Forensic Files

A college senior was found raped and murdered near an unpaved footpath used by students to walk from one side of campus to the other.

A security guard disappeared from his post without a trace. His remains were found a year later in a remote campsite.

In a tragic twist of fate, just days after the woman sold her home and moved to a modest trailer, a fire took both the trailer and her life. But the autopsy proved this was no accident.

After shooting the victims in the head, the killer staged the scene, placed the incriminating evidence into a plastic bag, and tossed it into the river.

A human skeleton was discovered in the North Carolina marshlands. When investigators learned she'd been dead for 18 months, they knew it would be difficult to find out who she was, much less who killed her.

When two women went missing and were later found brutally murdered, police wondered if they were victims of a hate crime.

A young, attractive hairdresser was sexually assaulted and murdered in her own beauty salon. The evidence at the crime scene didn't match any of the suspects, and, after the initial investigation, the case went cold for ten years.

The crime scene was especially violent: A husband and wife had been shot to death in their bedroom. Was their 16-year-old daughter complicit?

In 1969, 25-year-old phone operator Diane Maxwell was raped and murdered. Her brother promised he'd find out who was responsible and bring the killer to justice.

The body of an attractive young woman was found a mile from her abandoned car. Police were especially concerned when they realized the victim had come to them for protection just two weeks earlier after a road rage incident.

In 1984, the body of college co-ed Laura Salmon was found on a Middle Tennessee farm, covered with her own denim jeans as well as the jeans of the killer.

A six-year-old girl ran and hid when she saw her grandmother being beaten to death, but the man followed, beat and assaulted her. She said the assailant was her uncle, who was convicted. She recanted her testimony years later.

The killer probably hoped to cover their tracks by staging the crime scene. But investigators saw through the attempt almost immediately and turned to forensic science to learn what really happened that night.

A woman was brutally murdered in her home, and the only witnesses to the crime were the family dogs. An expert in canine behavior was convinced the killer knew both the victim and the animals, and he was determined to find out what the dogs had seen.

After the suspect was convicted of arson and murder, he maintained his innocence but was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He turned to the law books in the prison library and watched TV about forensic science, and set out to prove his innocence.

Tests reveal the race, eye color and hair color of the person responsible for killing two young women on Halloween night.

The only lead to finding a serial killer on the loose is a bloody fingerprint on the body of a victim.

With a long list of suspects, forensic experts agree on one thing in this brutal murder: the killer knew his victim.

Three fingerprints on a window screen are enough for a print examiner to uncover a serial killer.

A pair of tennis shoes are found near a victim who had been stabbed on the beach.

A woman gets shot in her driveway; she may have been the victim of a co-worker half her age that she had recently rejected.

When a man's wife kills herself 14 years after his college sweetheart commits suicide, police start to get suspicious.

After a Michigan State University grad student disappears and is presumed dead, a professor of geological sciences helps police get the dirt on her killer.

Ten years after the murder of a rock singer, forensic scientists use evidence collected to finally bring her killer to justice.

An ATM transaction allows Texas detectives to pinpoint a suspect in the slaying of a teacher, but a shoelace stolen from the victim's home proves to be the tie that binds her killer to the crime.

A squashed tomato and a pinpoint reflection of light in a photo help catch a killer.

Casino security cameras offer the final images of a woman, just before she vanishes without a trace; can these grainy images lead police to her killer?

When two men appear to die of heart disease six years apart, police notice they have one thing in common, they were each married to the same woman.

A man is found strangled and burned in his San Antonio apartment and the killer thinks he has destroyed all the evidence.

When murder strikes a young girl, police quickly make an arrest, but cutting-edge technology from NASA proves they have the wrong suspect behind bars.