Cold Case Files Episode Rating Graph

When 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian is abducted and murdered in August of 1986, residents of Tacoma panic. This is the second young girl killed in five months. Convinced a predator is loose, police embark on a 32-year inquiry.

13 days after Pam Pitts disappears in 1988 her charred body is found at a popular hangout spot in the Arizona desert. When a second victim is discovered in a mineshaft, detectives suspect the killer may have known them both, but the truth is decades away.

In 1977, Florida nurse Deborah Clark, 23, is found brutally slain in her home; detectives unearth an affair, a jilted wife, and a web of money and power, but no true suspect. It will take 40 years and advanced DNA testing to expose her killer.

A killer authors a book about his con-man past that becomes the key to solving a 29-year-old cold case of two high school sweethearts--and three other cold case murders--leading police to believe he could be the Zodiac Killer.

When a beloved schoolteacher is found murdered in her Neptune, New Jersey apartment in the fall of 2009, suspicion is cast on her soon to be ex-husband. Long after the case goes cold, a detective embarks on a mission to help the man clear his name and track down the real killers.

When 23-year-old Tonya McKinley is found brutally murdered on New Years Day 1985, a little boy is left motherless. A family must wait 35 years for advancements in forensic science to finally catch a killer using familial DNA.

When beloved mother and sister Janora Stevens is found brutally stabbed in her Tulsa, OK, home, her family is bitterly divided and increasingly suspicious of each other. The case chills until a trail of tell-tale fibers leads cops to her killer.

When a 30-year-old mother fails to report for duty in Virginia, the Army lists her as AWOL. Her family immediately suspect foul play. They embark on a 13-year quest for answers before an eyewitness blows the case wide open.

Easter Sunday of 1992, the body of missing woman Lisa Ziegert is found in a field. The investigation yields hundreds of leads but no true suspect. After more than two decades on ice, the case is revived when DNA phenotyping puts a face to the killer.

In December 1985, when human bones are discovered in the woods, it puts an end to the search for missing teen David Reed. David's skull fractures point to murder; but it will be decades before investigators can find his killer.

When Susan Schwarz is found shot to death in her apartment in 1979, police suspect a robbery gone wrong. Thirty-two years pass before a witness reveals a much darker motive that breaks the case wide open and leads to Susan's killer.

When the body of a woman turns up in a field in Huntington Beach, CA in 1968, police simultaneously seek a killer and the identity of the victim herself. It takes 52 years for detectives to solve this dual mystery and expose a vicious predator.

A massive search unfolds in Chandler, OK, when two women and a child go missing from a Walmart parking lot in 1992. It will take 23 years and a tip from an unlikely source to piece together a heinous plot of misdirection and murder.

The quiet town of Redding, CA, is rocked by the disappearance of Frank McAlister, a teen with a recent cash windfall who leaves only a blood-stained car behind. 25 years will pass before someone makes a stunning on-air confession.

In March 1984, Jack Kennedy discovers his daughters brutally murdered. Their mother and niece spend their lives keeping the case alive. DNA leads nowhere. Thirty years later, an informant gives up a name. But the family's ordeal is far from over.

When 31-year-old real estate appraiser Mike Williams mysteriously vanishes while duck hunting in the Florida swamps in December of 2000, authorities suspect he accidentally drowned. For sixteen years Mike’s disappearance remains a mystery. The case heats up when police receive a distress call from the victim’s wife in 2016. Featuring interviews with detectives and the victim’s mother as well as rare footage of the crime scene and recorded audio confessions with the accused, the episode explores how the disappearance unfolded into a sinister plot to cash in on millions of dollars of life insurance.

On a bitter morning in 1980, radio intern Helene Pruszynski is found brutalized in a snowy field. After 37 years of fruitless leads, investigators tap into a public genealogy website that leads them across the country to the killer they've been hunting.