The WORST episodes of Cold Case Files (1999)
Every episode of Cold Case Files (1999) ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Cold Case Files (1999)!
Unsolved crimes locked away in dusty file cabinets. Time is an ineffectual balm. Painful memories are left to a victim's loved ones. What happens when a killer gets away with murder? Thanks to the efforts of a special breed of modern detective, no one escapes the laws of justice - no matter how old the case.
#1 - Murder Illustrated/Blood Relations
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/19/1999
Nine years after police had to release the teenage suspect in a woman's murder due to lack of evidence, they find a new lead in the case. Twenty years after a young woman is murdered while babysitting her nephew, police are able to find DNA evidence that points to her killer.
#2 - Blood on the Badge/Bump in the Night
Season 3 - Episode 15 - Aired 4/9/2001
A prostitute who fights off a screwdriver-wielding man helps police track down a serial killer; and undercover agents acting as mobsters conduct an elaborate sting to solve a murder case that had gone cold for years. Then, detectives from three different police departments in Westchester County, New York team up to track down a serial killer.
#3 - Bodies In The Bay/'Til Death Do Us Part
Season 1 - Episode 24 - Aired 6/11/1999
A sunset boat ride in Florida leads to death for a vacationing woman and her two daughters, and police investigate a Texas man whose three wives all died in mysterious fashions.
#4 - A Killer Named Korn/The Night Watchman
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/12/2002
The conviction of a man found guilty of sexually assaulting and stabbing an Ohio woman to death is overturned because his Miranda rights were violated when he was arrested. And police spend 13 years looking for the killer of a Houston security guard who was shot 11 times when he tried to stop a car theft.
#5 - Frozen in Time/Little Girl Lost
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/28/1999
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.
#6 - The Missing and the Dead
Season 1 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/14/1999
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.
#7 - A Confession for Carmen/The Girls
Season 4 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/14/2002
A forensic scientist's painstaking examination of a rape kit helps solve the 15-year-old murder of a teenage girl. And when California investigators probe the murder of a 71-year-old man, they get help from the top suspect's former therapist.
#8 - The Bitemark/Justice for Eglena
Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/5/2002
A forensic dentist helps police nab a child killer by showing that the teeth marks on the killer's arms matches the teeth of the murdered boy. And telltale blood stains on a blue bandana solve the 10-year-old case of a teenage girl murdered.
#9 - The Calling Card/Carol's Diary
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/8/2002
Business cards found at a murder scene plus 38 years of advances in DNA technology reveal the killer of a 19-year-old New York woman. And, the lead suspect in a 22-year-old murder confesses after police take DNA samples from him.
#10 - The Flaming Gorge Falls/Caught in the Mail
Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/14/2001
A man suspected of the cold case murder of his wife and son hatches a new plot to kill his mother and father; and detectives solve the 20-year-old murder of a teenager by tricking her killer into licking an envelope, then extracting DNA from the saliva.
#11 - The DNA Link/The Secret Slide
Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 2/26/2001
Detectives from three different departments in Westchester County, NY team up to track down a serial killer; and a man known as the Bus Stop Rapist becomes the lead suspect decades after a woman is found murdered under a hotel bed in the case.
#12 - Killer in the County
Season 1 - Episode 15 - Aired 4/16/1999
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.
#13 - Deja Vu/Secret In The Well
Season 4 - Episode 15 - Aired 4/9/2002
A new fingerprint identification system helps detectives track down a killer after three years of searching. And a Georgia investigator gets to the bottom of a 16-year-old murder case when he discovers the victim's body -- in the bottom of a well.
#14 - Evidence Kit
Season 5 - Episode 28 - Aired 10/14/2007
A member of the Chicago Police Department launches the Women's DNA Initiative to fund the testing of rape kits; a deputy district attorney in Sacramento County, Calif., uses a DNA grant to find a killer.
#15 - Innocence Files
Season 5 - Episode 27 - Aired 9/20/2007
A look at the work of college students who take on the cases of jailed murderers who claim they're innocent. With exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to Innocence Projects at the University of Cincinnati and Texas Tech University, viewers watch as the students visit the inmates, track down key witnesses, and seek DNA testing that could prove their clients' innocence. We focus on the cases of Anthony Graves, a Texas death row prisoner, and Glen Tinney, a mentally ill Ohio inmate who pleaded guilty but now says he didn't do the crime.
#16 - Smoky Mountain Mystery / A Drop of Blood
Season 4 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/28/2002
A North Carolina man looking to clear his conscience gives police the information they need to solve a murder. And Indiana police are baffled by the murder of an 86-year-old woman, found dead in her bedroom.
#17 - Friend of the Family/Remains of Murder
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/22/2002
The killer of an 11-year-old girl is brought to justice when his ex-girl friend tells police he confessed the crime to her. And a mysterious set of bones puts police hot on the trail of a man who killed a teenage boy 17 years before.
#18 - The Hit makers/Favor For A Friend
Season 3 - Episode 23 - Aired 6/4/2001
A scheme to bribe a country music magazine to manipulate the charts leads to murder in Nashville and a 13-year hunt for the killer; and a murderer's plan to hide his gun is foiled when the man who buried the evidence for him spills the beans to cops.
#19 - Portrait of a Killer/The Tortured Truth
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 4/30/1999
The accidental discovery of a human scalp leads to the conviction of a man for murder 18 years after the killing. And a teenager who likes to kidnap younger boys and break their bones, kills one and tortures another.
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#20 - The Execution of Michael Johnson
Season 5 - Episode 26 - Aired 7/26/2007
Bill Kurtis narrates this look at the last 48 hours before the scheduled execution of Michael Johnson, convicted in the senseless killing of Jeff Wetterman 11 years earlier. Our cameras capture the rising tension as we interview Johnson the day before his date with death and as his family fights to save him. Will Johnson die, or will he receive a last-minute stay of execution? In a shocking turn of events, the story ends in a way no one could have foreseen.
#21 - The Taunt / Death in Deadwood
Season 5 - Episode 14 - Aired 7/29/2006
A serial rapist seals his own fate when he sends a taunting letter to police, who use the DNA extracted from the saliva in the envelope's seal to track him down. And when a man is found dead in South Dakota, his head bashed in by a 50-pound rock, investigators go on a 20-year search for the killers--a man and woman who were part of a free-loving hippie group and are known only by the names "Outlaw" and "Inlaw."
#22 - The Closers/Caught by an Eyelash
Season 4 - Episode 24 - Aired 6/11/2002
A bloody dagger and a phone tap help detectives solve a 20-year-old murder case. And DNA taken from an eyelash found on a dead prostitute's body brings a killer to justice.
#23 - The Tourniquet/Burning Desire
Season 4 - Episode 16 - Aired 4/16/2002
DNA evidence found on a murder victim whose body had been dumped in a Dairy Queen drive-thru leads to the arrest of Houston's notorious tourniquet killer.
#24 - The Monster/A Cousin's Promise
Season 4 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/19/2002
After an Arkansas man confesses to the brutal murders of two women, police are shocked when the DNA evidence shows that he isn't the killer. And a DNA profile on a scarf helps solve the 21-year-old case of an Ohio woman who was raped and strangled.
#25 - The Bedroom Basher
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/19/2002
A California jury convicts Kevin Green of raping and bludgeoning his wife, despite his claims of innocence. But 15 years later, police nab a serial killer known as the Bedroom Basher and discover that Green may have been wrongly jailed after all.