Cold Case Files: Silent Witness/Innocence Lost
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Bill Kurtis
David Bartick
Mike Buttitta
Stephen Chaput
David J Decker
Marie Dibernardo
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Examines "cold cases" -- homicides and other crimes that remain unsolved or are solved many years after the crime. "Silent Witness" examines the 1985 murder of British scientist Helena Greenwood. Greenwood, who had been working on the new forensic technology of DNA profiling, was murdered in the front yard of her San Diego home. Police discovered that a year earlier she had been sexually assaulted and was scheduled to testify against the suspect, David Frediani. Even without Greenwood's testimony, Frediani was convicted of sexual assault, but prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to charge him with murder -- until 1997. "Innocence Lost" examines the case of a young girl who was abducted and raped in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County in 1996. Within six months, five other girls had been raped. Despite thousands of leads, the cases went cold. Two years later, Billy Lee Mayshack was accused of sodomizing his two grandsons. Police ran a DNA profile on Mayshack that matched the South Bay rapist's. He was sentenced to 98 years.
