Waking the Dead

A new team of detectives, the Cold Case Squad, is put together to re-examine evidence of unsolved murders using advanced technology. In their first investigation DCI Peter Boyd has a second go at nailing the murderer of Alice Miller, a young girl who disappeared five years ago. Trouble is, the perpetrator is as keen as Boyd to act again, and abducts another girl.

A young woman, Marina sets fire to an abandoned car in a street and takes photographs of it as it burns. Boyd walks by and tackles her to the ground, attempting to shield her from the possible explosion. He later learns that Marinas father died in a car accident a few years earlier in that spot, and Marina refuses to accept that his death was an accident. Although not officially a cold case, Boyd is intrigued and reluctantly agrees to investigate. Frankie runs forensic tests on Marinas fathers car and proves that he was still alive after the crash and could have escaped. The answers they uncover may mean that the danger to Marina is much greater than any of them had suspected.

Workmen are burrowing in the crypt of a Catholic church when they come across the skeletal remains of a young man buried in concrete. The squad sets about trying to pinpoint the identity of the body, which was buried with the accoutrements of certain Catholic rituals. Even more oddly, there is a message in Braille buried with the corpse, which tums out to be a passage from one of St Pauls letters to the Corinthians The team suspects that the body was never meant to be discovered.

Boyd and the team decide to reopen the 25 year old case of Annie Keel, a woman who was tried and convicted of a double homicide solely based upon her own confession. Boyd doubts the validity of the conviction, and decides to dig deeper to possibly discover what really happened. Why did Annie confess? Did she really commit murder, or was she covering for someone else?

When the corpse of a well-known police woman who went missing a year earlier is found floating in the Thames, Boyd and his team of investigators try to track down who murdered her and her unborn child.

The Cold Case team is forced to enlist the help of a psychotic serial killer named Thomas Rice, AKA "the Gambler" (because he left playing cards at the scenes of his murders). The one woman who escaped death at his hands, the cool and poised Dr Clare Delaney, gets a dreadful reminder of her past ordeal and a fearful shock when a playing card is flung at her car windscreen as she sets off to make a house call on a wet, windy, dark night. The team look again at the Gamblers crimes, prompted by Boyds unshakeable belief that Rice had claimed other, hitherto undiscovered victims.Boyd - who has personal links to the case - and Grace decide to use detective constable Amelia Silver to lure a confession from Rice.

Boyd and the team take on the task of infiltrating the dark underworld of Londons gangland crime families when Harry Newman makes a deathbed confession to 12 "unauthorised killings". Dr Grace Foley is intrigued by this strange expression but Boyd and the rest of the team are tempted to dismiss it as the meanderings of a dying man. Until, that is, forensic psychologist Frankie Wharton discovers that Newman did not die of natural causes, but has been murdered. They soon realise theres a lot more to Newman than they imagined. Added to all that, theres a link to a famous fifties trial in which a gangster was hanged for killing two policemen.

Boyd and his team struggle to find the truth behind the murder of a prominent Home Office adviser, when a petty criminal is acquitted of the crime. Once a prominent feminist activist, victim Katherine Reed had attacked the establishment at every opportunity, only to later switch sides. Boyds progress on the case is hampered not only by a Home Office audit, which means the team will be shadowed throughout, but also by the fact that the original investigation was conducted by one of his old flames.

Twelve years after Joanna Gold famously disappeared in broad daylight on Hampstead Heath, the dress she was wearing is found in a lock-up. The team begin the hunt for her killer.

A man accused of opening fire on a crowd from a multi storey car park, and killed a policeman, is claiming his innocence. Boyds colleagues question his loyalties when he seems unwilling to re-investigate. As DC Mel Silver digs deeper, she discovers some disturbing truths about her boss.

When a convicted killer is cleared at appeal for the murder of his adoptive father ten years previously, Boyd is not convinced that the man is innocent. But the only way to find out is to track down the rest of the family - and with a big inheritance at stake, both parties appear to have a lot to hide..

A recovered memory therapist alerts the CCS to a care home regime of sexual abuse of young boys and a suspected murder. Her client who revealed all this in a therapy session goes missing and the team strongly suspect he has gone on the hunt for the man who abused him and murdered his friend.

A mummified body sends the Cold Case Squad back to the sixties and to a Notting Hill house which had been featured in a film as the location for a murderous fight between gangsters. Renovation works at the house in the present day reveal more bodies behind the walls. The film starts to appear not so fictional after all. Things get even more complicated when Spencer tells Boyd that he and his family lived there when the events took place.

In 1948, post-war Britain, an ex-soldier has been found dead with his skull nailed to the floor. Now this case has been re-opened due to media attention and pressure created by his grandson.

As a garage is demolished in contemporary London, demolition work is halted at the sight of a skeleton sitting in the driver’s seat. An unexploded bomb is found under the car which is soon linked to an Irish terrorist cell from the late 1970s.

Two five-year-old twins are taken from their home in Notting Hill Carnival and a nationwide search is launched, but they are not found. Thirteen years later, one of the twins, Jason, is admitted to hospital after a traffic accident. The hunt now begins to establish where his sister, Cindy might be and if she is still alive.

After Sam is released from prison, a man is murdered in the hostel where he stays. Soon he is a suspect. But it looks as though Sam was in fact the intended victim. On the surface Sam appears to be a devoted family man, but he has a hidden past which the team can only speculate about.

A sadomasochistic serial killer is at large. The killings are brutal and the victims are found with the word Sorry carved in their backs.

A young woman who has psychiatric problems has killed her family through an arson attack on her family home. She claims she was incited to do this by a mysterious figure known only as The Shepherd.

A mummified body is discovered in a disused airliner that has been parked in the desert for 6 years. There are indications of a link to an armed robbery at Heathrow Airport six years earlier, and a murder at around the same time. Our team gains two new members. DS Andrea Stephenson takes over for DS Mel Silver, and the new mad scientist is Dr Felix Gibson.

Under the impression that he may receive a confession, Boyd accepts the invite for a visit to the prison from former police officer Eddie Vine, who is serving a life sentence for murdering his friend and former fellow officer, Tom Pallisser.

A millionaire businessman is found dead, a year after he dissapeared. It appears that during the time he was missing he was being held prisoner. But why...

Grace is haunted by an old case that she assisted on at the beginning of her career when she is asked to give evidence at the assailants appeal hearing.

A criminal is about to be released, the team is sure he is a serial killer. They enter in a race against the clock to prove their suspicions to prevent his upcoming release.

As DNA evidence from an old case of Spencers (while he was working for the Atomic Energy Constabulary) is re-examined it appears that the wrong man was sent to jail. Someone tries to coverup the new evidence, causing all eyes to turn to Spencer.

The team re-investigates the death of a teenage boy who was found on a building site some years ago, drowned in concrete. Part of a human ear is found in his stomach, linking him to the dumping of another seriously injured teenager in a hospital at around the same time. The ground on which the dead teenager was found belongs to a Catholic abbey which is soon to be dissolved, and the abbey owns a shrine which might contain evidence and has to be dismantled - a task which falls to the unwilling Stella Goodman.Meanwhile, new forensic scientist Dr Eve Lockhart makes her mark on the case.

MI6 asks Boyd to reopen the case of the killing of an Iraqi dissident.Meanwhile, a man running for election as President of the Sudan announces he is going on hunger strike to protest at Britains refusal to return the skull of a 19th century leader.

Two sexually conjoined mummies mysteriously fall through the the ceiling of an old City bank, resulting in the Cold Case team being called in to investigate.

Two days after James Jenson is released from a psychiatric unit, the wallets of his victims are sent to a relative. Does this mean more murders could follow? And is James really responsible for the three coldcase murders, or did he take the blame for somebody else?

A psychiatric patient, imprisoned for the murder of his parents as a teenager escapes and reveals the location of an unknown corpse.

Boyd receives an anonymous package in the post – a Nazi ceremonial dagger. Attached to it is a Cold Case number, linking it to the unsolved murder of a young girl in May 1945. It seems that Mel had been working on the case before her death, what does this mean for the Cold Case Team?

When a woman defends her daughter from a mugger, it sets into motion a chain of events that places herself and her children in mortal danger.

The Cold Case team investigate the mystery surrounding human remains found in an urban canal with links to the murder of a prison governor.

The accidental excavation of a human hand leads the cold case squad to the cover-up of a major incident.

After they get a tip off in an anonymous e-mail,the team head to a waste ground in east London, where they find the remains of a right-wing fascist activist.

The team find out that a body discovered in a disused tunnel is that of salesman Chris Dearden, who went missing in 1996. He was on a self-empowerment weekend with his colleagues when he died.Could one of them be responsible?

At the scene of a road accident, a DNA link is found that goes back to a horrific murder in the Bosnia / Serbia conflict, which Eve had to deal with when working on mass war graves.

After a women running naked along a country way is picked up there are two cases to solve. The first one is to find out how she got there, a complicated task because she suffers from memory loss. The second case goes back quite some years as her DNA was found in a strange cold case with two bodies and a sword.

The failed suicide of a women called Gemma who has been raped 12 years ago, when she was just a girl by two men, causes Boyd and his team to re-open the investigation. But as the previous investigation went nowhere there arent any leads left to start from.

When Eves new boyfriend Stefan is being vague about his past she puts her skills to use and uncovers something she rather wouldnt have. Unsure about the next step she turns to Boyd for advice, initially he promises support. But once the facts become clearer Boyd and Eve want to follow a different path.

An old adversary of Boyds asks him to investigate two deaths at her psychiatric hospital.

Boyd has to break in a new team member of equal rank, Detective Superintendent Sarah Cavendish, a high-flyer recently grounded by a hushed-up failed operation.After the empty and abandoned car of banker Donald Rees is discovered threee years after he went missing, Boyd decides to take on the case in an effort help the mans family find some closure with their lives.

After a woman is discovered stabbed in the eyes and incinerated in her car she is identified as Claire Somers, a neglected child who was taken into care, then later kidnapped in 1986 at the age of seven. Robert Fenchurch had his eyes stabbed out on the night Claire was kidnapped as her abductor fled the scene. The team soon find out that Claire had snatched 15-year-old Abigail Harding, who was found locked in a hotel room.

When the squad look in to the case of an army activist discovered in Londons sewer system they discover that the case may have more police connections than they originaly thought.

Boyd suspects a cover-up when a missing students DNA matches with an unidentified corpse.

Boyd investigates the disappearance of 16 homeless boys from Waterloo Bridge in the 1980s.