With the national homicide-clearance rate below 60 percent, the odds are good that eventually a detective—even an excellent one—will run into a dead end: The case that goes cold, that leaves a family grieving without justice and a detective grasping for answers, even after retirement.

Gary Leon Ridgway, who raped and murdered more than 49 women, was obsessed with deviant sex and visiting prostitutes. This, combined with his aggression and violence, were significant driving forces behind his murderous actions, says Mary Ellen O'Toole, a retired FBI senior profiler who interviewed Ridgway.

Move over fingerprints—an exciting new field of forensics has emerged: DNA phenotyping, where investigators interpret DNA left behind at a crime scene to make predictions about what the perpetrator might look like. We spoke with Ellen Greytak, a bioinformatics expert, to learn more about the use and limitations of this new science.

Tricia Griffith, who runs the web forum Websleuths, talks to A&E True Crime about her close encounter with Ted Bundy, how the online community dug into the Casey Anthony case and why she believes police should let amateur detectives help investigations.

Rebecca Morris, a New York Times bestselling author and high-school classmate of murder victim Dick Kitchel, returns to her hometown of Corvallis, Oregon to explore how the cold case murder changed the town and the lives of Kitchel's friends.

In 1991, four teenage girls were brutally murdered in a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. The killers have never been caught and the crime has never been solved.

Why do so many killers—Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz to name a few—abuse animals before targeting people? An expert provides insights on how the two behaviors are linked.

Tommy Ray, a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, came up with an idea that would revolutionize cold-case homicide investigations: making a game out of it.

The year 2017 was an explosive one on the crime-news front. But for the families of some long-ago crime victims, the past 12 months were especially memorable since their loved ones’ cases—some unsolved for decades—took dramatic new steps toward being solved

Thomas G. Martin, former supervisory federal agent for the U.S. Department of Justice, gives his take on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.