The BEST episodes of 48 Hours
Every episode of 48 Hours ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of 48 Hours!
Television's most popular true-crime series, investigating shocking cases and compelling real-life dramas with journalistic integrity and cutting-edge style.
#1 - Eric Smith: Gambling on a Killer
Season 35 - Episode 24 - Aired 3/26/2022
When he was 13 years old, he committed an unthinkable crime. 28 years later, Smith is out on parole. What’s next for him?
Watch Now:Amazon
#2 - Nelson Mandela: Father of a Nation
Season 27 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/7/2013
A "48 Hours" special from the journalists of CBS News exploring the social, cultural and political impact of Mandela's life on the world.
#3 - A Promise to Ahmaud
Season 35 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/27/2021
When Ahmaud Arbery was chased by three White men and shot in the street, his mother laid him to rest promising to get him justice. The promise is fulfilled when the men are found guilty. CBS News correspondent Omar Villafranca reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#4 - The Case Against Brooke Skylar Richardson
Season 33 - Episode 33 - Aired 5/23/2020
The parents of Brooke Skylar Richardson speak out -- the real story behind the international headlines in the case of an alleged unthinkable crime. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty investigates.
Watch Now:Amazon#5 - The Hollywood Ripper on Trial
Season 33 - Episode 35 - Aired 5/30/2020
Part 2: Four young women attacked, only one survivor. "48 Hours" correspondent Maureen Maher has been on the trail of serial killer Michael Gargiulo for more than a decade. How "48 Hours" helped crack one of the cases.
Watch Now:Amazon#6 - Hitting Home
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 6/16/1988
48 Hours spends two days investigating domestic violence. It talks to police officers and victims and looks at the role alcohol and drug abuse can take in domestic violence. It also looks at how aspects of the home environment can lead to abuse. It interviews battered men and women and looks at how Minnesota became the first state to treat domestic violence as a crime.
Watch Now:Amazon#7 - The Circleville Letters
Season 34 - Episode 35 - Aired 8/25/2021
An anonymous letter writer threatens to expose a town’s rumored secrets. Is anyone safe? "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#8 - The Black Swan Murder?
Season 34 - Episode 37 - Aired 9/8/2021
A former ballerina shoots her husband. Did she kill to save herself or was it out of spite? "48 Hours" contributor Jim Axelrod reports.
Watch Now:Amazon
#9 - Katrina Brownlee: The Good Cop
Season 35 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/26/2022
Her ex-fiancé — an officer with a badge — nearly killed her. She says police failed to protect her, so she got her own badge. “CBS Saturday Morning” co-host Michelle Miller reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#10 - Endgame
Season 20 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/6/2007
Janet March seemed to have it all - two beautiful children, a successful attorney husband, a dream house she designed herself and an aspiring art career. But appearances can be deceiving and on Aug. 29th, 1996, she was reported missing. What would follow was an international investigation that would last almost ten years. As Bill Lagattuta reports, the case ended up with two members of a cold case squad who would try to uncover the mystery of what exactly happened to Janet March and who was involved in her disappearance. After nearly nine years since the disappearance of Janet, her husband Perry March returned to Nashville, Tenn., to face murder charges. As he walked into the courthouse, there was no telling what was going through his mind.
Watch Now:Amazon
#11 - The Plot to Kill Jamie Faith
Season 35 - Episode 26 - Aired 4/9/2022
An airline manager is shot dead while walking his dog. Who was the puppet master plotting his murder? “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.
Watch Now:Amazon
#12 - Death on Safari
Season 35 - Episode 27 - Aired 4/16/2022
An American woman dies by gunshot on a safari trip. Was it murder or an accident? “48 Hours” contributor Debora Patta reports.
Watch Now:Amazon
#13 - Chasing Catherine Shelton (Part 1)
Season 35 - Episode 29 - Aired 4/30/2022
A journalist finds herself in a game of cat and mouse with a skilled former attorney dogged by mayhem and suspicions of murder. Why do bad things happen to the men in Catherine Shelton’s life? “48 Hours” contributor Jenna Jackson reports.
Watch Now:Amazon
#14 - Chasing Catherine Shelton (Part 2)
Season 35 - Episode 30 - Aired 5/7/2022
A journalist finds herself in a game of cat and mouse with a skilled former attorney dogged by mayhem and suspicions of murder. Why do bad things happen to the men in Catherine Shelton’s life? Follow “48 Hours” contributor Jenna Jackson’s quest for answers.
Watch Now:Amazon
#15 - A Man With a Past
Season 36 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/24/2022
A young woman vanishes. The prime suspect has a criminal past — he murdered his parents when he was a child. Did he kill again? "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.
Watch Now:Amazon
#16 - The Tree that Helped Solve a Murder
Season 36 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/10/2022
When a young mother disappears, DNA from a tree helps lead to her killer. "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#17 - Drawn to Murder
Season 22 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/29/2008
A teen is hunted for murder for over a decade. Now, some of the cops who helped put him away want to set him free. Susan Spencer reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#18 - Two Wigs, a Gun and a Murder
Season 18 - Episode 29 - Aired 5/21/2005
When Fred Jablin, a beloved Richmond University professor and devoted father, goes out to retrieve the morning newspaper on Oct. 30, 2004 and is gunned down in his driveway, his ex-wife, Piper Rountree, is the prime suspect. But, before investigators in Richmond, Va. can make their case, they must deal with a trail of confusing clues and an unusual relationship between Rountree and her sister, Tina Rountree. Correspondent Harold Dow reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#19 - The Mystery of Slide Mountain
Season 15 - Episode 20 - Aired 3/8/2002
Peter and Rinette Riella Bergna were a seemingly normal and happily married couple who lived in upscale Incline Village, Nev., near Lake Tahoe, Calif. He was an antiques dealer and she had just switched careers. Once a highly paid pharmaceutical consultant, she became an international tour guide, a job that paid much less and required weeks of travel at a time. When Rinette was killed in a mysterious crash on Slide Mountain, near Reno, Peter, her husband of 11 years, became the chief suspect in what police said was a murder investigation, Susan Spencer reports for 48 Hours.
#20 - Black Dahlia Confidential
Season 18 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/27/2004
48 HOURS MYSTERY has new clues in Los Angeles' most famous unsolved murder, the 57-year-old Black Dahlia case. The brutal murder of Elizabeth Short, a young, beautiful, struggling actress whose body was discovered in a vacant lot in January 1947, has baffled the Los Angeles Police Department for decades. Correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.
#21 - Secrets of the Well aka Cold Case Clay
Season 18 - Episode 20 - Aired 3/5/2005
Criminal investigator Clay Bryant, also known as "Cold Case Clay," earned his nickname from the LaGrange, Ga. district attorney's office. When 48 HOURS MYSTERY caught up with Bryant, he was working on two separate and unsolved murders with some strange similarities -- both bodies had been found in wells. Correspondent Susan Spencer reports.
#22 - Blood Feud
Season 18 - Episode 23 - Aired 4/9/2005
Nancy Seaman, a suburban Detroit elementary school teacher, killed her husband, Bob, with a hatchet in May 2004. Nancy says she killed him in self-defense and that she had been abused for more than 30 years. At Nancy's murder trial, the couple's youngest son testified on behalf of his mother, while the other son says his mother was never abused and that she simply snapped. Contributor Maureen Maher reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#23 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
Season 18 - Episode 26 - Aired 4/30/2005
American journalist Paul Klebnikov was shot nine times on July 9, 2004 in a contract killing as he left Forbes magazine's Moscow headquarters. Klebnikov, as editor-in-chief, wanted to expose the corruption in Russia's new economy, where the rich and powerful often operate beyond the law. As Klebnikov searched for the truth, did the secrets he uncovered cost him his life? Correspondent Susan Spencer reports.
Watch Now:Amazon#24 - The Other Woman
Season 17 - Episode 15 - Aired 1/7/2004
A prominent Mississippi heart surgeon dies under mysterious circumstances. In the sleepy Bible Belt town of Hattiesburg, what happened to Dr. David Stephens turned out to be the stuff that scandals are made of. His wife said he probably killed himself, but she was arrested for murder. 48 Hours' investigation with Correspondent Harold Dow takes us inside the operating rooms, courtrooms - and the bedrooms - of a town where "everybody knows your name." It's a classic tale of infidelity, gossip, tragedy - and possibly even murder.
Watch Now:Amazon#25 - Krystal's Courage
Season 14 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/1/2001
In the early morning hours of December 31, 1999, 10-year-old Krystal Surles and her friend Kaylene Harris, 13, were brutally attacked by a knife-wielding intruder, who slashed their throats. Kaylene died, but Krystal walked to a neighbor's house for help, and survived. Despite her injuries, she helped police identify the killer. Two days after the crime, police arrested a 35-year-old drifter named Tommy Lynn Sells. During questioning, Sells told police that he had committed dozens of murders over the past 20 years. An eighth-grade dropout who often made money as a carnie, he said he had committed his first murder in Hollywood, Calif., in a street fight. Sells said that he had killed people all over the country, from California to West Virginia. Harold Dow reports on a man who for 20 years got away with murder in a big way and the child whose courage put an end to the killings.
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