The 1980s: The Deadliest Decade

The Stuarts, are robbed and shot in Boston. Carol and her unborn child are killed. Charles survives to describe their black assailant, inflaming racial tensions, until a surprise witness comes forward with a story that blows open the case.

Jennifer Levin is found strangled to death in Central Park. A prep school heartthrob, Robert Chambers, is arrested for the crime. The press seizes on his provocative claim that Jennifer’s death happened accidentally during “rough sex."

In a wealthy California suburb, 15-year-old cheerleader Kirsten Costas is stabbed to death. A teenage girl is seen fleeing the scene. As months pass without an arrest, the police are stumped. But some in the community… think they know the murderer.

In the heart of America’s devastating Farm Crisis, the largest mass murder in recent Missouri history stuns a small town. An entire family is wiped out. The unlikely suspect is a 14-year-old boy… but the real extent of the horror is even more shock

The case of Joe Pikul is related. In October 1987, the former Wall Street securities analyst was accused of second-degree murder following the death of his wife, Diane. He claimed that he acted in self-defense. A jury decided otherwise, however, and convicted him.

Single mother Linda Culbertson lands a dream job as a legal secretary in a Kansas City, Mo., law firm, and falls hard for her married boss, Donald Pierce; the fallout is deadly as Culbertson draws bystanders into a shocking and vicious crime.