The WORST episodes of Cold Case Files
Every episode of Cold Case Files ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Cold Case Files!
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 - Killings on Christmas Eve
Season 6 - Episode 2 - Aired 3/6/2017
A family torn apart by their grandparents’ murders. Two decades later, a cold case detective takes on the case that has haunted him since he was a child.
#2 - A Deadly Pattern/A Desperate Housewife
Season 5 - Episode 23 - Aired 11/18/2006
When a woman is found murdered in her mobile home, police make two shocking discoveries--her husband may not only have been the killer, but he may have also killed his first wife 31 years before. And after an Oregon man is shot dead, the case takes an unusual twist when one of the investigating detectives has an affair with the chief suspect--the dead man's wife.
#3 - Murder He Wrote/Caught By the Past
Season 5 - Episode 24 - Aired 12/31/2006
Guns found dumped in a pond outside of Atlantic City, N.J., help police to solve the 15-year-old murder of Detroit cab company owner. And the rape and murder of an Atlanta TV station receptionist goes cold for 20 years before the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) links a man with three prior burglary convictions to the crime.
#4 - 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.
#5 - Silent Witness/Innocence Lost
Season 1 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/21/1999
The murder of scientist Helena Greenwood, who was helping to develop DNA forensic technology when she died, is solved 12 years later with the help of DNA evidence. And a Los Angeles County prosecutor uses criminal profiling to nab the notorious South Bay Rapist, who abducted and raped six young girls.
#6 - 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.
#7 - Family Secret/Blood Trail
Season 1 - Episode 23 - Aired 6/4/1999
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.
#8 - 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.
#9 - 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.
#10 - Left for Dead/On the Case
Season 5 - Episode 25 - Aired 12/31/2006
A detective in California tracks down a prostitute's killer with the help of a key piece of evidence--fingerprints lifted off two beer bottles found at the murder scene. And two persistent cold case detectives in Kansas City, Mo., use DNA analyses to investigate the 1990 murder of a woman and the death of a man killed in a car crash in 1988.
#11 - 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.
#12 - Little Girl Lost
Season 6 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/27/2017
Halloween in a small town is canceled indefinitely when a young girl is kidnapped and killed on her way home from a costume party.
#13 - 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.
#14 - She Never Came Home
Season 6 - Episode 3 - Aired 3/13/2017
The case of a gruesome stabbing death of a bullied teenager remains unsolved for 27 years – until a rookie cold case detective sees a new clue in an old crime scene photo, leading her to a killer that everyone thought could not possibly have committed the crime.
#15 - Sweethearts, Silenced
Season 6 - Episode 4 - Aired 3/16/2017
A killer authors a book about his con-man past that becomes the key to solving a 29-year-old cold case of two high school sweethearts–and three other cold case murders–leading police to believe he could be the Zodiac Killer.
#16 - The Night Shift
Season 6 - Episode 5 - Aired 5/25/2017
College student Brad Perry shows up to work his graveyard shift at the gas station and is never seen alive again. It will take twenty years, the uncovering of an illegal drug ring in a squeaky-clean Mormon town, and the development of new forensic technology to solve this cold case.
#17 - Officer Down
Season 6 - Episode 6 - Aired 6/1/2017
The longest running cold case of a law enforcement officer in the United States was the murder of Sheriff’s Lt. Joe Clark – shot execution style in his own home. Given his tough stance on drug crime, detectives become convinced his death is the beginning of a drug war. It takes 33 years for them to discover the truth.
#18 - Circle of Friends
Season 6 - Episode 7 - Aired 6/8/2017
When 18-year-old Shannon Siders’ body is found in the woods, everyone in the small town of Newaygo, Michigan, becomes a suspect – but no one is convicted of the crime. It takes 22 years for a special cold case unit – along with the help of the entire town – to solve Shannon’s murder.
#19 - A Family Secret
Season 6 - Episode 8 - Aired 6/15/2017
A 17-year-old girl from a small Kentucky town goes missing, then is found strangled two weeks later; a police investigation into the crime uncovers a terrible family secret.
#20 - A Family Cursed
Season 6 - Episode 9 - Aired 6/22/2017
Two unsolved murders of loved ones plague a family; detectives uncover a hidden crime scene that may help solve the 13-year-old cold case.
#21 - A Killer Slips Away
Season 6 - Episode 10 - Aired 6/29/2017
Police learn the key witness in the stabbing death of a beloved aunt was an imposter; a return to the crime scene reveals a clue hidden in plain sight.
#22 - The Voice in the Lake
Season 7 - Episode 1 - Aired 8/20/2021
When 31-year-old real estate appraiser Mike Williams mysteriously vanishes while duck hunting in the Florida swamps in December of 2000, authorities suspect he accidentally drowned. For sixteen years Mike's disappearance remains a mystery. The case heats up when police receive a distress call from the victim's wife in 2016. Featuring interviews with detectives and the victim's mother as well as rare footage of the crime scene and recorded audio confessions with the accused, the episode explores how the disappearance unfolded into a sinister plot to cash in on millions of dollars of life insurance.
#23 - Devil at the Door
Season 7 - Episode 2 - Aired 8/27/2021
When 36-year-old computer programmer Lisa Valdez fails to show up for work, her apartment manager finds her brutally murdered in her tiny studio. Her body is riddled with stab wounds, the walls are covered in blood. Evidence shows the killer cut off her long, dark hair, taking it as an apparent trophy. Detectives ask, could she be the victim of a brutal serial killer? Or was Lisa murdered by someone she knew? Clues left on an answering machine point to a co-worker who was known to have feelings for Lisa, but two bloody fingerprints left on a toilet seat clear him as a suspect, and the case goes cold for thirteen years. Things heat up when a detective gets a hit during a search of the state's DNA database, leading to an unsuspected person from Lisa's past.
#24 - Missing in Altoona
Season 7 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/3/2021
When Sherry Leighty goes missing in 1999, her family is left wondering how a dedicated mother of three could vanish without a trace. A decade later, the cold case heats up when Sherry's sister launches a social media campaign to help solve her sister's mysterious disappearance. An online tip unearths the killer truth and a sinister family secret. This episode features an interview with Shelly Leighty, who never gave up on solving her sister's case, along with rare home video of Sherry and her family not long before she disappeared.
#25 - Innocence Stolen/Danger at the Door
Season 5 - Episode 12 - Aired 7/8/2006
A district attorney uses a clever technique--a "John Doe indictment"--to give law enforcement officials the time they need to track down the Schoolgirl Rapist from Rochester, N. Y. And prosecutors reluctantly decide not to prosecute their lead suspect in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl because they have only circumstantial evidence. But 12 years later, the cold case squad reopens the case, hoping DNA evidence will prove the supect's guilt.