murder. In New York State, Eleanor Fowler opened a small package, which as mailed to her home. When she lifted the lid the box exploded killing her instantly.
Some people do get away with murder, at least for a while. Flush with their success, serial killers murder again and again. But each time they kill, they leave behind a few more clues, which ultimately lead to their undoing.
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