No Witnesses. No Leads. No Problem.
Forensic Files (also known as Medical Detectives, Mystery Detectives, Murder Detectives, and Cause of Death) is a crime documentary series that aired from 1996 to 2011 as a Dramatic Half-Hour.
It was narrated for almost its entire run (channel hopping from TLC to Court TV/truTV to HLN, and even airing on NBC as a summer Midseason Replacement in 2002) by Peter Thomas. As the title implies, the show focuses on forensic investigations, mostly on murders.
On October 1, 2019, a revival of the show titled Forensic Files II was announced
, which premiered on February 23, 2020.
Forensic Files includes examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Several cases have the victim killed by someone who had expressed interest in them, or the murder victim killed so their partner could freely pursue someone else. Examples include Patrick Sweeney's stalking of Pamela Walsh in "Flower Power," Bruce Moilanen murdering his wife Judy to try and shack up with his married, extremely uninterested female friend in "Hunter or Hunted?," and Oliver O'Quinn lethally injecting his friend Michelle Herndon because she wasn't interested in "Needle in a Haystack."
- Adaptation Distillation: You're only getting the important details the show was given at the time of its airing. Additional details about the victims, cases, and the killers often require an internet search.
- A Fate Worse Than Death: Several murderers consider life imprisonment to be this. One killer was angry that he didn't get the death penalty, and another who was on death row got tired of waiting for his execution and tried to commit suicide.
- All for Nothing: Naturally, since the majority of the episodes profile solved cases, everything the criminals do to conceal their crimes will have failed. A few cases stand out for their senselessness, however.
- In "Missing Pearl," Bill Bruns murdered his wife Pearl after an argument gone wrong. After Bill was sentenced to 15 years in prison for Pearl's murder, an autopsy revealed Pearl was Secretly Dying from terminal cancer and at the time of her murder had six months to live max.
- In "Without a Prayer," David Waters kidnapped atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Madalyn's son Jon and granddaughter Robin. Waters had avoided conviction for stealing from O'Hair's American Atheists organization by reimbursing her, but Madalyn used her magazine to libel him, so Waters kidnapped the three O'Hairs to enrich himself by draining the American Atheists' bank account, but also for revenge. Waters not only killed all three O'Hairs, but also murdered his accomplice Danny Fry, who he feared would give the game up due to his drinking problem. It was all for naught: Waters was eventually convicted for the murders and kidnappings. To really punctuate the meaninglessness of his crimes, Waters converted the O'Hairs' stolen money into gold coins, which were stolen from a storage locker he stupidly hid the gold in before he could spend any of it.
- "Chief Evidence": Members of the Mad Pack, a Washington Samoan gang, murdered engaged couple Jay Johnson and Raquel Rivera in an attempt to steal a stash of drugs from them. The tip they'd received about Johnson and Rivera was fraudulent; neither were drug users, and there were no drugs in their possession.
- "Hear No Evil": Deaf woman Daphne Wright murdered and dismembered a fellow deaf woman, Darlene VanderGiesen. Wright, a lesbian, was motivated by jealousy, believing Darlene was standing in the way of Wright reconciling with her ex-girlfriend Sallie Collins. Darlene was heterosexual and simply a good friend of Sallie, not a lover.
- "Penchant for Poison": Tim Scoggin befriended Catherine and Cordelia Norton, two elderly sisters who were both multimillionaires. Scoggin poisoned both sisters, intending to snap up their millions once they were out of his way. It turns out both sisters were killed before they could alter their wills to include Scoggin, so he unsuccessfully tried again with an elderly couple, which got him caught and sent to prison for life.
- Anachronism Stew:
- The case in the episode "Memories" took place in 1979-1980 (although it was not solved for nearly twenty years), and when the victim had her previously lost memory jogged by some pictures in a baby magazine, the pictures she was looking at, on closer inspection, were of actress Kelly Preston and her daughter Ella Blue, the latter of whom was born in 2000.
- The case documented in "Photo Finish" took place in 1995, yet the vehicle that Linda Sobek is shown modeling with is a Lexus RX, which was still in the design stage at the time and wasn't sold in the U.S. until 1998.
- Animal Reaction Shot: Invoked in "Disrobed" with a shot of a horse raising its head being paired with the sound of a gunshot.
- Artistic License – Law: One interviewee from "Unmasked" expressed shock Chad Price didn't get the death penalty; none of the crimes he was convicted of (kidnapping, rape, robbery) carry a death penalty.
- Asshole Victim:
- "Over and Out": Chris Marquis was an amateur CB radio repairman who earned a reputation for cheating customers by sending cheaper radios and parts than his customers paid for. Chris paid for ripping off the wrong customer, an Ohio man named Chris Dean, with his life when Dean mailed back a pipe bomb.
- "Going for Broke": Michael Prozumenshikov, a stockbroker who emigrated to the US from Russia, made himself rich off his fellow Russian immigrants. He wasted his customers' money by intentionally investing in bad stocks, made unethical stock trades for extra commission money, and scammed investors into putting down money for a nonexistent casino. Prozumenshikov got in too deep when he squandered the investment money of his close friend Zachary Persitz, reducing a $150,000 investment to a fraction of that money through his rash trading. Persitz kidnapped Prozumenshikov to get his money back with interest and killed Michael when he was unable to procure the money in time.
- "The Gambler": Jason McGuigan, a gambling addict and amateur sports better, conned a college student named Mark Wu by taking his money to allegedly bet on a baseball game, but in reality kept the money for himself. His dishonesty cost Wu $17,000 he would have won had Jason placed the bet, and put Wu, who had sacrificed $72,000 [unbeknownst to his wealthy parents back in his native Taiwan] to his gambling addiction, even deeper in debt. When Wu tried to get his money back, Jason and two of his friends verbally assaulted Wu at a stoplight with racist remarks and threats. Wu ended up breaking into McGuigan's house and murdering Jason and his two friends in retribution. Years later, Jason's father would reveal in an article that when he tried to intervene in Jason's addiction and get back money Jason had stolen from a family member, Jason attempted to run him over.
- "Pinned by the Evidence": Real life Jerk Jock Dusty Harless assaulted a man who tried to give his girlfriend a ride on a rainy night. The man, David Genzler, inadvertently stabbed Dusty to death in self-defense.
- "Without a Prayer": Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an outspoken atheist, founder of the American Atheists organization, and dubbed "the most hated woman in America" by Life magazine. O'Hair was a class A Jerkass who disowned her son Bill for converting to Christianity (the same way a lot of religious parents disown their children for living lifestyles they disagree with) and used the American Atheists' magazine to homophobically libel an ex-employee who had stolen from her. She, her son Jon, and her granddaughter Robin would end up being kidnapped, tortured and murdered by said ex-employee, David Waters.
- "Double Cross": Naval station worker Elise Makdessi schemed with her husband Eddie to get rich by extorting the U.S. Navy. Elise recorded a False Rape Accusation, saying she had been sexually harassed at work. Elise seduced a coworker, Quincy Brown, and brought him back to her home, intending for Eddie to kill him so they could frame him for supposedly breaking in and raping Elise after sexually harassing her on the job. Once Brown was dead, however, Eddie also killed Elise, who was restrained since she and Quincy were partaking in BDSM, so he could collect a life insurance policy he took out unbeknownst to her.
- Bait-and-Switch: The opening of "Postal Mortem" introduces a woman saying goodbye to her colleague and entering her office, suggesting that she's the episode's victim, only for the woman to rush out of her office after the building shakes from what the narrator reveals to be an explosion... at which point the camera pans to a Dead-Hand Shot of her colleague.
- Black Widow: Several episodes involve the murderer falling into this category.
- *Bleep*-dammit!: In "Grave Danger," when Clay Daniels's mother-in-law calls him an asshole, the "hole" part is bleeped out while "ass" is left uncensored.
- Bluff the Imposter: "If I Were You" has the suspect being tricked into believing that he had forgotten to do something while he was posing as the victim.
- Call-Back:
- "Dressed to Kill" contains one for the episode "Beaten by a Hair": it show the key evidence Hadden Clark left behind that led to the conviction of the first murder that he committed.
- "The Music Case" had a little girl in Minnesota murdered in her home, with authorities initially believing that the murderer from "Tooth or Consequences" killed her as well. As it turns out, someone else committed the crime.
- In a more roundabout example, "Dinner and a Movie" is about how the murderer used the real-life movie Blackout as an inspiration for covering up his wife's time of death. Blackout was loosely based on the John List murders, which the show had previously covered in "The List Murders," though the show doesn't acknowledge this.
- Character Shilling: Several investigators and friends of the victim in "Matter of Time" go out of their way to stress how smart the killer Paul Curry was.
- Cliffhanger Copout: "Breaking News" concerns the murder of a young TV news producer, and Peter Thomas ominously intones, "But something was missing: her young son,"" just before the episode goes into commercial. After the break, he reveals that the boy was spending the summer with his father.
- Confess to a Lesser Crime:
- Joseph Mannino pulled this off successfully in "Letter Perfect." The prosecution believed he injected Michael Hunter with lidocaine so he could take their former mutual lover for himself and drafted a phony suicide letter to make it look like he did it to himself. The investigation later proved that the suicide note matched Maninno's linguistics and that the amount of lidocaine would've killed the victim so fast that the needle would've still been in Hunter's arm when he did. In response, Mannino claimed that Hunter had requested help with his persistent migraines and that Mannino had simply given him too much by accident, then drafted the suicide note to cover up for his mistake. Since Hunter had a history of migraines, everything used in the cocktail was known to treat migraines, and there was no time stamp on the drafts due to it being 1982, the jury conceded the most they could convict him of was involuntary manslaughter, since it was illegal in North Carolina for a medical student to give an injection without a doctor present. While he was barred from ever practicing medicine weeks before he was set to graduate, making all that debt he went into for nothing, he still only spent three years in prison and is now a free man.
- Jonathan Binney's murder of Judy Southern in "Home Evasion" plays with and somewhat inverts this due to the killer's Insane Troll Logic. He was about to be sentenced for the rape of his infant daughter and, fearing what inmates do to people who commit crimes like his, decided he would be treated better in prison if he went as a murderer instead, which led to him killing a complete stranger at random. He later confessed to the rape of his daughter and pleaded the death penalty when confessing to the murder, though.
- Content Warnings: When the series still aired on Court TV, several of the more gruesome/horrifying episodes ("Treads and Threads," "Pure Evil," "Root of All Evil," "Where the Blood Drops," etc.) had warnings before they aired. These have been removed for almost all of the HLN airings.
- Contrived Coincidence: A series of these led to a teenage boy being shot in the head in "Magic Bullet": there was a shooting competition that day in the outdoor firing range whose targets where in front of the air gun building; one competitor used hand-made bullets that went farther and faster than regular bullets and fired them from a modified handgun that, unbeknownst to him, fired an additional bullet at a higher angle at one point when the gun recoiled; the wooden panels called baffles weren't properly designed, and the berm between the front and back range was only 12 ft high instead of the standard 20 ft, resulting in the bullet fired during recoil slipping past; the bullet travelled through the storage room, exiting right next to a broom and some pipes; and the unfortunate teen got hit when the bullet ricocheted off the air gun range's ceiling towards his head, despite him sitting in the designated safety area at the time.
- Convenient Photograph: "The Financial Downfall" had detectives realizing that a young woman's fall from a cliff was in fact murder when they reviewed the pictures taken of the outing with her supposed friends and noticed (a) How lethargic she appeared in the pictures from later in the day and (b) The body language of one of the friends in one of the final pictures taken before she supposedly fell. Analysis revealed that rather than them simply walking along the cliffside, he was actually preparing to shove her over—as well as looking around to make sure no one was watching—and that her dazed appearance was because she'd been drugged so that she wouldn't put up a fight.
- Cool Old Guy: Narrator Peter Thomas, a man who had been doing voiceover work for 61 years at the time and sounded every second of it. Even before his time, he had served in World War II, fighting in the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, and received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
- Corpse Temperature Tampering: "Dinner and a Movie" focused on Ed Sherman's murder of his pregnant wife Ellen on August 3, 1985 in Connecticut. Inspired by the movie Blackout (1985), Sherman killed his wife and used an air conditioner to try to slow decomposition of her remains in an attempt to establish an alibi.
- Crossover:
- "The List Murders" shows how America's Most Wanted was able to accurately provide an aged-up bust of John List after nearly two decades and how that lead to his identification and arrest. John Walsh even appears as one of the people being interviewed.
- Multiple episodes ("Horse Play" for the murder of Shannon Mohr, "Stick 'em Up" for the murder of Dan Short, "Stranger in the Night" for the murder of Dorothy Donovan, and "Water Logged" for the murders of Joan Rogers and her daughters Michelle and Christie) serve as sequels to episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, telling the rest of the story as and after the mystery was solved.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- In "Over and Out," teenage amateur radio repairman Chris Marquis swindled one of his buyers, Chris Dean, by sending him a cheaper radio than he'd paid for. Dean retaliated by mailing back a pipe bomb which killed Chris and permanently mutilated his mother.
- Oliver O'Quinn, the murderer in "Needle in a Haystack," killed his crush Michelle Herndon with a lethal injection after he overheard her insult him in a phone call.
- "Shot of Vengeance" profiles Richard Schmidt, a doctor who infected his ex-lover Janice Trahan with HIV after she broke off the affair they'd been having.
- Distant Finale: The reruns on HLN include updates for the older episodes when applicable.
- Double-Meaning Title: The Forensic Files II episode "Church Lady" refers to both the victim (who worked there) and the killer (a parishioner).
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Some of the early episodes, like "Legionnaires' Disease" and "Fatal Fungus," were medical mysteries that didn't involve intentional poisoning, which would later become a rare occurrence in the series. In addition, the dramatization footage was shot in black-and-white.
- The early episodes contain uncensored crime scene and autopsy photos. Later episodes would censor these photos.
- Everyone Has Standards: Derek DeVirco from "Payback" was arrested for his involvement of Bobby Kent's murder but insists that while he was involved in the planning, he never actually believed the plan was murder, just a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, and was horrified that was how it ended. Seeing as he didn't actually hit Bobby Kent and only brought the bat used in the revenge plan, this might actually be true. The only reason this isn't Even Evil Has Standards is because Bobby Kent 100% had it coming.
- Fanservice: The series wasn't above this if it fit the context of the episode. Examples include showing bikini-clad women on beaches if the story took place in a resort area and pole-dancing reenactments if the case centered around an exotic dancer. One particularly notable example is "Window Watcher," which repeatedly showcases a reenactment of a woman showering and getting dressed throughout the episode.
- Fiery Cover-Up: Occasionally attempted and usually failed. For starters, the fire itself is determined to have been deliberately set, thus revealing that an even bigger crime had taken place.
- Speculated in "Haunting Vision." While the fire that destroyed Lori's house and killed her two sisters has never been proven to be arson, Lori clearly believes that her father, Gene Keidel, set the fire intentionally to kill her and her sister Susie because they had seen him kill their mother and bury her body in the yard. For their part, the police don't seem to disagree with this conclusion; they just don't have the evidence to make a case (and it wouldn't serve any practical purpose to do so, since Keidel was already serving life without parole for his wife's murder).
- Foreshadowing:
- An establishing shot in "The Alibi" emphasizes the straight-lacedness of the area with a "Jesus is the Way" sign on a tree. In the upper right corner of the frame is a pair of street signs reading Pee Dee and Register, the name of the murderer.
- In "Dinner and a Movie," when Ed Sherman is calling his wife from his friend's house, the friend's teenage daughter can briefly be seen staring at him from across the hallway. She later testified that she attempted to call a friend while Sherman was on the line, and the entire time, he had been talking to himself with no one answering him, proving that Sherman's wife was already dead by then and that the "call" was just to strengthen his alibi.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: Most of the episodes focus on murder cases or other violent crimes, such as arson. However, once in a while, an episode comes up that focuses on unintentional crimes, tragic accidents, disease or food-poisoning outbreaks, or something similar.
- "Legionnaire's Disease" is about an outbreak of the titular disease.
- "Killer Fog" focuses on finding what's responsible for the heavy fog that caused a 99-car pileup on I-75 in Tennessee.
- "Foreign Body" concerns the identification and tracking of Mad Cow Disease.
- "Core Evidence" has investigators determine that a batch of contaminated Odwalla apple juice caused an E. coli outbreak.
- "Hack Attack" focuses on the disastrous 1996 computer crash at Omega Industries and the efforts by investigators to discover the cause.
- "Deadly Curve" concerns a car accident that killed three Secret Service agents in a motorcade escorting the Queen of England during a visit.
- "Visibility Zero" is about a 1993 train crash in Alabama.
- "Flashover" focuses on a fire that killed several people at King's Cross.
- "Breaking the Mold" is about a family suffering from a mysterious illness.
- "Sunday's Wake" is about a lethal (accidental) case of lead poisoning.
- Glitter Litter: "All That Glitters is Gold" details a case where traces of glitter are used to prove the victim was in a suspect's car after she was murdered.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil:
- "A Woman Scorned" has a mother and her infant son go missing and later turn up dead. Forensic evidence points to the husband's jealous ex-girlfriend, who apparently tried to call him a few days before his wife and son disappeared, only for his wife, whom the ex-girlfriend had never even met before, to answer the phone and tell her off. During the trial, defense tried to argue that prosecution had failed to establish a believable motive, as no normal person would murder someone they barely even know because of a single argument over the phone. One of the prosecutors on the case actually agreed with that assessment but added the culprit in question was clearly not normal.
- The victim of "Video Diary" was killed in an armed robbery while working the first ever overnight shift of a convenience store. In the days leading up to her death, she had told her family that she wasn't afraid to work overnight, since she had a plan for if someone tries to rob her: she'll just open the register and hand all the money over without a fight so that there won't be any reason to kill her. She does exactly this when she encounters an armed gunman demanding all the money in her register, but once he takes the money, he ends up shooting her dead anyway as he's leaving.
- The killer of "Home Evasion" shot the victim dead in her own home after having spent quite a bit of time inside the house, though the crime scene did not resemble that of a robbery. Evidence identified the gunman as a man who lived three miles away and was already facing charges for the rape of his infant daughter, though investigators struggled to come up with a reason for why he committed the murder: there was apparently zero connection between the killer and victim, and the closest one that could be found was that they may have both had library cards to the same local public library, which could be said about every resident in the county. However, while the shooter apparently had no motives, the victim's husband did: they had been going through a whole host of marital problems for some time before finally separating just days before the wife's death, and with her gone, her husband would receive both full custody of their son and all of her life insurance benefits. Investigators thus became convinced that the husband had hired the man to kill his wife and were sure that the shooter was going to rat the husband out when he said he wanted to talk to them. To their surprise, the shooter instead confessed that he had chosen the house at complete random with the plan to just kill whoever walked inside first, as he needed to go to prison as a murderer and not a pedophile so that he wouldn't become somebody's prison bitch. The narration describes it one of the strangest and most senseless crimes ever committed, and investigators, jurors, and the victim's family all struggled with the fact that the killer murdered an innocent woman he didn't even know for such a pointless reason.
- Hanlon's Razor: Occasionally the show has bizarre coincidences:
- The victim of "Video Diary" was a gas station clerk who had been fatally shot in an armed robbery in the middle of the night while working the store's first ever overnight shift. Her son showed up at the station just ten minutes after she was killed, before police had notified the victim's family, and screamed, "I'm gonna kill that ni**er!" when it hadn't yet been disclosed that his mother had been killed by a lone black male. He later denied having been involved in the crime and insisted that his unfortunate remark was just speculation made in anger, and the police ultimately found no evidence that he had anything to do with the robbery after the actual shooter was caught.
- "Stranger in the Night" has a son being accused of his mother's murder. His only defense is that he'd earlier picked up a hitchhiker and then dumped him on the side of the road when the man attacked him, then saw the man skulking around his mother's home, theorizing the hitchhiker must have somehow known who she was and killed her for revenge. Not only does his story about the fight with the hitchhiker turn out to be true, the man had entered the house thinking no one was home and killed the homeowner when she startled him. He was just as stunned as everyone else to learn the man he'd attacked and the woman he'd killed were related.
- "Trouble Brewing" has a man claim the items at a crime scene being found in his house was because someone stole them and then put them back. It turns out that his friend, who was staying with him after his power was turned off, had done exactly that.
- "Toxic Environment" in Forensic Files II has a wife being accused of murdering her husband after arsenic was found in his system and her subsequent behavior, such as sleeping with her husband's friends and rushing to get the insurance money, were deemed suspicious. It turns out that the samples were mishandled, and the amount of arsenic that was measured would've killed him way faster than his symptoms were around for. As for her behavior, she needed the money to feed her kids and was coping with the loss by trying to run away from the trauma.
- Hate Sink: The series features a lot of despicable criminals, ranging from a man who murdered his own daughter because she didn't get along with his girlfriend, to a pair of brothers breaking into the house of a gay couple for the sole purpose of killing them while they sleep, to a man out on bail killing a complete stranger so that the Villain Cred he'd get from the resulting murder conviction would (supposedly) gain him more respect in prison and help distract from his original crime of raping of his three-month-old daughter.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In "Haunting Vision," Lori survives becoming trapped in a raging house fire because her older sister Susie laid on top of her, using her own body as a barrier to shield Lori from the flames. Susie died in the process, but because of this final act, Lori was still alive when the firefighters reached them.
- Hollywood Silencer: When the killer in "If I Were You" shoots his victim with a silenced pistol, the classic "fwip" sound is used.
- Honor-Related Abuse: "Honor Thy Father" tells the story of Tina Isa, the victim of an honor killing, and even explains what honor killings are.
- Hope Spot: One episode goes to a commercial break asking if the missing person was still alive. This question is answered immediately after the show returns: the victim's remains were found in a ravine.
- Insane Troll Logic: The killer of "Home Evasion" picked a house in the neighborhood at random and snuck inside with the plan to murder whoever walked through the front door first, which led to the death of the Victim of the Week, a woman the killer had no connection with. His reason for doing all this? He was about to do time for the rape of his three-month-old daughter and, knowing he'd likely become a prison bitch because of it, decided that he needed to go as a murderer instead of a child molester. Predictably, he ended up going to prison after being convicted of both his heinous crimes, and investigators were left with perhaps the most bizarre and senseless case they'd ever encountered.
- Insurance-Motivated Murder: A lot of the murder cases covered on the show usually had this as the motive for why the crime was committed.
- The murderer of "Something's Fishy" took out a life insurance policy on her husband by forging the latter's signature on the application, then poisoned the victim with cyanide hidden in victim's headache capsules. In a slight twist on the trope, the policy also stated the killer would receive an additional $100,000 if the victim's death was due to an accident, but the coroner mistakenly ruled the death as being due to natural causes. Thus, to create an excuse to have the victim's body re-examined and their death declared an accident, the murderer decided to make it look like the victim died due to a random poisoner or manufacturing mistake by placing a few more bottles of cyanide-laced pain relievers on the shelves of nearby stores, which resulted in the death of another individual the killer didn't even know.
- "Mistaken For Dead" is an interesting example that overlaps with Faking the Dead. Neurologist Richard Boggs and clothing store chain owners John Hawkins and Gene Hanson were all encountering financial difficulties and came up with a plan to enrich themselves: they'd take out a large policy on Gene Hanson, murder someone whom they could pass off as him, then flee with the life insurance benefits before the authorities find out. It led to Hanson and Boggs finding Ellis Greene, a man who resembled Gene Hanson, at a gay bar; luring him to Boggs's clinic, where he was murdered; and then planting documents on his body to help pass it off as that of Gene Hanson. Hawkins was also named the sole inheritor of Hanson's estate to ensure that only he would be asked to identify the body of his supposed business partner. It wasn't until after he had already collected the life insurance and disappeared that it was discovered the thumbprint on Gene Hanson's driver's license didn't match the one the morgue took from his alleged body, which exposed the ruse. Police were able to arrest Boggs, who had been left behind when his fellow conspirators fled, but it would be many more years before all three men were finally caught and brought to justice.
- Jack the Ripoff: "Sign of the Zodiac" focuses on solving the case of a self-proclaimed "Zodiac" serial killer who terrorized New York and wrote letters, claiming they will kill 12 people with 12 different astrological signs at night. The investigators recalled that about 20 years ago, an unidentified "Zodiac" serial killer terrorized San Francisco with the same method and determined that they were dealing with a copycat. Interestingly, the copycat claimed to be the real Zodiac Killer that was active in California in the 1960s, but when his identity was revealed, it turned out he was way too young to have committed the California murders.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- The bomber in "Postal Mortem" killed a man that was close to discovering that he was selling fake documents and sent another bomb to the victim's business partner to serve as a distraction, leading to the death of the latter's wife. When handling another bomb, it goes off in his car, causing him to lose two fingertips and a kneecap. This is what eventually led to his capture.
- The killer in "Punch Line" beat his victim to death, and one of her teeth cut his hand while she was being punched in the face. The cut gets infected, and he has to go the hospital while claiming it was an injury from a dumpster. The doctor treating his hand realizes the origin of the injury, leading to the man's arrest.
- In "Double Cross," Elise Makdessi schemed with her husband Eddie to use False Rape Accusations to extort the American military. The Makdessis, who both worked at a naval station, talked their coworker Quincy Brown into coming to their house so he could have a consensual sexual affair with Elise, planning on killing him and framing it as Brown breaking in and raping Elise after sexually harassing her at work. Eddie, as planned, killed the innocent Quincy...and then killed Elise, committing the titular double-cross in order to collect a life insurance policy he'd taken out on her behind her back.
- Lethal Negligence: A few episodes have people dying from this instead of intentional crimes.
- The Victim of the Week in "Magic Bullet" was shot in the head while sitting in an air gun range's designated safety area due to this. The back of the air gun building was directly behind the targets of the outdoor firing range, and the dirt berm between the building and outdoor range failed to catch a stray bullet because it was only 12 ft high instead of the standard 20 ft. It was also noted that the baffles, wooden panels nailed together and placed above the targets to catch stray bullets, had large gaps and lacked steel or concrete backing and that there were already several plugged holes at the back of the building, indicating the owners of the range knew that bullets were getting past the outdoor range's safety features but didn't do anything about it.
- Several individuals fell ill from an E. coli. outbreak in "Core Evidence" due to a batch of contaminated Odwalla apple juice that hadn't been pasteurized, with some even dying from it. The narration reveals that the company now makes sure to pasteurize its product and put on warning labels.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The cops arrest a couple in "Dirty Little Secret" after catching them breaking into a restaurant. When the woman asks them to get her medication from her purse, they find the driver's licenses of a couple that had been reported missing several days prior. Soon enough, it was learned that they had murdered the pair.
- Mistaken for Gay: In "Hear No Evil", Daphne Wright killed Darlene VanderGiesen because she believed that VanderGiesen was dating her ex-girlfriend whom she wanted back. Turns out, not only were they not dating, VanderGiesen was straight.
- Murphy's Bullet: "Magic Bullet" has a young teenager killed by a stray bullet to the head at a shooting range, despite sitting in the designated safety area of the air gun range. This was due to a series of Contrived Coincidences, as well as the poor design of the shooting range: the air gun building was located behind the targets of the outdoor firing range; hand-made bullets designed to travel faster and farther than regular bullets were being used in the outdoor range that day; the bullets were fired with a modified gun that fired a second bullet at a higher angle during a recoil; the berm between the air gun building and the outdoor targets was around half the height it should have been and thus failed to catch the bullet; the bullet pierced the aluminum wall of the storage room and made its way through, narrowly missing a broom and some pipes; and it then ricocheted off the ceiling as it enters the air gun range and strikes the unfortunate teen in the head, mortally wounding him.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The opening trailer for "Runaway Love" notes that the victim's ex-husband and daughter were missing, implying that the ex may have murdered her and kidnapped their daughter. In the actual show, it's quickly revealed that the reason they couldn't find the ex-husband was because he'd been away on a business trip and was surprised to find police at his home.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
- Kevin Rice, the murder victim in "Key Evidence," was killed trying to stop two young men from breaking into a parked car.
- Ronald Shaw, the victim of "No Safe Place," hired two young men to work on his house at the request of their grandfather, who was building a new home for Shaw and his wife. The boys' thank you was shooting Shaw dead in a robbery and coming within a hair of executing his wife, only leaving her alive when she told them she was pregnant.
- Joshua Ford and Martha Crutchley kindly paid the bus fare for Erika and Ben Sifrit. The latter couple invited them to their condo as a "Thank You"... then brutally murdered them.
- The third victim of the triple homicide in "Fate Date" was Kenneth Maxwell, a bystander who called 911 to report the killer's attempt at a Fiery Cover-Up and was shot dead while on the line with a first responder.
- Noodle Implements: The teaser for later episodes almost always ended with Peter Thomas listing what sound like random, bizarre items that forensic scientists would end up using to crack the case (something like how a shred of paper, half a shoelace, and a dead beetle led police to the killer).
- Offing the Offspring: A good amount of episodes are dedicated to parents murdering their own children.
- In “Invisible Intruder”, Darlie Routier reports that she and her two sons had been attacked by an intruder. The two boys were stabbed to death, and she suffered a slash on her arm and throat. However, evidence like blood spatter proved inconsistencies with her story, and eventually it provided a different story: the mother herself had stabbed her boys before harming herself.
- “Ultimate Betrayal” has a mother get revenge on her husband for an affair by first poisoning him, then burning down his house. In the process, she was willing to let her 3 children die in their house. Tragically, 2 passed away, but one escaped alive.
- Attempted in “Freeze Framed”, but failed: after a woman is suspected for the poisoning death of her husband (and previous husband), she tries to set it up on her daughter by poisoning her and framing it as a suicide. Thankfully, her daughter survived.
- In "Bagging a Killer," the murderer killed his own daughter just because she didn't get along with his girlfriend, and likely killed her mother as well.
- Product Placement: Played with: the show doesn't censor name-brands when they appear in crime scene pictures, but it doesn't draw attention to them, either.
- Pun-Based Title: Most of the episode titles have some sort of double meaning or play on words. Some of the more groan-inducing ones include: "Sim-ilar Circumstances," "Sworded Scheme," and "Purebread Murder."
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Peter Thomas refers to the DA in "Fire Dot Com" as this, citing that, while he did spend the episode trying to convict Terri Strickland, he dropped the case against her once an independent scientist came up with a plausible theory that explained the evidence and informed the DA that the problems with the previous ruling came from assigning arson investigators to a case of fire deaths when the origin was not yet known.
- Red Herring: Quite a few initial suspects have turned out to be innocent, despite admittedly odd or suspicious behavior.
- The Victim of the Week in one episode died from cyanide poisoning, and on the day of her funeral, while looking for headache medication, her sister found Excedrin capusles in the kitchen. She thought this strange, since, to her knowledge, her sister only took Excedrin tablets, never capsules, and her suspicions were proven right when it was later discovered that many of the capsules contained cyanide. Since the victim's husband was the one who convinced her to switch to capsules, he naturally became the prime suspect, which was not helped by the fact that he had been married three times in the past, had only been married to the victim for six months before her death, and had been forced by the victim shortly before the wedding to break things off with an old girlfriend he was still seeing. It turns out he was completely innocent in his wife's death. A stranger in the neighborhood who had poisoned her husband wanted it to look like the result of an accidental cyanide poisoning for life insurance purposes, so she placed multiple bottles of capsules containing cyanide on local store shelves, hoping it would look like her husband died from accidentally taking one of those capsules; the Victim of the Week just had the misfortune of purchasing a bottle of cyanide-contaminated capsules that ended up at her store.
- The beginning of "Video Diary" heavily implies the victim's son was involved in or knew about the robbery in which she was killed. Not only did he show up at the crime scene just ten minutes after his mother was killed, before the family had been notified, but the remarks he made immediately after her death--"I'm gonna kill that ni**er!"--implied he knew that she had been killed by a lone black gunman, even though he hadn't yet been told that the security camera showed that. It's also revealed that he was unemployed and that the victim had told her family in the days leading up to the shooting that if someone tried to rob her, she would just give them all the money in the cash register without putting up a fight. Investigators thus theorized that the son may have met the killer at the strip club he and his friends were hanging out at on the night of the murder and hatched a plan to rob the store, knowing that, since the cashier wouldn't try to resist, it would be an easy target and a good opportunity for them to get their hands on some money without actually having to hurt anyone. When they finally caught the shooter, investigators failed to find any connection between him and the victim's son, whose comments about the shooter being black were apparently just speculation that he screamed in anger.
- "Home Evasion": A woman is shot by an unknown assailant upon returning home from work, and all the signs point to the husband: their marriage was on the brink of collapse; the two had separated two days prior; both parties were cheating on each other even before the separation he was the beneficiary of her life insurance policy; he would get full custody of their son, whom he was close with; and he was the first to find her after she was shot. It turns out she was a victim of one of the most bizarrely random crimes in the show's history: a guy who lived three miles away from them was about to be sent to prison for raping his three-month-old daughter and decided to murder someone at random under the belief that a murder conviction would save him from the abuse that pedophiles frequently suffer from other prisoners. Despite searching high and low for a connection between the two, investigators found nothing, with the narrator mentioning her husband would've been the victim had he arrived home first. The husband himself even admitted he understood why he was the prime suspect.
- "Knots" from Forensic Files II: A young woman is killed in her apartment, and most of the episode is spent focusing on her ex-convict friend, whom she had rejected just prior to the murder. Decades later, the DNA is put into CODIS, and it turns up a match: the apartment manager who was briefly mentioned offhand.
- Retraux:
- Some of the dramatization footage in "Revenge" was shot in black-and-white (much like the earlier episodes) and was made to resemble the pre-Season 7 episodes.
- Inverted with the HLN and CNN reruns of the earlier episodes, which have been edited to resemble the newer episodes.
- Revisiting the Cold Case: Several episodes are re-enactments of crimes that went cold decades ago.
- Scare Chord: These are (almost) all over the soundtrack, from shrieking violins, to horrifying swells and bursts of brass.
- Self-Defense Ruse: Attempted multiple times, and of course, failed. One gentleman spent weeks creating a supposed campaign of harassment by a neighbor that culminated in his wife nearly being killed by a Car Bomb meant for him and the neighbor coming over to his house to try to kill him once and for all. The police soon discovered the plan and determined that he had planted the bomb that almost killed his wife and invited the neighbor over in order to frame him.
- Self-Made Orphan: Dana Ewell in the episode "Two in a Million" murdered his own parents for their estate. Bart Whitaker in the episode "Family Interrupted" and Christopher Porco in "Family Ties" attempted this, but Bart Whitaker's father and Porco's mother survived the attacks.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: "Man's Best Friend?" has a couple losing their child to a dog attack, being wrongfully convicted of it, getting acquitted years later, then divorcing because the time in prison changed them.
- Spiteful Suicide:
- Some of the criminals in the show, like Ari Squire, do this to avoid being caught by the police, much to the chagrin of their victims' loved ones.
- "Within Arm's Reach" is about a wife taking her own life in a way that looks like murder to get back at her husband for cheating on her. What makes this uniquely bizarre is that there's evidence she herself had cheated beforehand.
- Spoiler Title:
- One Victim of the Week died from poisoning, and suspicion fell on one of his coworkers because that same type of poison was found in his workplace. It's pretty obvious to viewers, though that that real murderer was the man's wife, condering the episode in question is entitled, "Til Death Do US Part."
- "A Woman Scorned" begins with the disappearance of a wife and her infant son. The episode seems to toy with the possibility that her husband was the culprit, but given the episode's title, the viewer is likely waiting for the narrator to start talking about the husband's ex-girlfriend.
- Jenna Verhaalen's murder was linked to three possible suspects: her boyfriend, a fellow neighbor, and a maintenance man working in her apartment. However, the episode's title being "Low Maintenance" practically gives away which of the three suspects was actually involved in the murder.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Many of the cases documented on the show involve people being killed by toxic substances slipped into their food or drinks.
- Taught by Television: Some episodes, such as "Grave Danger" and "All Butt Certain," are about situations in which either a victim, witness, suspect, family member, friend, acquaintance, or even a member of law enforcement used some technique that learned from watching a TV series or movie to either solve the case or commit a crime.
- Theme Naming: Most of the episode titles relate to a clue that leads to the arrest of a suspect.
- Trauma Swing: In episodes where a survivor was available for interview, the B-roll tends to include a shot or two of them using a swingset, no matter how old they are.
- The Un-Reveal: For obvious reasons, some episodes do not reveal the name of a certain element or method that was crucial in committing the murder. For example:
- "Bitter Poison" involved the suspect tampering with some Coca-Cola bottles in some way, which were used to poison his neighbors.
- A young woman in "Death Play" killed her father by poisoning him with a substance found in her high school chemistry class, which the narration explicitly states will not be revealed in the program.
- "Cats, Flies & Snapshots" has a man who killed his estranged wife after purchasing a book on how to commit a murder and get away with it.
- "Wired for Disaster" doesn't disclose the specific combination of explosives used in the bomb, except to say it was strong enough to indicate a motive in and of itself.
- Urban Legends: Meta-example. There is a persistent rumor that the series was revived in 2016 for a 15th season and began airing new episodes. In actuality, the series did in fact end in 2011. HLN contributed to the confusion by advertising "all-new" episodes, when, in fact, they were just episodes that hadn't aired on the channel. HLN would then, with full intents and purposes, prove the rumor true and indeed revive the series in 2020.
- Villain Cred: Some of the suspects in the show will confess to their crimes in order to obtain this. This includes the New York Zodiac Killer after he was arrested for shooting his sister, and the killer in "Home Evasion" who murdered a woman at random because he was already going to prison for raping his infant daughter and thought that going to prison for murder would spare him from the abuse pedophiles usually suffer in prison.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- "With Every Breath" never mentions whether Merrill Bahe and Florena Woody's infant son survived the hantavirus that killed his parents.
- It's never stated in "Insulated Evidence" who the anonymous tipster was who alerted cops to murderer Joe Luna.
- "Waste Mis-Management" never clarifies who the body mistaken for Glenda Fuch was, or even how she died.
- Where Are They Now: Reruns of the older episodes featured on HLN include an update that offers information on the perpetrators, such as if they've died in prison, been executed, been released, etc.
- Who Murdered the Asshole?:
- In "Without a Prayer," the disappearance of caustic activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, as well as her son and granddaughter, was received with a collective apathetic shrug from police. It took four years of pressure from investigative journalists and Madalyn's estranged son Bill to get the police on the case.
- The investigation into Michael Prozumenshikov's murder in "Going for Broke" was complicated by the long list of disgruntled customers that Michael had screwed over to line his own pockets.
- The "Payback" 1-hour special is about the murder of Bobby Kent, killed by his best friend, ex-girlfriend and five other people as revenge for years of bullying and abuse. Had the perpetrators not had Loose Lips, they might have gotten away with it, as Bobby had a lot of people who wanted him dead.
- With Friends Like These...: Betty Lee, the murder victim in "Four on the Floor," was abandoned by her two female friends so they could go hook up with men they met at a bar. Lee accepted a ride from two men, Bobby Fry and Les Engh, who saw her crying at a payphone...who then drove Lee into the desert, unsuccessfully tried to rape her, and successfully killed her.
- Worthy Opponent: It is implied in "Order Up" that Jill Coit was generally impressed by Dr Dobersen's forensic evidence.Dr Dobersen: I remember presenting all of that to the judge, and she was there. At the end, I picked up all my materials and slides and walked out next to her, and she looked at me and said, "Nice job."