8.6/1035 votesLoading...#1 - Mommie Dearest
Season 2 Episode 24 - Aired 6/11/2000
A mother is suspected in the murders of two of her daughters, when her third daughter finally convinces police to reopen two cold cases.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.2/1029 votesLoading...
#2 - Through the Eyes of a Child / Killer Next Door
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 2/6/1999
In Missouri, a part-time missionary is convicted, 38 years later, of killing her 5-year-old stepdaughter, and the skeleton of a Michigan boy, dead for 10 years, leads police to a serial killer.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.2/1027 votesLoading...
#3 - The Original Night Stalker
Season 2 Episode 22 - Aired 5/28/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.1/1019 votesLoading...
#4 - Lady in the Box
Season 2 Episode 9 - Aired 2/26/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.1/1019 votesLoading...
#5 - The Widow and the Wolf/Unicorns and Alligators
Season 2 Episode 12 - Aired 3/19/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.0/1028 votesLoading...
#6 - The Boy and the Monster/Secret in the Cellar
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 1/8/1999
The Boy and the Monster In Wisconsin in the winter of 1991 a young woman's body was found naked, badly beaten and to make it harder to identify her, her fingertips were cut off. After months of trying to figure out who she was they finally came up with a name. Doris McLeod. After finding out who she was the police find out a lot more about her. She had a troubled past. After being on the streets she ended up connected to a pimp. Only one month of being on the streets she is never seen again. It takes a 3 year old boy to finally tell the police about Doris and the Boy and the Monster. Secret in the Cellar The second part of this episode is about a young woman from South Portland, Maine who was in search of her mother. She contacts the police but they get nowhere. They question Bill Bruns, the missing woman's husband who told the police a story about how Pearl drank and ran off with another man. Elaine Woodward, the missing womans daughter, went to the media for help. An investigator takes the case and with the help of science and man power he finds out what happened to Pearl with the Secret in the Cellar.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.0/1016 votesLoading...
#7 - The Hunter Homicides / Skulls in Stanley Park
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 1/29/1999
DNA tests identify a skull of a 14-year-old boy who went missing 6 years earlier. When a second skull is found, investigators fear they have a serial killer in the area. In Florida, detectives trace a gun used in a 4-year-old murder.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.0/1019 votesLoading...
#8 - Ticket to Nowhere/The Paper Route
Season 2 Episode 5 - Aired 1/29/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.9/1019 votesLoading...
#9 - Pride and the Fall/The Nail File
Season 2 Episode 7 - Aired 2/12/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1015 votesLoading...
#10 - Hour 1 - Cold Case Files
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 1/1/1999
In the first case in this episode Felicia Prechtl is found raped and murdered in Dallas, Texas/ The only thing the killer left behind was a fingerprint which was smudged. The fingerprint was left on a piece of duct tape that the killer used to tie up Felicia. It would take many years before Felicia would get justice. It would take the work of a dedicated detective to runs the prints through the system and find not only a match to the print but also finds the killer. And he wants to confess. The second story in this episode is about a little girl, Surrette Clark, who lived in the Arizona desert. She disappeared with nobody to even recognize that she was gone. After Surrette went missing at the age of 3 it would take more then 20 years to solve this mystery. Her parents took off across the Canadian border right after her disappearance. Finally a woman comes forward to tell of the families secret. With this information cold case detectives find out about a story of child abuse and how deadly some people will go to hide them. The third story in this episode is about a known man. One who has passed through our live via television either from watching the show or somebody talking about it. Its Bob Crane. Best known for his role on Hogan's Heroes as Colonel Hogan. Crane was strangled and beaten to death in his own bed in 1978. The story goes that Bob and a friend of his had a fight one night. With the small evidence that the police did have the police suspected his friend of his murder but could not prove it. It would be 12 years before anybody takes a second look at this case. On the second try police do find the evidence they need but will it be enough? In the fourth installment to this episode is about Ronnie Bullock. He was a man who had served 10 years of his sentence for raping an 11 year old girl. Through the entire time of his imprisionment he stayed stedfast to his claim of innocence. It would not be until DNA was founded that someone would listen to him and prove him innocent.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1022 votesLoading...
#11 - Man in the Shadows/The Hitchhiker
Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 4/2/1999
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1020 votesLoading...
#12 - Reconstructing Murder/Fire Flicks
Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 4/9/1999
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1018 votesLoading...
#13 - Vanished
Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 5/7/1999
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1018 votesLoading...
#14 - The South Side Rapist
Season 2 Episode 2 - Aired 1/8/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1023 votesLoading...
#15 - Murder On The Menu
Season 2 Episode 11 - Aired 3/12/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1015 votesLoading...
#16 - The Unluckiest Man/The Deadly Triangle
Season 2 Episode 15 - Aired 4/9/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1021 votesLoading...
#17 - Soft Kill/Unsolved
Season 2 Episode 20 - Aired 5/14/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1017 votesLoading...
#18 - The Bedroom Basher
Season 4 Episode 8 - Aired 2/19/2002
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1025 votesLoading...
#19 - Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer
Season 5 Episode 2 - Aired 12/15/2005
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/1011 votesLoading...
#20 - The Interrogation/The Slide
Season 5 Episode 13 - Aired 7/15/2006
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.7/1016 votesLoading...
#21 - Mark of a Killer/Dead Ends
Season 2 Episode 3 - Aired 1/15/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.7/1020 votesLoading...
#22 - Crimes of the KKK
Season 2 Episode 10 - Aired 3/5/2000
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.7/1041 votesLoading...
#23 - Sex, Lies and Murder
Season 4 Episode 11 - Aired 3/12/2002
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.6/1014 votesLoading...
#24 - The Texas Drifter/The Fingerprint File
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 1/15/1999
Texas Drifter Two women in two separate towns in Texas who where raped. The rapist uses a knife to threaten these women then rapes them and leaves his DNA behind. Back when these happened DNA was not profected yet so having the DNA was useless. Many years later when CODIS was developed which is a database for DNA a match to the rapists DNA was found. It was to a known serial rapist. Fingerprint File It was two days before Christmas a woman if found stabbed to death with the only clue left is a fingerprint left on a pop bottle. The forensic people were able to lift the print but had no success in matching it to anybody. Years later a man still working on cold cases finds a match to the fingerpprint which gives the police a lead to a killer. Rose Among Thorns Juliet Rowe was the victim who got shot in the bedroom of her English Countryside home. She was shot execution style then was shot again in the heart. The killer wanted to make sure that Juliet was dead. After thousands of endless attempts her case remained unsolved. 8 years later a stranger comes into a pub and starts talking to Mr Rowe Juliet's husband. The stranger's name was Keith Rose. He was arrested on kidnapping charges 6 weeks later. Because of his arrest he brings attention to himself to the cold case investigators who then look at him in the "Rose Among Thorns" case.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.6/1016 votesLoading...
#25 - The Burning Secret/Justice Delayed
Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 3/26/1999
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.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
The Best Episodes of Cold Case Files
Every episode of Cold Case Files ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Cold Case Files!
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...
Genres:CrimeMysteryDocumentary
Network:A&E
Best Episodes Summary
"Mommie Dearest" is the best rated episode of "Cold Case Files". It scored 8.6/10 based on 35 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 6/11/2000. This episode scored 0.4 points higher than the second highest rated, "Through the Eyes of a Child / Killer Next Door".