Time of death is an important consideration in a murder investigation, but when a killer freezes, burns, or grinds his victim, even the most skilled medical examiner would be at a loss about how to calculate it.
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Arson Investigation: Insurance torchings, mob burnouts and arson murders: these crimes are designed to take all clues with them. But a solid case can be built from a heap of ashes.
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.
For the forensic entomologist, the insects that nest in dead bodies are like tiny witnesses to a crime.
Time of death is an important consideration in a murder investigation, but when a killer freezes, burns, or grinds his victim, even the most skilled medical examiner would be at a loss about how to calculate it.
Investigators are always on the cutting edge of new forensic techniques that can help them solve cases more accurately. An experimental brain fingerprinting technique has already won the acquittal of a police officer accused of a drug charge.
Forensics in the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial: Millions watched on television as the jury rendered their verdict. Orenthal James Simpson was found not guilty of murder.
Some of the best clues come from the least likely places. Baffling crimes have been solved and criminals betrayed through evidence provided by insects, beer bottles, and other seemingly meaningless objects.
Every family has its secrets, and sometimes blood relations lead to bloodshed. When murder becomes a family affair, investigators must turn to forensics to uncover family plots.
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.
Ballistics: A corpse is found with a gunshot wound to the head the weapon lies next to the victim. It looks like suicide, but could it be murder? It's a question best solved by ballistics experts.
In Northern California, a fire rages in the middle of the night. A woman's charred body is discovered in the smoldering aftermath.
Terrorism: Thanks to new technology and, perhaps, the approaching millennium, terrorism is a growing international threat. The Oklahoma City explosion and the bombing of the World Trade Center are just two of the incidents of this growing problem.
The tiniest residue left at the scene can become a mark of distinction in the most singular and intimate of ways.
Killers often attempt to deflect attention away from their crimes by hiding the remains of their victims. Bodies may lay hidden for years before they are discovered.
Years after a murder has been committed, investigators use advanced DNA analysis to shed new light on crimes that have gone unpunished for far too long.
Bombers, snipers, spree killers: some people don't care who they kill, they just want to hurt innocent people.
In New York, an ambitious college student has her whole life ahead of her, until she crosses the path of a killer. It's a random murder, the hardest kind to solve.
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.
Some cases simply can't be solved with current technology or with the evidence at hand. But that doesn't mean they'll remain unsolved forever.
Investigators rely on forensic odontology to identify a body from a single tooth and to catch two brutal killers from their bite marks.
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