Exhibit A: Secrets of Forensic Science

An exhaustive 18-month investigation follows the murder of a young woman in North Bay. The prime suspect's DNA matches that on the woman's clothes. In a startling development, further DNA tests prove the wrong man has been charged. Out of the blue, a phone call from a prison administrator in Calgary sends the investigation in a completely new direction.

A car carrying six friends crashes. As bodies fly in all directions, four teenagers die and two are critically injured. Sara LeBeau, who owns the car, survives but has total amnesia. Who was driving? Using toxicology, chemistry, accident reconstruction and DNA, charges are eventually laid against LeBeau. (This Ontario case is currently under appeal.)

In 1990, John Willis of Chicago is sentenced to 105 years in prison for a series of bizarre robberies and sexual assaults. They all take place in women's beauty shops. Willis proclaims his innocence. It is not until 1998 that a committed young US attorney and sophisticated forensics by a Toronto lab uncover a serious miscarriage of justice.

She was a typical teenager, everyone's potential sister, daughter, neighbour. In 15 minutes she went from living an ordinary life to becoming a quadriplegic. Her name is Barbara Turnbull and she was shot in a Mississauga convenience store in a senseless robbery. Ballistics will show which of two brothers did the shooting. Now a Toronto newspaper writer, Turnbull tells her own dramatic story.

The beaten and frozen dead body of a missing man is found in his abandoned car in Ottawa. The suspects are his wife and/or two male tenants. Detectives unearth stories of jealousy, abuse and a bloody boot. Whoever wore the boot killed the man. Police call on a forensic footprint specialist to solve the mystery.

Michael Giroux confesses to a sexual assault. A psychological assessment supports his claim that this was a one time offense. While in prison, his house is sold and the new owner finds numerous photo IDs. The police link one name with a woman who was sexually assaulted in Toronto's High Park eight years previously. Is Michael Giroux a sexual predator and the notorious High Park rapist?

The body of a cocktail waitress is found in a dumpster in Vancouver shot and burned beyond recognition. Detectives follow a maze of clues to the likely killer. Unfortunately, the body is so charred, it is impossible to see if the blood in the suspect's car matches the victims. A forensic dentist steps into the picture. Only he can get to the root of the dilemma to close the case.

A young female taxi-driver is fatally stabbed and left to die in Banff. The investigators find a knife and blood in the abandoned cab. Hundreds of men are questioned and give blood samples in a cross continent manhunt. It is two years before police identify two suspects who refuse to co-operate. It will take undercover operations to get the DNA samples and put a killer behind bars.

A woman goes missing in Summerside, PEI. The blood inside her abandoned car tells a terrible story. DNA confirms the blood on a splattered man's jacket matches that of the missing woman. The jacket is also covered with white cat hairs. When the woman's body is found, her estranged common-law husband is charged. Forensic history is made when geneticist and cat expert Dr. Stephen O'Brien matches Snowball's DNA to the hairs on the jacket.

Disguised bandits fell a Brinks guard in Oshawa. The police find a fake bomb in the abandoned getaway car. It is a major forensic clue in tracking the gang. The bandits are charged, but the prosecution needs to find the murder weapon. Just days before the trial, investigators get a break, putting them knee-deep in swampy water searching for the murder weapon.

Firefighters find two dead bodies on a burning boat in Sydney Harbour, Vancouver Island. Another boat has been broken into. The assailants may have drunk beer from the discarded cans on the boat. A forensics ID unit matches the cans through a serial code on the lid. Whoever broke into the second boat also killed the couple on the burning boat.

A hunter makes a gruesome discovery near Saskatoon - a human skull. Detectives find the remains of two more bodies close by. A forensic anthropologist determines the three victims are female and aboriginal, all killed in the same time frame. The victims are identified through a police artist's reconstruction drawings. Behavioural profiler Ron MacKay helps nail a brutal serial killer.

A middle aged Vancouver barber is having remarkably bad luck with his girlfriends - they kept dying. Coincidentally they were all native and alcoholics, so it is some time before an astute pathologist questions the staggeringly high blood alcohol levels. Forensic science pins Gilbert Paul Jordan as the serial killer in the world's first trial of homicide by alcohol poisoning.