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On the Case with Paula Zahn Season 25 Episodes
Season 25 Episode Guide
17 Episodes 2022 - 2023
Episode 1
From Zero to Murder
Sun, Sep 4, 2022
Police investigating the brutal murder of a young woman ask themselves a chilling question: Was the ambush style shooting that ended the victim's life actually a terrifying case of mistaken identity?
Episode 2
Jenny's Story
Sun, Sep 11, 2022
A homicide and its disturbing details devastate a teenager's loving family, leaving a tight-knit community to wonder if their loved one could become the next victim.
Episode 3
Graduation to Murder
Sun, Sep 18, 2022
Atlanta, Georgia, June 7, 1995: A fourteen-year-old honor student at Ralph J. Bunche Middle School, Nacole Smith, was walking to school when she remembered that she left a school project at home. To save time, she took a shortcut through the woods back to her home. On the trail, she was raped and killed. Nacole's mother, Acqunellia Smith was devastated. Investigators worked the case but were unable to find a suspect. Years later in 2004, student Betty Brown of East Point was also raped on the woodsy trail, but this time, the man let her live. His DNA linked the suspect to Nacole's murder. She studied his face during the attack and the police sketch artists produced a detailed drawing of the suspect. There was still no match to the killer's DNA in the Federal database. In 2015, the crime was investigated again as a cold case. This time, the detectives used Forensic Genealogy to try to identify the attacker. They found him, a man named Kelvin Arnold. However, he had died on August 29, 2021 while in hospice care for liver and kidney failure, just four months before officials made the major break in the case and identified the rapist and murderer.
Episode 4
Mystery in Coachella Valley
Sun, Sep 25, 2022
Indio, California, Desert Star Ranch: Horse ranch owner Wendi Brant, age 45, was murdered on August 10, 1998 in a brutal assault in which she struggled with her killer. Her body was found later the same day. Police focus on her estranged husband, William I. Hillman, but there are other potential suspects that complicate the investigation and throw the case into a decades-long cold case.
Episode 5
Room 106
Sun, Oct 2, 2022
Two 1982 Murders: First murder: On June 25, 1982, Lee Gunsalus Rotatori, a 32-year old woman from Nunica, Michigan, was sexually assaulted and murdered in her hotel room in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Second murder: About July 1982, Thomas Oscar Freeman was murdered in Cobden, Illinois. Lee Rotatori's murder went unsolved for nearly 40 years, until it was announced by authorities in 2022 that the perpetrator has been identified as Thomas Oscar Freeman himself by using investigative genetic genealogy. As of 2022, Freeman's murder remains unsolved and the case remains open. Investigators believe the two murders are connected.
Episode 6
Changing Stories
Sun, Oct 9, 2022
Burley, Idaho, February 1995: When a young girl, 14-year-old Regina "Gina" Krieger, vanishes under mysterious circumstances, police must discover if she simply ran away or was actually the victim of something far more sinister. Her body was found two months later on the banks of the Snake River. For years, the police suspected her father, Dan Krieger, was to blame, but no in-depth investigation was done on the case which want cold for decades before 'heating up' again. Finally, Gilberto Flores Rodriguez was arrested and charged with the murder. In June 2021, he was sentenced to life in prison. Cody Thompson was a witness who was already behind bars for a different crime.
Episode 7
The Year of Fear
Sun, Oct 16, 2022
Deborah "Debi" Tomlinson Murder: On December 27, 1975, Debi Tomlinson, age 19, is found strangled to death in Mesa County, Grand Junction, Colorado. Suspicion swirls around her Uncle Tim. However, when detectives exhaust all viable leads, the case goes cold for decades. The case gets a short revival in 2008, and investigators re-interview Debi's Uncle Tim. He is excluded as a suspect by his DNA. Years later, a cold case team carries on the investigation and names Jimmy Dean Duncan, a career criminal, as the man responsible to Debi's rape and murder. However, he had died in the 1980s.
Episode 8
A Fairy Tale Ruined
Sun, Oct 30, 202242 mins
Captured on CCTV, a young woman is shot to death on her own driveway in the early morning while setting up for a garage sale.
Episode 9
Unthinkable Betrayal
Sun, Nov 13, 2022
On September 4, 1981, Jeff Slaten, age 15 and his brother Tim, age 12, were awakened by Lakeland, Florida, police. The boys were told that their mother, Linda Slaten, had been murdered. Investigators collected a rape kit and lifted a palm print from the windowsill where the killer had entered. They questioned a slew of suspects, but no one was charged, and the case went cold for 40 years. Prior to, and after Linda Slaten's murder, Tim's football coach, Joe Mills, would regularly drive Tim to and from football practice. Coach Joe became a role model for the young boy, who proudly hung up his football team photo in his room. In the photo, Coach Mills stood right behind Tim. Linda's sons spent decades living in fear of the man they called "The Monster". Nearly 40 years later, advances in DNA technology revealed Linda Slaten's likely killer: Coach Joe. "I looked up to this guy," Tim tells "48 Hours" contributor Jim Axelrod. "And I had a picture in my house ever since then, and never knew it was him." "He's a cold-hearted monster, that's for sure," says Jeff.
Episode 10
A Call for Answers
Sun, Nov 20, 2022
After police responders find a young mother who had been ruthlessly bound and murdered in her own bedroom, her family members challenge the team of homicide detectives to bring a heartless and cold killer to justice for the sake of the victim.
Episode 11
The Mother She Never Knew
Sun, Nov 6, 2022
Two young girls were raised in Louisiana by their grandmother who never told them that their mother had died young at age 23. Years later, the teenage girls, Christine and Donna, found photos of their mother, Mary Scott, who had been living in San Diego, California when they were young. They also learned, through old documents, that their mother had died in San Diego in 1969. Mary had been raped and strangled in her apartment. The original 1969 case went cold, through no fault of investigators. The homicide team worked hard, but in 1969, there was very little to track the culprit with. It was not until advent of genetic genealogy forensics that the investigative team in San Diego could zero in on a killer. On October 24, 2020, 75-year-old John Sipos was arrested, charged with the crime and found guilty.
Episode 12
A Bad Man Hurt Mommy
Sun, Dec 4, 2022
Santee, California, May 2, 1988: Diane Dahn, age 29, was murdered when an intruder came into her apartment. She was stabbed to death in front of her own son Mark, who was age 3. Diane managed to grab a strand of the man's hair, which was put into evidence. The case had stops and starts but basically went cold for 30 years until the hair strand was submitted for DNA testing. There was no match in the Federal CODIS database, but the investigators were able to make a match using forensic genetic genealogy. However, the man who killed her, Warren Robertson, had died in Indiana in 1999.
Episode 13
Blood-Stained Reputation
Sun, Dec 11, 2022
Police must analyze a long, emotional and rage-filled 911 call to see if it was made by by a distraught husband or a killer trying to cover his tracks.
Episode 14
New Year's Eve Nightmare
Sun, Dec 18, 2022
Pensacola, Florida: Shortly before 5:00 AM on January 1, 1985, Tonya Marie Ethridge McKinley, age 23, is found dead on the roadside. She is identified by the contents of her purse. Law enforcement homicide detectives are unable to solve the case in 1985, but they have the foresight to collect biological evidence from the victim and from a bloody towel left at the scene. The case goes cold for over 30 years until forensic genetic genealogy matches the evidence DNA to Daniel Leonard Wells, who is now age 57, of Pensacola. He is arrested and confesses to the murder, but within 24 hours, he commits suicide in his jail cell.
Episode 15
Disconnected Story
Sun, Jan 1, 2023
The Gail Herrera murder; Denver, Colorado; April 27, 1984: The Denver Police Department 911 Dispatch Center receives an emergency call from a frantic Gail Herrera that is truncated. In 1984, they do not have the technology to locate and send a unit to her residence. Hours later, an Avon saleswoman calls 911 with the report that when she tried to call Gail, the phone was answered by Gail's 3-year-old son, PJ, who said disturbing comments such as "Mommy's dead" and additional comments about putting bathroom tissues on Mommy's "owies". Police arrive to find Gail Herrera stabbed to death in a pool of blood. Gail's 3-year-old and his 1-year-old sister were unharmed. Due to the lack of evidence, the case goes cold. In 1995, DNA that had been collected from the 1984 crime scene is matched to Charles Wilson, aka Chuck Wilson, a former friend of Gail's husband Phil Herrera. In the early days of the 1984 investigation, Wilson's wife had lied to the investigators to give her husband an alibi. Over a decade later, she recants her lie. Charles Wilson is arrested, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He died in prison in 2021. Appearing on this show to speak with Paula Zahn are Gail's son, PJ Herrera; Gail's daughter, Michelle Herrera; Gail's brother, Gary Garcia; Gail's sister, Glenda Gomez; Denver Homicide Detective Joe DeMott, and others.
Episode 16
Confessions and Lies
Sun, Jan 8, 2023
Cherry Hills Village, Colorado: David Anderson was linked to the 1981 death of Sylvia Quayle in 2021 through his DNA that was left on a Vanilla Coke can. Exactly 41 years to the day that Sylvia Quayle was found murdered in her Cherry Hills Village home, her killer, David Anderson, was sentenced to life in prison.
Episode 17
Pretty Pink Bicycle
Sun, Jan 15, 2023
Vicki Lynne Hoskinson, age 8, disappeared on September 17, 1984 in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona while riding her pink-colored bicycle a few blocks to mail a birthday card to her aunt. She had been abducted by a stranger, Frank Atwood. The tip to police that cracked the case was when a physical education teacher, Sam Hall, provided Atwood's license plate number to the investigators. The day before the murder, the teacher had noticed that a man was watching school children. This made the teacher uneasy and he jotted down Atwood's Datsun 280Z vehicle's license plate number and watched the stranger until he left the school area. This valuable information led to the arrest of Frank Jarvis Atwood, age 28, from Los Angeles, who was on parole at the time. Atwood had a long history of sexual assaults against children. Atwood was arrested and convicted of Vicki's murder and was sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection on June 8, 2022. Seven months after Vicki's abduction, her partial remains were found by a hiker in a desert area 20 miles from her home.