Forensic Files

The first case to use DNA evidence is detailed. In 1983 Leicester, England, police were stymied by a rape/murder of a 15-year-old girl; three years later, faced with a similar crime, they turned to Dr. Alec Jeffreys, a molecular biologist with a revolutionary approach to solving the case.

Single mother Denise Johnson is found dead in a deserted area outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Local investigators ask a molecular geneticist to pick out a tree in a 'lineup' when unidentified seed pods are found in suspect Mark Bogan's truck. The judge rules into evidence DNA profiles linking the pods to a tree near where the body was found. This is the first U.S. case where plant DNA was used to convict a criminal.

The U.S. criminal justice system's first use of DNA profiling in a serial murder case frees an innocent man after he spent two years in prison, and convicts the real killer. FBI psychological profiling and DNA evidence identify the man who raped and strangled five young women in Virginia.

Legionnaires' disease is one of the most famous medical detective stories, especially irritating for its missteps and frustrations. When 180 Legionnaires contract pneumonia-like symptoms after a Philadelphia Convention and 29 of them die, doctors and scientists are mystified. The determination of one scientist helps to determine the cause and likely vector of this deadly disease.

On the night of May 22, 1992, Betty Wilson returned home after a meeting. She walked up the stairs to the bedroom and discovered her husband, Eye doctor Jack Wilson, beaten and stabbed to death, lying in a pool of blood with a baseball bat nearby. Jack Wilson had obviously been murdered... but how? And by whom? Even the experts couldn’t agree.

Troubling clusters of deadly cancer cases strike concerned communities across the country. In a Phoenix suburb, too many children are fatally stricken with leukemia and, on a Connecticut street, there is a disproportionate amount of illness, including four cases of brain cancer. Modern environmental agents such as buried poisons and electrical substations are found... Could these be the culprits?

Between 1985 and 1988, 18 people were choked, molested and left for dead in the remote desert mountains of California. The only witnesses were the insects – and they also proved to play an important role in solving the crimes.

Alarmingly high levels of thyroid hormones pump through the systems of South Dakota residents. Investigators study one family who all got sick, except their 12-year-old son who is a vegetarian.

In 1971, John List left a note with the bodies of his mother, wife, and three children in his mansion ballroom, funeral organ music blaring from a central sound system, and disappeared. Eighteen years later, all detectives had to work from is an outdated photograph of List. In 1989, the popular television series America's Most Wanted commissioned an age-scaled bust of List to aid viewers in identifying the confessed murderer. Dr. Frank Bender, nationally-recognized artist and sculptor, worked with forensic psychologist Richard Walter to develop a profile of the aging List.