Series / Forensic Files

No Witnesses. No Leads. No Problem.

Forensic Files (also known as Medical Detectives, Mystery Detectives, Murder Detectives, and Cause of Death) is a crime documentary series that aired from 1996 to 2011 as a Dramatic Half-Hour.

It was narrated for almost its entire run (channel hopping from TLC to Court TV/truTV to HLN, and even airing on NBC as a summer Midseason Replacement in 2002) by Peter Thomas. As the title implies, the show focuses on forensic investigations, mostly on murders.

On October 1, 2019, a revival of the show titled Forensic Files II was announced, which premiered on February 23, 2020.

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Forensic Files includes examples of:

• Adaptation Distillation: You're only getting the important details the show was given at the time of its airing. Additional details about the victims, cases, and the killers often require an internet search.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • The case of the episode "Memories" took place in 1979-1980 (although was not solved for nearly twenty years) and when the victim had her previously lost memory jogged by some pictures in a baby magazine. The pictures she was looking at, on closer inspection, were of actress Kelly Preston and her daughter Ella Blue, who was born in 2000.
  • The case documented in "Photo Finish" took place in 1995, yet the vehicle that Linda Sobek is shown modeling with is a Lexus RX, which was still in the design stage at the time and wasn't sold in the U.S. until 1998.
• Animal Reaction Shot: Invoked in "Disrobed" with a shot of a horse raising its head being paired with the sound of a gunshot.
• Bait-and-Switch: The opening of "Postal Mortem" introduces a woman saying goodbye to her colleague and entering her office, suggesting that she’s the episode’s victim, only for the woman to rush out of her office after the building shakes from what the narrator reveals to be an explosion... at which point the camera pans to a Dead-Hand Shot of her colleague.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: In "Grave Danger", when Clay Daniels' mother-in-law calls him an asshole, the "hole" part is bleeped out while "ass" is left uncensored.
• Bluff the Imposter: This happens in "If I Were You" where the suspect was tricked into believing that he had forgotten to do something while he was posing as the victim.
• Call-Back:
  • "Dressed to Kill" contains one for the episode "Beaten by a Hair". It shows the key evidence Hadden Clark left behind that led to the conviction of the first murder that he committed.
  • "The Music Case" had a little girl in Minnesota murdered in her home and authorities initially believed that the murderer from "Tooth or Consequences" killed her as well. Turns out, someone else committed the crime.
  • In a more roundabout example, "Dinner and a Movie" is about how the murderer used the real-life movie Blackout as an inspiration for covering up his wife's time of death. Blackout was loosely based on the John List murders, which the show had previously covered in "The List Murders," though the show doesn't acknowledge this.
• Cool Old Guy: Narrator Peter Thomas, a man who had been doing voiceover work for 61 years at the time and sounded every second of it.
• Content Warnings: invoked When the series still aired on Court TV, several of the more gruesome/horrifying episodes ("Root of All Evil", "Where the Blood Drops", "Pure Evil", "Treads and Threads", etc.) had a warning before it aired. These have been removed from almost all of the HLN airings.
• Convenient Photograph: One episode had detectives realizing that a young woman's fall from a cliff was in fact murder when they reviewed the pictures taken of the outing with her supposed friends and noticed (a) How lethargic she appeared in the pictures from later in the day, and (b) The body language of one of the friends in one of the final pictures taken before she supposedly fell. Analysis revealed that rather than them simply walking along the cliffside, he was actually preparing to shove her over—as well as looking around to make sure no one was watching—and that her dazed appearance was because she'd been drugged so that she wouldn't put up a fight.
• Crossover:
  • "The List Murders" shows how America's Most Wanted was able to accurately provide an aged-up bust of John List after nearly two decades that was able to lead to his identification and arrest. John Walsh even appears as one of the people being interviewed.
  • Multiple episodes ("Stick 'em Up" about the murder of Dan Short, "Horse Play" about the murder of Shannon Mohr, "Stranger in the Night" about the murder of Dorothy Donovan, "Water Logged" about the murders of Joan Rogers and her daughters Michelle and Christie) serve as sequels to episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, telling the rest of the story as and after the mystery was solved.
• Distant Finale: The reruns on HLN include updates for the older episodes when applicable.
• Double-Meaning Title: The Forensic Files II episode "Church Lady" refers to both the victim (who worked there) and the killer (a parishioner).
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Some of the early episodes included topics like "Legionnaires' Disease" and "Fatal Fungus". Medical mysteries that didn't involve intentional poisoning would become a rare occurrence. In addition, the dramatization footage was shot in black-and-white.
  • The early episodes contain uncensored crime scene and autopsy photos. Later episodes would censor these photos.
• Fanservice: The series wasn't above this if it fit the context of the episode. Examples include showing bikini-clad women on beaches if the story took place in a resort area, and pole-dancing reenactments if the case centered around an exotic dancer. One particularly notable example is "Window Watcher," which repeatedly showcases a reenactment of a woman showering and getting dressed throughout the episode.
• Foreshadowing: An establishing shot in "The Alibi" emphasizes the straight-lacedness of the area with a "Jesus is the Way" sign on a tree. In the upper right corner of the frame is a pair of street signs reading Pee Dee and Register, the name of the murderer.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Most of the episodes focus on murder cases or other crimes, such as arson. However, once in a while, there is an episode that focuses on neither, such as:
  • "Breaking the Mold" is about a family suffering from a mysterious illness.
  • "Deadly Curve" focuses on a car accident that killed three Secret Service agents in a motorcade escorting the Queen of England during a visit.
  • "Visibility Zero: Amtrak Sunset Limited Train Crash" focuses on a 1993 train crash in Alabama.
  • "Flashover: The 1987 Kings Cross Underground" focuses on a fire that killed several people at King's Cross.
  • "Core Evidence" focuses on a batch of Odwalla apple juice that was contaminated with E. coli.
  • "Hack Attack" focuses on the disastrous 1996 computer crash at Omega Industries and the efforts by investigators to discover the cause.
  • "Legionnaire's Disease" is about an outbreak of the titular disease.
  • "Killer Fog" focuses on finding who's responsible for the heavy fog that caused a 99-car pileup on I-75 in Tennessee.
  • "Foreign Body" is about the identification and tracking of Mad Cow Disease.
• Glitter Litter: One episode details a case where traces of glitter are used to prove the victim was in a suspect's car after she was murdered.
• Hollywood Silencer: In "If I Were You", when the killer shoots his victim with a silenced pistol, the classic "fwip" sound is used.
• Hope Spot: One episode goes to a commercial break asking if the missing person was still alive. This question is answered immediately after the show returns; the victim's remains were found in a ravine.
• Insurance-Motivated Murder: A lot of the murder cases covered on the show usually had this as the motive for why the crime was committed.
• Long-Runners: The series aired 404 episodes from 1996-2011. A revival series premiered in 2020.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The opening trailer for "Runaway Love" notes that the victim's ex-husband and daughter were missing, implying that the ex may have murdered her and kidnapped their daughter. In the actual show, it's quickly revealed that the reason they couldn't find the ex-husband was because he'd been away on a business trip and was surprised to find police at his home.
  • In "Breaking News," about the murder of a young TV news producer, Peter Thomas ominously intones "But something was missing: her young son" just before the episode goes into commercial. After the break, he reveals that the boy was spending the summer with his father.
• Noodle Implements: The teaser for later episodes almost always ended with Peter Thomas listing what sounded like random, bizarre items that forensic scientists would end up using to crack the case (something like how a shred of paper, half a shoelace, and a dead beetle led police to the killer).
• Product Placement: Played with: the show doesn't censor name-brands when they appear in crime scene pictures, but doesn't draw attention to them either.
• Pun-Based Title: Most of the episode titles have some sort of double meaning or play on words. Some of the more groan-inducing ones include: "Sim-ilar Circumstances", "Pure Bread Murder", and "Sworded Scheme".
• Red Herring: Quite a few initial suspects have turned out to be innocent, despite admittedly odd or suspicious behavior.
  • "Home Evasion": A woman is shot by an unknown assailant upon returning home from work and all the signs pointed to the husband. Their marriage was on the brink of collapse, both parties were cheating on each other, he was the beneficiary of her life insurance policy, he would get full custody of their son whom he was close with, and he was the first to find her after she was shot. It turns out she was a victim of one of the most bizarrely random crimes in the show's history: a guy who lived miles away from them was about to be sent to prison for raping his three-month-old daughter, and decided to murder someone at random to avoid being abused by the other prisoners. Despite searching high and low for a connection between the two, investigators found nothing with the narrator mentioning her husband would've been the victim had he arrived home first. The husband himself even admitted he understood why he was the prime suspect.
  • "Knots" from Forensic Files II: A young woman is killed in her apartment and most of the episode is spent focusing on her ex-convict friend whom she rejected just prior to the murder. Decades later, the DNA is put into CODIS and it turns up a match, the apartment manager who was briefly mentioned offhand.
• Retraux:
  • In "Revenge", some of the dramatization footage was shot in black-and-white (much like the earlier episodes) and was made to resemble the pre-Season 7 episodes.
  • Inverted with the HLN and CNN reruns of the earlier episodes, which have been edited to resemble the newer episodes.
• Revisiting the Cold Case: Several episodes are re-enactments of crimes that went cold decades ago.
• Spoiler Title:
  • One episode has Jenna Verhaalen's murder linked to three possible suspects: her boyfriend, a fellow neighbor, and a maintenance man working in her apartment. However, the episode's title is "Low Maintenance", practically giving away which of the three suspects was actually involved in the murder.
  • One episode focuses on a man who died from poisoning, and suspicion fell on one of his coworkers because that same type of poison was found in his workplace. However, the episode in question is entitled "Til Death Do We Part", which kind of gives away that the real murderer was the man's wife.
  • One episode mentions the disappearance of a wife and infant son. The episode seems to toy with the possibility that her husband was the culprit, but given that the episode's title is "A Woman Scorned", the viewer is likely waiting for the narrator to start talking about the husband's ex-girlfriend.
• Taught by Television: Some episodes, such as "All Butt Certain" and "Grave Danger", are about situations where either a victim, witness, suspect, family member, friend, acquaintance, or even a member of law enforcement used some technique that learned from watching a TV series or movie to either solve the case or commit a crime.
• Theme Naming: Most of the episode titles relate to a clue that leads to the arrest of a suspect.
• Trauma Swing: In episodes where a survivor was available for interview, the B-roll tends to include a shot or two of them using a swingset, no matter how old they are.
• The Un-Reveal: For obvious reasons, some episodes do not reveal the name of a certain element or method that was crucial in committing the murder. For example:
  • In "Bitter Poison" where the suspect tampered with some Coca-Cola bottles, which were used to poison his neighbors.
  • In "Death Play" where a young woman killed her father by poisoning him with a substance found in her high school chemistry class.
  • In "Cats, Flies and Snapshots" where a man killed his estranged wife after purchasing a book on how to commit a murder and get away with it.
  • "Wired for Disaster" doesn't disclose the specific combination of explosives used in the bomb, except to say it was strong enough to indicate a motive in and of itself.
• Urban Legends: Meta-example. There is a persistent rumor that the series was revived in 2016 for a 15th season and began airing new episodes. In actuality, the series did in fact end in 2011. HLN contributed to the confusion by advertising "all-new" episodes, when in fact they were just episodes that hadn't aired on the channel. HLN would then, with full intents and purposes, prove the rumor true and indeed revive the series in 2020.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • "Waste Mis-Management" never clarifies who the body mistaken for Glenda Fuch was, or even how she died.
  • In "Insulated Evidence", it's never stated who the anonymous tipster was that alerted cops to murderer Joe Luna.
  • In "With Every Breath," it's never mentioned whether Merrill Bahe and Florena Woody's infant son survived the hantavirus that killed his parents.
• Where Are They Now: Reruns of the older episodes featured on HLN include an update that offers information on the perpetrators—if they've died in prison/been executed/been released, etc.

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