Episode
Cold Case Files: Finding BTK
Overview
The story of the hunt for one of the most notorious serial killers in recent American history--the BTK killer, who terrorized the Wichita, Kansas, area for years. After committing at least seven brutal murders, BTK (for Bind, Torture, Kill) vanished for over 25 years before sending clues of his crimes to the media in 2004. He continued to avoid capture until a forensic computer expert traced a computer disc that led investigators to a surprising suspect--a church president.
Details
- Series
- Cold Case Files
- Season
- Season 5
- Episode
- Episode 2
- Air date
- 2005-12-22
- Runtime
- 60 min
Episode context
Finding BTK is Episode 2 in Season 5 of Cold Case Files. It aired on 2005-12-22. The runtime is 60 min.
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Episode 1: Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer
In this special 100th edition of Cold Case Files, we look at the biggest serial murder case in U.S. history - the 20-year hunt for the Green River Killer. Dave Reichert, the detective who made finding the killer his obsession, walks us through the case. He tells vivid, sometimes harrowing stories about the murders, saying, "You never forget the sight of a 16-year-old body lying on her back on the riverbank with ligature around her neck." Reichert headed up two Green River task forces until forensic DNA technology helped crack the case and brought him face to face with the killer thought to be responsible for 48 deaths.
Episode 3: Death of a Deacon/A Wife's Mission
When an adulterous church deacon is found shot to death in the back seat of his car, it looks like police may have stumbled upon a multi-party murder plot. And, a wife remains a key suspect in her husband's murder case for six years, until she takes the matter into her own hands to prove her innocence.
More episodes from this season
Episode 4: Snatched/A Detective's Promise
The dogged work of an Alberta, Canada, detective finally pays off when he tracks down the man who raped and murdered a 6-year-old girl 10 years earlier. And when police search for the killer of an 18-year-old hitchhiker, they find that the victim's diary is one of their best clues.
Episode 5: The Sunday Morning Slasher
Law enforcement officials fear they may have to release a serial killer from prison until a 24-year-old murder case gives them a chance to lock him up for good.
Episode 6: Caught on Tape/A Son Remembers
A video tape made at an ATM machine helps police in Louisville, KY, to nab a man suspected of raping 13 women. And a DA investigator in Georgia helps crack a murder case that his father, a police chief, first worked on 30 years before.
Episode 7: On the Case: Nacole's Killer
This special edition of Cold Case Files offers an inside look, rarely seen, at an active cold case investigation. We follow Det. Vince Velazquez of Atlanta and Capt. Russell Popham of East Point, Ga., as they work to solve the 1995 rape and murder of 14-year-old Nacole Smith, one of Atlanta's most notorious unsolved crimes. We see Velazquez and Popham hit the streets to question people who might recognize the man in their composite sketch, and obtain DNA samples from potential suspects. "It's almost like the carrot's dangling in front of us, but we just can't catch it," Velazquez says of his painstaking, frustrating search for the killer.
Episode 8: Killer on Campus/Bow Hunter
Thirty-two years after the killing of University of Michigan law student Jane Mixer, police use DNA found on her pantyhose to finally track down the killer. And psychologists help solve a cold case by suggesting the lead detective take a page from the game of romance, and play hard to get with the killer.
Episode 9: Something Snapped/A Killer's Dream
On a summer night in 1987 a mother worries and waits for her 19-year-old daughter to come home. But Diana never comes home and she's found raped and strangled near the Hudson River. Investigators suspect her friend, Michael because his alibi is shaky and witnesses place his truck near the crime scene. Trouble is, he passes a polygraph and his DNA is no match. Nevertheless, Michael remains the chief suspect for 17 years, until DNA fingers another man who offers a chilling story of Diana's last breath. Then, a young family's life is shattered when a San Antonio interior design shop becomes a crime scene. In 1983, a young mother is raped and murdered at work. The crime remains unsolved for two decades. Then in 2003 detectives reopen the case pegging their hopes on DNA. But when the evidence turns up missing, detectives worry this case could be over before it starts.
Episode 10: Daddy Dearest/A Pastor's Wife
Nine years after the murders of a mother and her teenage daughters, a wiretapped conversation between the suspected killer and his sister helps police to crack the case. And the baffling murder of a Virginia woman is solved when human bones are discovered by a geologist working in North Carolina.
Episode 11: A Killer's Skin / Where's Peggy?
Police in Albany, N.Y., get a surprise when a killer they think targets only older women is suspected in the murder of an elderly man. And the contents of a secret storage shed holds the grisly clues to a murder that has gone cold for more than 14 years.
Episode 12: Innocence Stolen/Danger at the Door
A district attorney uses a clever technique--a "John Doe indictment"--to give law enforcement officials the time they need to track down the Schoolgirl Rapist from Rochester, N. Y. And prosecutors reluctantly decide not to prosecute their lead suspect in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl because they have only circumstantial evidence. But 12 years later, the cold case squad reopens the case, hoping DNA evidence will prove the supect's guilt.
Episode 13: The Interrogation/The Slide
A 14-year-old boy is charged with the murder of his sister, but his public defender believes the police coerced the boy's confession and that the real killer is still on the loose. And two deteriorated medical examiner's slides, made in a murder investigation 16 years earlier, give police the evidence they need to reopen the cold case and bring the lead suspect to trial.