48 Hours - Season 17

Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns, two brilliant best friends who once wrote a screenplay about two boys wrongfully accused of murder, are now caught up in a real-life murder mystery. They are accused of murdering Rafay's family, from the upper middle-class community of Bellevue, Wash., near Seattle. The brutal murders took place in July 1994. Correspondent Peter Van Sant reports on this 10-year mystery that led investigators to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and involved secret videotaped operations by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

In July 1957 two young police officers on a routine traffic stop in El Segundo, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, were gunned down and murdered by a man who the police did not know had just committed robbery and rape at a nearby lover's lane. The gunman fled, triggering one of the largest manhunts in California's history. It would take detectives and modern science close to half a century to bring this case to a startling conclusion.

Jennifer Blagg and her six-year-old daughter, Amy, suddenly disappear in Nov. 2001 and their close-knit community of Grand Junction, Colo., doesn't know what to think. Michael Blagg, husband and father, comes home from work to find a bloody bed and an empty jewel box, but no Jennifer and Amy. And, although the Blaggs' marriage seems to be perfect, authorities find out otherwise. Many suspicions and allegations surround Blagg, but only a few facts point to his possible involvement in their disappearance and/or murder.

Fourteen-year-old Michael Crowe of Escondido, Calif. confessed to murdering his 12-year-old sister, Stephanie, in her bedroom in January 1998. But was he telling the truth or was it another man, a drifter named Richard Tuite, who stabbed Stephanie while she slept? 48 HOURS

Deborah Gardner, a beautiful young American Peace Corps volunteer from Tacoma, Wash., was murdered while on assignment in the South Pacific island nation of Tonga. Dennis Priven, a 24-year-old fellow Peace Corps worker from Brooklyn, N.Y., who friends say was obsessed with Gardner, was charged with her murder by Tongan police. But in a bizarre turn of events, Priven avoided going to prison for Gardner's murder and received a clean record from the Peace Corps. Many today are left wondering if justice was served and if the Peace Corps was trying to protect the murderer.

Amber Frey's father, Ron, tells contributor Maureen Maher, "A part of Scott was great in her mind. For that five-week window, that was the greatest thing that ever happened in [Amber's] life."

Cherry Hammock of Crawford County, Ga. says she killed her husband, Jay, in self-defense in September 2001, but prosecutors say it was murder.

Maria Cruz, a successful, 35-year-old New York City financial analyst, disappeared on the afternoon of April 13, 2003. For 10 months, police were unable to find Cruz, but the trail of evidence finally pointed to a man named Dean Faiello, who posed as a doctor and is believed to have treated Cruz for a mouth infection the day she went missing. In February 2004, acting on a tip from Faiello's former lover, Greg Bach, authorities found Cruz's body stuffed in a suitcase and buried in the cement in the garage of Faiello's former home in Newark, N. J. Just one month later -- 11 months after Maria Cruz was reported missing -- Dean Faiello was under arrest for Cruz's murder in Costa Rica.

It happened in the summer of 2002 during a wild July 4th weekend of partying in the wealthy community of Newport Beach, Calif. When it was over, three teenage boys would be accused of rape and face the prospect of spending life in prison. The critical evidence was a videotape the defendants made themselves. Correspondent Bill Lagattuta has the first network television interviews with the three defendants -- Greg Haidl, Keith Spann and Kyle Nachreiner -- and the alleged victim, "Jane Doe,"

48 HOURS MYSTERY has new clues in Los Angeles' most famous unsolved murder, the 57-year-old Black Dahlia case. The brutal murder of Elizabeth Short, a young, beautiful, struggling actress whose body was discovered in a vacant lot in January 1947, has baffled the Los Angeles Police Department for decades.

In August 1993, 13-year-old Eric Smith made national headlines as a red-haired, freckle-faced killer. Smith's looks and age were so completely at odds with the horrific crime -- he was convicted of murdering four-year-old Derrick Robie -- that he nearly got away it. Until now, Smith has never explained why he killed Robie. Police investigators and veteran prosecutors found it difficult to comprehend that this child could kill another child in such a brutal way. CBS News' Dan Rather reported on this story 11 years ago and revisits it as Smith becomes eligible for parole and speaks out for the first times about the crime.

New evidence that investigators hope will lead to a break in the almost eight-year-old unsolved murder case of JonBenet Ramsey is reported by correspondent Erin Moriarty for 48 HOURS MYSTERY.

When Marlene and Steve Aisenberg awoke in their home outside Tampa, Fla., on a November morning in 1997, their five-month-old daughter, Sabrina, was missing from her crib. Immediately, the Aisenbergs reported their child missing and the police began to search for the baby. But soon, the investigation began to focus on themselves as authorities became convinced that the parents knew much more about their baby's disappearance than they were saying.

48 HOURS has obtained never-before-seen videotape shot by the terrorists who took 1,200 people hostage on Sept. 1, 2004 for three days at a school in Beslan, Russia. Roughly half of the hostages are believed to have been children. Correspondent Peter Van Sant speaks to the hostage negotiator, Ruslan Aushev, who is seen in the new video negotiating with the terrorists' leader. The footage also captures the dramatic moment when the terrorists let mothers leave captivity with their babies, some of whom were forced to leave their older children behind.

Joe Jackson, father of superstar Michael Jackson, believes racism is a motivational factor in the case against his son. 48 HOURS MYSTERY has obtained the rights to an exclusive interview with Jackson's parents, Joe and Katherine Jackson, on the eve of their son's trial. Jackson's parents weigh in on the accusations against their son.

Texas multimillionaire Herb Vest is searching for who killed his father almost 60 years ago. Twenty-five-year-old Harold "Buddy" Vest was found hanging in his cabinet shop in June 1946 in the small town of Gainesville, Texas, and although the police ruled his death a suicide at the time, Herb always thought there was more to it. Now, he has launched his own investigation - hiring a team of experts to search for the truth. Vest receives a mysterious letter that claims that someone who was on the Gainesville police force was responsible for Buddy's death. Will Vest find his father's supposed killer?

Frieda Hanimov was a woman in desperate fear of losing custody of her kids because she believed the judge ruling on her case was corrupt. Panicked and pregnant, she told authorities of her suspicions and agreed to go undercover. Wearing a wire, she went alone into a warehouse to try to prove that New York State Supreme Court Judge Gerald Garson was corrupt.

CBS News' 48 HOURS investigates the shadowy underworld of human sex slaves and rescues a young woman. Correspondent Peter Van Sant infiltrates the billion dollar business of human trafficking to reveal how easy it is in the 21st century to purchase a human being -- not for an hour, but forever -- and bring her to the United States. 48 HOURS MYSTERY.

John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer, was convicted of murdering his estranged wife, Sandy, in 1999, though he has always maintained his innocence. But after Maloney's conviction, the story took an unexpected turn when the prosecutor in his case, Joe Paulus, pled guilty to accepting bribes to fix more than 20 cases. This question now is, did Maloney get a fair trial, and, if not, should he get a new one?

Nancy Seaman, a suburban Detroit elementary school teacher, killed her husband, Bob, with a hatchet in May 2004. Nancy says she killed him in self-defense and that she had been abused for more than 30 years. At Nancy's murder trial, the couple's youngest son testified on behalf of his mother, while the other son says his mother was never abused and that she simply 'snapped.' k.

Chris Pittman shot his grandparents, Joe and Joy Pittman, at close range and then set their house on fire. According to family members, Chris, a well-mannered and shy 12-year-old, who lived with his grandparents, loved them more than anything. So, why would Chris kill them? Is the anti-depressant, Zoloft, which he was prescribed shortly before the murders, really to blame, as his lawyers claim?

Dr. O.C. Smith, a popular medical examiner in Memphis, Tenn., was apparently attacked on June 1, 2002, as he was leaving work. He was found wrapped head-to-toe in barbed wire with a bomb strapped to his neck. Dr. Smith survived, but he lives in fear that his assailant is waiting to attack again. Who wants to harm the city's medical examiner?

American journalist Paul Klebnikov was shot nine times on July 9, 2004 in a contract killing as he left Forbes magazine's Moscow headquarters. Klebnikov, as editor-in-chief, wanted to expose the corruption in Russia's new economy, where the rich and powerful often operate beyond the law. As Klebnikov searched for the truth, did the secrets he uncovered cost him his life?

Professor Thomas Murray of Kansas State University is a very smart man, but is he smart enough to get away with the murder of his ex-wife?

When Fred Jablin, a beloved Richmond University professor and devoted father, goes out to retrieve the morning newspaper on Oct. 30, 2004 and is gunned down in his driveway, his ex-wife, Piper Rountree, is the prime suspect. But, before investigators in Richmond, Va. can make their case, they must deal with a trail of confusing clues and an unusual relationship between Rountree and her sister, Tina Rountree.

A man wanted for murder pretends to be a New York Times reporter.