Nitrate

Cold Case Files

  • TV-PG
  • 1999–2007
  • 5 seasons
  • Crime, Mystery
  • 8.4

Explore compelling cases that have gone cold for years, chronicling the journeys of the detectives who reopened them. The detectives relive the events of the crimes, reveal new twists and startling revelations, relying on breakthroughs in forensic technology and the influence of social media to help crack these cases.

Episodes

25 episodes
  1. 1Operation Jambalaya/Footprints in the Snow

    60 minJan 1, 2000

    A New Orleans police officer goes undercover on a Baton Rouge riverboat to gain a confession from one of the ship's maintenance workers who is suspected of murder. And a Wisconsin man, suspected of committing murder using a nunchukus, a weapon consisting of handles connected by a chain, goes on trial nearly 10 years after the victim's body was found on Christmas Eve 1987.

  2. 2The South Side Rapist

    60 minJan 8, 2000

    A series of brutal rapes in St. Louis goes unsolved for many years until a fluke audit of a license plate number leads police to the culprit.

  3. 3Mark of a Killer/Dead Ends

    60 minJan 15, 2000

    A killer's bite marks and a jailhouse snitch lead to a murder conviction in a case gone cold for eight years, and Bill Kurtis joins a group of super sleuths trying to solve the slaying of 18-year-old Jamie Weiss, found dead in her bathtub in 1996.

  4. 4The Baiting Game/The Killer's Tattoo

    60 minJan 22, 2000

    Investigators in Virginia, probing the murder case of a sailor, seek the help of a forensic anthropologist from the "body farm" in the Great Smoky Mountains. Dr. William Bass became an expert on the human body's rate of decay by watching bodies rot at his plot at the University of Tennessee and keeping tables of weather data.

  5. 5Ticket to Nowhere/The Paper Route

    60 minJan 29, 2000

    A 13-year-old girl's mother is murdered and 20 years later she helps bring the killer to justice; and a dogged policeman gets to the bottom of the brutal murder of a 63-year-old newspaper delivery woman.

  6. 6Traces of Murder/The Bathtub Killer

    60 minFeb 5, 2000

    A killer helps convict himself when he boasts about his crime to prison cellmates; and New Hampshire investigators probing the murder of a pregnant woman found raped, strangled, and dumped into her bathtub, get a new lead when they discover a similar case in Florida.

  7. 7Pride and the Fall/The Nail File

    60 minFeb 12, 2000

    A woman's fall from a cliff in the Grand Canyon leads police to uncover a series of grisly murders, and investigators smoke out a killer when they find crucial DNA evidence on his cigarette butts.

  8. 8In the Care of a Killer/Deadly Lies

    60 minFeb 19, 2000

    The suspicious death of 2-year-old Billy Blankenship is solved when police force his babysitter to re-enact the circumstances of his death. Then, a murder case is solved when the dead man's body is accidentally found by divers searching underwater for an antique car.

  9. 9Lady in the Box

    60 minFeb 26, 2000

    The murder of an Ohio woman in 1974 is solved more than 20 years later after police get a crucial clue--the woman's husband was seen building a coffin-shaped box about the time the woman disappeared.

  10. 10Crimes of the KKK

    60 minMar 5, 2000

    Klan leader Sam Bowers goes on trial for ordering the murder of an African-American storeowner 32 years prior, and investigators reopen the unsolved case of an African-American truck driver who was forced to leap to his death from a bridge by Klan members.

  11. 11Murder On The Menu

    60 minMar 12, 2000

    A boy's toy Batmobile car provides an important clue for detectives struggling to make a case against a serial killer who stalks and kills waitresses.

  12. 12The Widow and the Wolf/Unicorns and Alligators

    60 minMar 19, 2000

    After the murder of her aunt goes cold, a woman helps launch Citizens Against Homicide, an advocate group that brings awareness to cases that have gone unsolved. And police solve a young girl's rape and murder when the car where her body was discovered acts like a refrigerator, preserving half of her body and allowing authorities to recover incriminating DNA from semen in her body.

  13. 13Vintage Murder/Trouble in Paradise

    60 minMar 26, 2000

    Police doggedly reopen a rape-murder case 25 years after the crime and find enough DNA evidence on the suspect's cigarette butts to bring him to justice. And a confession made to a "Baywatch" TV star helps police solve the three-year-old riddle of a wealthy Newport Beach woman's murder.

  14. 14The Perfect Murder/Death of Innocents

    60 minApr 2, 2000

    It takes nine years and the work of cutting-edge forensic toxicologists to solve the murder of a medical examiner's wife. Then, a determined Alabama sheriff reopens the case of the deaths of two babies, hoping to get their mother to confess.

  15. 15The Unluckiest Man/The Deadly Triangle

    60 minApr 9, 2000

    Fire investigator Jack Malooly helps crack the case of an arsonist and killer who set a series of fires to collect insurance money; and a prison inmate tells a homicide detective that he can't help him with his current murder investigation, but knows plenty about another murder that took place in California 15 years earlier.

  16. 16Cat and Mouse/Cabbie Killer

    60 minApr 16, 2000

    A police investigator discovers a letter written 16 years earlier that provides clues to a woman's murder. And a firearms expert supplies the evidence that South Carolina authorities need to put a man on trial in 2002 for a murder committed in 1961. It was the oldest murder case ever tried in the state.

  17. 17The Cuff Link/Graveyard Shift

    60 minApr 23, 2000

    Police solve an old murder case with a painstaking examination of the tool mark on the plastic flex cuff that bound the victim's hands, and a 15-year-old murder case is finally cracked open when a disgruntled wife tells police that her husband committed the crime.

  18. 18The Good Samaritan/Gun Shy

    60 minApr 30, 2000

    New DNA technology and the national DNA databank help police hunt down a rapist-killer 11 years after he committed his crimes, and a detective's painstaking recreation of a woman's shooting death proves it wasn't an accident.

  19. 19A Map To Murder/Life on the Run

    60 minMay 7, 2000

    After a long manhunt, cops finally close in on a serial killer with the help of the Internet and information supplied by a subsidiary of Microsoft. And a drug trafficker jumps bail, goes into the bike shop business, and helps pioneer the sport of mountain biking while he's on the lam.

  20. 20Soft Kill/Unsolved

    60 minMay 14, 2000

    Police run down more than 11,000 leads before coming up with a suspect in the murders of three Virginia girls; and the abduction and strangulation of a California woman continues to baffle investigators more than 11 years after the crime.

  21. 21License to Kill/The Tell-Tale Mark/The Supermarket Mystery

    60 minMay 21, 2000

    A quarter of a century after the murders of two nurses, Canadian police suspect that a former Toronto cop committed the crimes. A blow to the head of a garbage collector in San Jose leaves strange markings, and decades later a detective, with help from forensic science, matches the markings to the etchings of a vintage bar sign. California police hope that DNA will help them track down the man who stabbed and killed a woman as she sat in her parked car in front of a supermarket in 1985.

  22. 22The Original Night Stalker

    60 minMay 28, 2000

    In the 1980s, a serial killer prowled the posh streets of Orange County. Police were unaware of the serial attacks until 1996, when DNA revealed the killer's secret and they linked four murders to a single DNA profile. Detectives uncovered three more crimes attributed to the man dubbed "The Original Night Stalker" before learning he had an earlier career as a serial rapist! Watch as cold case detectives compare the attacker's DNA with nearly every convicted violent offender in California.

  23. 23Cold Hit/Silent Kill

    60 minJun 4, 2000

    A thumbprint connects two separate murders and it is later discovered that the suspect had a strange fetish for women's lingerie. Then, an elderly woman is found murdered in her bed and the only evidence is a single strand of hair.

  24. 24Mommie Dearest

    60 minJun 11, 2000

    A mother is suspected in the murders of two of her daughters, when her third daughter finally convinces police to reopen two cold cases.

  25. 25A Sealed Fate/Deadly Divorce

    60 minJun 18, 2000

    A murderer's saliva, found on envelopes that he sealed, helps seal his doom 37 years after his first killing. And Colorado police crack a cold case 24 years later when they take a DNA sample from the victim's son that proves that his father murdered his mother.

Where to watch Cold Case Files

Free with ads

No subscription needed

Free with a library card

Sign in with your public library card

Buy

Pay once, keep it in your library

Availability from JustWatch, via TMDB. Full listing for United States

Series cast

Bill KurtisSelf - Narrator (voice)128 episodes
Chima SimoneSelf1 episode

More like thisShows TMDB viewers also watched