72 Hours: True Crime

Three bodies are found in a house, arms tied behind their backs. Stab wounds to the neck. Bloody footprints in the upstairs hall. These are the clues to a killing spree that leaves a young woman, her boyfriend and an elderly church deacon dead.

A withered corpse is found half-buried in a field beside a theme park. Too decayed to identify properly, detectives have only the leathery fingers of one hand to work from. When they manage to get a print, they identify the dead woman as a missing wife and mother. The husband casts the finger of blame on his wife's conman lover.

A young single mother in small town Saskatchewan visits her local hospital in the midst of a panic attack. Her doctor sedates her. Then, she is certain, he rapes her. But she's a party girl and the man she's accusing is a respected and esteemed citizen. No one, it seems, will believe her story.

An aging hippy is going through bad times. His wife has left him for a lesbian lover, taking their kids. His cancer, once in remission, has returned. When he's found dead in his home with a gut full of antifreeze - "the sweet killer" - it's sad, but not shocking that he looked for an escape in suicide.

Stuck at home and bored, a retiree takes a job at a 24-hour convenience store. On her third night at work a customer finds her on the floor behind the register, face down in a pool of blood. Detectives determine that her last customer was also her killer. Only two witnesses saw that customer.

A Toronto real estate broker fails to return home at the end of the day. Her family can't find her. But the police do - dead in a utility closet in her downtown office. The DNA found on her body is tested against 150 different men. No match. The case runs cold. And then an office employee suggests police investigate a former maintenance worker who has slipped under the detective's radar.

The phone rings in the middle of the night and on the other end of the line, there is the awful sounds of an attack. The couple who received the call rush to its source only to discover a horrific scene. Two teenage sisters, from Taiwan studying English for the summer have been viciously attacked in their basement apartment.

A dead woman is found in a park. When her body is identified it's learned the deceased is a recently divorced landlady of a group home for transients. The list of suspects is long; the clues police have to follow are few. And the only potential witness to the crime? A woman who remembers a car in the area the night the body was found.

One cold February morning in the dark stairwell of a Toronto apartment building, a security guard makes a grotesque discovery: the dead body of a Filipina nanny. It's clear she's been savagely murdered and raped. Police analyze the list of potential suspects - the boyfriend, the employer, serial offenders in the community.

A gorgeous young model is bludgeoned to death in her downtown Toronto apartment. The wounds to her head are so severe police initially presume she's been shot. Evidence at the scene suggests to detectives that the killer gained access to his victim by posing as a telephone repairman.

A young couple hit the road, hitchhiking their way across North America. They're free spirits keen to explore life and the world. When the young woman stops phoning home, her father becomes alarmed. But police dismiss the case as normal behaviour for a pair of young travelers.

A Girl Guide leader is found dead in her home on the floor of her bedroom. As there is no obvious cause of death, police are suspicious. When an autopsy reveals a small bullet lodged within the victim's brain with an entry wound through the left eye, detectives learn they're investigating a murder.