Episode
Cold Case Files: The Missing and the Dead
Overview
When a passing motorist spots a fire along a country road in South Carolina and calls it in, police arrive to discover the badly burned and battered remains of a woman, her skull smashed in to 97 fragments. After a forensic anthropologist at the University of South Carolina painstakingly pieces the bones back together, investigators use the skull to solve the murder.
Details
- Series
- Cold Case Files
- Season
- Season 1
- Episode
- Episode 20
- Air date
- 1999-05-14
- Runtime
- 60 min
Episode context
The Missing and the Dead is Episode 20 in Season 1 of Cold Case Files. It aired on 1999-05-14. The runtime is 60 min.
Previous / Next
Episode 19: Vanished
The story of serial killer James Rodney Hicks, who left a trail of bodies and kept police, prosecutors, and the FBI quite busy working on his cases for over 20 years. Hicks murdered his wife, his children's babysitter, and a girlfriend.
Episode 21: Silent Witness/Innocence Lost
The murder of scientist Helena Greenwood, who was helping to develop DNA forensic technology when she died, is solved 12 years later with the help of DNA evidence. And a Los Angeles County prosecutor uses criminal profiling to nab the notorious South Bay Rapist, who abducted and raped six young girls.
More episodes from this season
Episode 18: The Tortured Truth/Portrait Of A Killer
The accidental discovery of a human scalp leads to the conviction of a man for murder 18 years after the killing. And a teenager who likes to kidnap younger boys and break their bones, kills one and tortures another.
Episode 22: Frozen in Time/Little Girl Lost
Using a hair dryer to thaw a frozen corpse, detectives get to the bottom of a grisly murder. And the discovery of a child's skeleton in a Chicago garden puts police on the trail of an "oddball" family.
Episode 17: The Missing Informant/Man's Best Friend
Police solve a murder when divers find a skeleton in a car at the bottom of a river, and a dead dog's DNA helps crack open a 6-year-old case.
Episode 23: Family Secret/Blood Trail
Forty-one years after the crime, a woman implicates her brother and cousin in the murder of a New Jersey policeman. And members of the Vidocq Society, a group of law enforcement professionals who volunteer their expertise to crack difficult cases, find blood-spatter evidence that helps solve a Texas murder.
Episode 16: Presumed Dead/The Tow Truck Killer
One will take 10 years and one will take 17 years to solve but they do get solved. Dedication, science, luck, and even hypnosis is used to make sure justice is done for the dead.
Episode 24: Bodies In The Bay/Cold Hit
A sunset boat ride in Florida leads to death for a vacationing woman and her two daughters, and police investigate a Texas man whose three wives all died in mysterious fashions.
Episode 15: Killer in the County
A serial killer of four women, Faryion Wardrip, is brought to justice in Wichita Falls, Texas after a DNA sample is found on a coffee cup.
Episode 26: Man in the Shadows/The Hitchhiker
Episode 14: Reconstructing Murder/Fire Flicks
In Wisconsin, advances in forensic clay modeling help investigators identify a murder victim whose skin was stripped from her head, neck, and legs. And in California, police track down two boys who enjoy satanic rituals and setting fires.
Episode 13: The Burning Secret/Justice Delayed
A rapist is captured seven years after the crime, but when he is released on a technicality his victim is determined to fight back. Fifteen years after a fire claimed the lives of a father and son, detectives interview the grown surviving son and learn a tragic tale of a mother who burned her family.