The FBI Files

In 1984, south Miami became the home for a sadistic serial killer. Posing as a fashion photographer, Christopher Wilder lured young women from shopping malls with promises of fame and fortune. Most ended up dead. As the FBI closed in around him, Wilder took off on a cross-country murderous rampage. The FBI added Wilder to their Most Wanted Fugitives program. The chase was on, and Wilder ultimately lost.

Larry Horn nearly got away with the perfect crime: a multiple murder-for-hire plot that was meticulously planned and executed. Horn's former wife, their 8-year-old son, and a live-in nurse were all brutally murdered by an assassin. In the absence of any significant clues, police in Maryland contacted the FBI to assist in the investigation.

A cunning predator was loose in rural South Carolinaabducting young women from their own front yards in broad daylight. He was also a sadist, calling one victim's family, taunting them, boosting and then dashing their hopes. Local investigators called on the FBI to help them find this clever serial killer. Like a game of chess, FBI profilers and forensic examiners were able to outwit the killer, and put an end to his deadly game of cat and mouse.

When a young boy and his mother were kidnapped and murdered by a vicious drug cartel, FBI agents in the field worked tirelessly to pierce the secretive drug underworld and unearth those involved. Their surveillance and investigative work uncovered a violent trail of murder and greed. FBI agents and forensic examiners pieced together the evidence needed to draw out and then crush the cartel.

Local law enforcement became stumped when the body of an unidentified young woman turned up on a highway in their small Pennsylvania town. They turned to the FBI labs. The hi-tech lab enabled investigators and agents to identify the victim. Knowing who she was allowed agents to reconstruct her every move. Though the road to finding her killer was twisted and long, agents persisted.

A serial killer's rampage was discovered when the bodies of several young women began turning up in shallow graves that dotted the Alaskan wilderness. The killer taunted his victims, hunting them like animals before shooting them down. He was at home in the rugged terrain. But the hunt for him began 3000 miles away, where FBI profilers mapped the criminal's mind.

On Mississippi's Gulf Coast, a judge and his politician wife were brutally murdered in their home. The killer left few clues and the investigation led nowhere. But the FBI was patiently waiting in the wings. Once it was determined that federal laws had been violated, they pounced on the investigation. They uncovered a corrupt local government and a group of violent criminal conspirators known as the Dixie Mafia, responsible for fraud, money laundering and murder.

Corruption in the New Orleans Police Department grew like a cancer in the early 1990's. Lured by the easy wealth of the narcotics industry, crooked cops began breaking the laws they were sworn to uphold. They would stop at nothing, including murder, to protect their rackets. When it became clear they could no longer police themselves, the FBI got involved. Putting their lives on the line, undercover agents devised a way to flush out the violent cops and restore trust in the city's police force.

Residents of the small town of Noel, Missouri were shocked when one of their banks was robbed. When the bank president was nowhere to be found, the residents were outraged. The FBI discovered that things are not always as they appear. Minute clues led the agents to the body of the bank president. With no suspects, the FBI relied on dogged determination and modern forensics. Agents slowly pieced together tiny shreds of evidence.

From May until July of 1984, Alton Coleman and his common law wife, Denise Brown, engaged in a gruesome crime spree that spanned six states and left eight people dead including children. The FBI coordinated law enforcement efforts throughout the entire country in order to track the couple. Their expertise in conducting manhunts for the nation's most horrible killers paid off. The couple was located and apprehended as they prepared to kill again.

A young mother and her infant son mysteriously disappeared from their home. The woman's husband was the only suspect, but he was eventually cleared. There was no solid evidence that a crime had even been committed. Six months later, a local farmer found the remains of the missing woman and her child. Both had been murdered. Agents and local police had only one tiny piece of evidence, an unidentified hair found in the murdered woman's car. The hair was too small for analysis.

In 1980, the FBI began a massive undercover operation, code named Safebet, that was designed to expose the Chicago Mafia's infiltration into the city's surrounding suburbs. Undercover agents quickly discovered that the mob had its tentacles spread into every facet of the law enforcement community. They unwittingly uncovered the murder of a wealthy socialite perpetrated by a jealous and greedy mob lawyer and covered up by the local police chief.

After a series of brutal bank robberies and murders in south Miami during the mid-1980's, the FBI embarked on an exhaustive eight-month investigation. With little evidence and no suspects, agents were willing to try anything to find the violent perpetrators. On April 11, 1986, agents conducting routine surveillance spotted the vehicle used in the bank robberies. They attempted to arrest the two suspects in the car. What followed was the bloodiest firefight in FBI history.

Beginning in summer of 1990, the bodies of several women began turning up in and around the city of Vienna, Austria. From an extensive investigation by the Viennese police, it was determined that these murders were the work of one sadistic predator. Europe was dealing with a serial killer. With no experience with this kind of predator, Viennese police turned to the FBI. FBI profilers were able to identify a suspect in the murders. More ominously, they linked this same killer to murders committed in the United States.

On August 20, 1980, an unseen sniper murdered two young black men as they jogged with two white women in Salt Lake City, Utah. Police threw all their resources into finding a killer who left almost no clues behind. They met with FBI agents and detectives from around the country who had similar racially motivated sniper slayings. A month later, working off little more than a possible license plate number, police in Kentucky arrested Joseph Paul Franklin but the man escaped from custody.

By April of 1995 in Washington, D.C., two officers had been shot and one had been murdered. Each had been sitting in their patrol cars when a man sneaked up and opened fire. The FBI was brought in to help catch the cop killer. Agents identified the man who was most likely the killer, but he was nowhere to be found. Months of surveillance operations around the country finally yielded a break; they found their suspect in Baltimore, MD.

Racial tensions in Buffalo in 1980 were at an all-time high. Six black males had been brutally murdered--two had their hearts cut out. The only thing connecting the victims was their ethnicity and the fact that each had been shot with .22 caliber bullets. Residents screamed for the police to stop this serial killer. With no suspects, local investigators turned to the FBI. Profilers were able to produce a psychological composite of the type of person the killer would most likely be. Their analysis paid off.