Cold Case Files

The Best Episodes of Cold Case Files

Genres:CrimeMysteryDocumentary
Network:A&E

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...
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  1. 8.0/10(16 votes)

    #1 - The Hunter Homicides / Skulls in Stanley Park

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    S1:E5

    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.

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  2. 8.0/10(32 votes)

    #2 - Through the Eyes of a Child / Killer Next Door

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    S1:E6

    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.

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  3. 7.8/10(16 votes)

    #3 - Hour 1 - Cold Case Files

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    S1:E1

    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.

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  4. 7.8/10(31 votes)

    #4 - The Boy and the Monster/Secret in the Cellar

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    S1:E2

    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.

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  5. 7.8/10(21 votes)

    #5 - Reconstructing Murder/Fire Flicks

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    S1:E15

    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.

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  6. 7.8/10(18 votes)

    #6 - Vanished

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    S1:E20

    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.

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    The 20 WORST Episodes of Cold Case Files

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  8. 7.8/10(17 votes)

    #7 - The Bedroom Basher

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    S4:E8

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  9. 7.8/10(25 votes)

    #8 - Obsession: Dave Reichert and the Green River Killer

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    S5:E2

    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.

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  10. 7.8/10(11 votes)

    #9 - The Interrogation/The Slide

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    S5:E13

    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.

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  11. 7.7/10(24 votes)

    #10 - Man in the Shadows/The Hitchhiker

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    S1:E14

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  12. 7.7/10(41 votes)

    #11 - Sex, Lies and Murder

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    S4:E11

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  13. 7.6/10(20 votes)

    #12 - The Missing Informant/Man's Best Friend

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    S1:E18

    Police solve a murder when divers find a skeleton in a car at the bottom of a river, and a dead dog's DNA helps crack open a 6-year-old case.

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  14. 7.6/10(19 votes)

    #13 - Frozen in Time/Little Girl Lost

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    S1:E23

    Using a hair dryer to thaw a frozen corpse, detectives get to the bottom of a grisly murder. And the discovery of a child's skeleton in a Chicago garden puts police on the trail of an "oddball" family.

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  15. 7.6/10(14 votes)

    #14 - NCIS / Exhuming the Truth

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    S5:E19

    After U.S. Navy sailor Andrew Muns disappears in 1968, the Navy claims that Muns went AWOL from his ship. But his sister works tirelessly for over 30 years to prove that Muns was really killed. And DNA surreptitiously gathered from a cigarette butt helps detectives to unravel a 20-year-old case of rape and murder.

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  16. 7.5/10(16 votes)

    #15 - Presumed Dead/The Tow Truck Killer

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    S1:E17

    One will take 10 years and one will take 17 years to solve but they do get solved. Dedication, science, luck, and even hypnosis is used to make sure justice is done for the dead. Presumed Dead Tracy Jo Shine is in trouble with the law, She is being prosecuted on drug charges. Her only chance for freedom is to testify against her boyfriend Michaekl Neal. Satisfied with her testimony she is released. Shortly after she went missing. All leads pointed to her boyfriend. An informant on the case told police that Michael was keeping her body in a rerfigerator. Police inspected it but found nothing. The case went cold. For more then 10 years Tracy was missing, then presumed dead. Science will finally fine justice for Tracy with a clue found hidden her tomb, that refrigerator.And justice is finally served for Tracy the woman Presumed Dead. Tow Truck Killer On a desolate roadway sits an abandoned car. Deputy Bill Simmons was on the scene and called for a tow truck to pick up the car. The next thing that happened was a "Mayday" call to the Sangamon County,Illinois Sherrifs department that there was an officer down, shot in the head twice. After following hundreds of leads the case runs cold. It would be 17 years before a Cold Case Detective decides to use forensic hypnosis on the only eye witness to bring back the memories in the case to catch the killer.

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  17. 7.5/10(14 votes)

    #16 - A Child Remembers

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    S5:E15

    Our cameras follow Detective Manny Reyes as he investigates the 1990 murder of a Fort Worth, Texas woman. Reyes talks to the woman's two sons, who believe that her husband, Bobby, was the murderer. We then watch as one of the husband's relatives tells Reyes that Bobby has confessed the crime to him. To make the case even stronger, Reyes collects physical evidence that connects him to the crime. Finally, Reyes meets Bobby for a dramatic interrogation. Will he crack and admit the crime--or will he hang tough and deny it all?

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  18. 7.4/10(16 votes)

    #17 - The Answer in the Box/Maternal Instinct

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    S1:E4

    Answer in the Box Alison Parrott was a runner. Not only was she was runner she was a great runner, So much so that she had the local media interested in her, So when she got a call from a photographer to take some pictures of her running she didn't think anything wrong with it. She left to go to her photo session and wasn't seen alive again. The police had a fellow runner as the lead suspect but nothing ever happened with that lead. A cold case detective named Vic Matanovic was going through some files 10 years later and came across the case. When the detective was looking for clues to solve the case the Answer is in the Box. Usually DNA is enough to prove a case but in this case the criminal who lured Alison to her death had a plan to lure the jury to believe in the lie he was about to tell. Maternal Instinct 1981 a brother and sister fell victim to a heartless mother with no regard for life. 3 month old Seth Davis was rushed to the hospital because of insulin poisoning. He was left brain damaged. 5 months later his sister, Tenga Davis, is rushed to the hospital. There she dies of Caffeine poisoning. Even though the autopsy that was turned in by the M.E. stated cause of death was a homicide, the police treated this as an accident. Their mother Mary Beth Davis moves on with her own life by moving to a different state. She starts a new family and forgets all about what happened back in her past. That is until 10 years later when Mary Beth gets a knock on her door by the cold case detectives which brings back her past as the detectives are there to prove a case of murder.

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  19. 7.4/10(25 votes)

    #18 - Killer on the Strip/The Doll Murder

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    S1:E11

    In the beautiful byways of West Palm Beach, along the canals a woman was fond dead in the canal. After some research they found that the woman was a prostitute. Even with all the evidence and DNA collected at the scene The detecives still had nothing to go on so the case went cold. Four yeas would pass before her case got looked at again. One of the Cold Case detective's who was reviewing some cases where crimes were committed in the area in which he worked his beat. With some new perspective on the case he finds signs that this womans killer has all the signs of a serial attacker and a kille. His trickery is to pose as a police officer to the local prostitutes and lures them into hidden places where he has privacy and assults them and rapes them. And at least 1 case he murders them. Doll Murder A woman from For Collins, Colorado thought she was safe in her own home, but one night in 1989 that myth was shattered. She was found murdered in her own home. The only things that were missing from her home were all her underwear. Semen and fingerprints were collected bt since there was no testing of DNA back then the case went cold. It would be 6 years when across town the womans underwear was found in a furnace. With this new discovery the case was re-opened to be looked at to finally settle the case

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  20. 7.4/10(18 votes)

    #19 - The Burning Secret/Justice Delayed

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    S1:E13

    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.

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  21. 7.4/10(14 votes)

    #20 - The Missing and the Dead

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    S1:E21

    When a passing motorist spots a fire along a country road in South Carolina and calls it in, police arrive to discover the badly burned and battered remains of a woman, her skull smashed in to 97 fragments. After a forensic anthropologist at the University of South Carolina painstakingly pieces the bones back together, investigators use the skull to solve the murder.

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  22. 7.4/10(16 votes)

    #21 - Family Secret/Blood Trail

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    S1:E24

    Forty-one years after the crime, a woman implicates her brother and cousin in the murder of a New Jersey policeman. And members of the Vidocq Society, a group of law enforcement professionals who volunteer their expertise to crack difficult cases, find blood-spatter evidence that helps solve a Texas murder.

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  23. 7.3/10(16 votes)

    #22 - The Texas Drifter/The Fingerprint File

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    S1:E3

    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.

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  24. 7.3/10(19 votes)

    #23 - Diary Of A Serial Arsonist/The Lost Clue

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    S1:E10

    Every 2 years, a group of fire investigators meet for a conference. While attending the conference in 1987 in Fresno, California, 3 suspicious fires break out near the conference. They were in 3 different fabric stores nearby each other. The only clue being left behind is one latent pint. Two years later when the conference is held again in Monterey, California another group of fires break out. The firefighters at the conference begin to think that it's one of themselves. With fingerprinting in it's more advanced stage they were able to tie the arsons to one of the investigators. While searching through his things they find a manscript called DIARY OF A SERIAL ARSONIST which contained not only information on arson but instructions on murder. In the second story line an elderly woman from San Antonio, Texas lay in her room naked from the waist down with her throat slashed. In the next room was her 80 year old husband who had just suffered his 3rd stroke. But there was no evidence to charge him. With pressure from a Texas Ranger the case is re-looked at where in they find the LOST CLUE in solving the case.

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  25. 7.3/10(25 votes)

    #24 - Killer in the County

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    S1:E16

    Time is not always on the killer's side. He never knows where or when. Bt somebody is inevitably going to find something out and find out who committed the crime. Even if you have changed for the better since then. As taken from the Baretta TV series. "Don't do the crime if you can't pay the time." Terror struck Wichita Falls, Texas when three women, Terry Sims, Toni Gibbs and Ellen Blau were murdered and raped. Ten years would pass before a task force was assembled to compare the three murders. They found that the three semen samples all matched. That was the easy part. Finding who those samples were linked to was another story. John Little, an investigator, revisited the files and after careful and time consuming work he found a name in one of the files of a man who was a suspect but was never investigated. Faryion Wardip was the suspect and after some research on him it was found that he was already convicted of killing a woman named Tina Kimbrew in 1986. He was however paroled because of a very publicized meeting in which Wardip begged for forgiveness from Kimbrew's father. Little thought that Wardrip was still a major player in his cases so he found out where he was living and watched him. One lucky night, Little obtained a discarded coffee cup of Wardrip and brought it back for DNA analysis. Much to his satisfaction, the DNA from the saliva on the cup and the DNA from the semen matched. When detectives finally approached Wardrip with all their overwhelming evidence, Wardrip, without a struggle, turned himself in and also during this time confessed to a fifth murder, one he was not even a suspect in.

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  26. 7.3/10(15 votes)

    #25 - Death Before I Do/Hollywood Homicide

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    S3:E10

    Included: the 1988 murder of actress Myra Davis, Janet Leigh's stand-in for “Psycho,” brings a conviction in 2001. Also: a phone tip helps solve a cold case.

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Best Episodes Summary

"The Hunter Homicides / Skulls in Stanley Park" is the best rated episode of "Cold Case Files". It scored 8/10 based on 16 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 1/29/1999. This episode scored 0.0 points higher than the second highest rated, "Through the Eyes of a Child / Killer Next Door".