The New Detectives: Case Studies in Forensic Science

- Season 3

(1997)

The most famous serial killer (Ted Bundy), who may have killed 40 women, was only convicted because of an odontologist's being able to match his teeth with a bite mark on a victim in Florida. In the home of a Canadian serial rapist-turned-killer, tiny trace evidence was found. Videotapes convicted him, but his wife's participation in torture and sexual abuse was ignored because she turned state's evidence for a 12-year sentence before the tapes were found. A single bloody palm print led to the female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who confessed to killing six ...

How murders can be solved even when the body is missing.

Evidence as minute as hairs and fibers can be used to track killers and victims whereabouts.

A simple seed pod found at a crime scene provides the missing link in a murder by placing a suspect at the crime scene.

While drugs can cure diseases and ease pain, they can also be agents of murder. Toxicologists can examine blood and tissue to uncover cases where death is not as natural as it may seem.

Sometimes the same tool or weapon used to commit a crime can be used to solve it.

How new technological advances can solve cases even a thousand years old, and answer questions long unanswered.

Experimental techniques and computer analysis can give new dimensions to a case.

Arson investigators turn ashes into concrete evidence.

Terrorists, armed with bombs and other new technology, are disarmed through the same means.