The Murder of Oakey “Al” Kite In May 2004, 53-year-old Oakey “Al” Kite Jr. was searching for a new tenant to rent the basement apartment of his Aurora, Colorado townhouse. What seemed like a normal decision quickly turned into one of the most disturbing unsolved murders in Colorado history. After placing an ad in the…

L Angela Hammond: The Missouri Abduction That Remains Unsolved In April 1991, 20-year-old Angela “Angie” Hammond vanished from a grocery store parking lot in Clinton, Missouri, while talking to her fiancé on a payphone. More than three decades later, her disappearance remains one of Missouri’s most haunting unsolved cases. On this episode of Forensic Tales,…

The Murder of Michelle O’Keefe: Convicted Without Evidence In February 2000, 18-year-old Michelle O’Keefe was just beginning her adult life. A college student from Hanford, California, Michelle dreamed of becoming an actress and had already started traveling to Los Angeles for small opportunities in the entertainment industry. On February 22, 2000, Michelle and a friend…

The Murder of Stacy Stites In the early morning hours of April 23, 1996, 19-year-old Stacy Stites vanished while driving to work in Bastrop, Texas. Hours later, her body was discovered along a rural roadside. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a belt. Almost immediately, investigators began searching for her killer. Eventually, DNA…

The Disappearance of Lauren Spierer In the early morning hours of June 3, 2011, 20-year-old Indiana University student Lauren Spierer vanished after a night out with friends in downtown Bloomington, Indiana. Despite surveillance footage, witness statements, and a detailed timeline of her final hours, Lauren has never been found. Lauren Spierer grew up in Scarsdale,…

The Murder of Dorothy Jane Scott: The Stalker Who Wouldn’t Stop Calling In 1980, a quiet young mother living in Orange County, California began receiving disturbing phone calls from a man who claimed he was watching her. At first the calls seemed harmless — awkward flirtation from someone who refused to give his name. But…

Lauren Agee: The Mysterious Death at WakeFest In July 2015, 21-year-old Lauren Agee traveled to Center Hill Lake in Tennessee for a weekend wakeboarding event known as WakeFest. Thousands of young people attended the festival each summer to camp, watch professional wakeboarders, and enjoy time on the lake. What was supposed to be a carefree…

The Oklahoma Peeping Tom Killer: How DNA and Footprint Evidence Solved an 18-Year Cold Case In the quiet town of Edmond, Oklahoma, a brutal home invasion in 1986 left one man dead and his girlfriend traumatized. The attack seemed random, senseless, and terrifying — the kind of crime that makes people wonder whether the killer…

The Robert Roberson Case: Shaken Baby Syndrome, Junk Science, and a Death Row Controversy In 2002, a two-year-old girl named Nikki Curtis was rushed to a hospital in Palestine, Texas. She was unresponsive, struggling to breathe, and quickly went into cardiac arrest. Despite doctors’ efforts to save her, Nikki died later that day. Within months,…

The Murder of Mackenzie Cowell It’s easy to believe that something like this could never happen in a place like Wenatchee, Washington. A quiet town. A tight-knit community. The kind of place where people feel safe raising their families. But in February 2010, that sense of safety was shattered when a teenage girl vanished. Her…