Forensic Files

A fifteen-year-old boy died from a mysterious gunshot wound to his head while he was sitting in the lobby of his father's gun club. Ballistics, laser technology, made-to-scale models and the latest in forensic animation showed that bullet had followed a tragic course after a misfire at the outdoor range.

A woman disappeared and her husband became the prime suspect -- especially after police found a huge bloodstain on the carpet of their bedroom. When they sprayed the bedroom with Luminol, they discovered it was awash with blood spatter. Complex DNA testing proved it was the wife's blood. Now all they had to do was find her body.

In 1986, scientists and detectives use DNA to solve a string of rapes and murders in the UK.

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, lying in a pool of blood. Jack Wilson had obviously been murdered... but how? And by whom? Even the experts couldn't agree.

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 and bringing the killer to justice.

FBI psychological profiling and DNA evidence identify Timothy Wilson Spencer who raped and strangled five young women in Virginia. 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 a real killer.

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.

In 1971, John List left a note with the bodies of his mother, wife and three children in his mansion ballroom right before he disappeared. Eighteen years later, all detectives had to work from is an outdated photograph of List. "America's Most Wanted" commissioned an age-scaled bust of List to help viewers in identifying the confessed murderer.

After a weekend retreat, a Boy Scout's organs start shutting down, leaving doctors puzzled.