I don't know why I had more than normal disgust for the two tat killed the guy in the truck.

One of the best episodes ever, "Ashes and Snow", is on A&E in a few hours. The First 48 is a great show to get hooked on. There are soooo many episodes, and A&E plays repeats constantly, so if you are someone who runs out of stuff on your DVR, this show is there to fill the gap. I have seen over 100 episodes, and I still constantly find new ones being played.

Here are my top five detectives of all-time, in no particular order. This list considers all the factors that make someone a good homicide detective, but focuses on a detective's ability in the confession room. Many people can gather evidence, analyze the forensic data, and interview the minor players. But it takes a special gift to extract information from people who don't want to give it, and you see many, many detectives who aren't good at all. These five are:

Lt. Caroline Mason (Memphis) - Bar none, the best interrogator on the show. She is a controversial figure to fans and perhaps other detectives. Reportedly introduces herself to people as "Caroline Mason, from The First 48" and is the only detective to have her own Myspace page. But there is no denying her ability to speak the language of Memphis criminals and eyewitnesses, and get them on "her side" in the box. Seems to instinctively know when to go hard at someone, and when to play to their soft side. When the case has some solid evidence, and the suspect is not a hardened criminal, she is a virtual lock to get a confession. I believe she is no longer in homicide.

Lt. Joe Schillaci (Miami) - Schillaci is a veteran detective who spent 16 years as an undercover narcotics cop before coming to homicide. Has a great rapport with street people, witnesses, victim's families, and suspects. After being promoted to Lieutenant, he is no longer in homicide. In his final case, he pulled out an amazing, had-to-have, last second confessional from out of nowhere. He was featured in some of the best episodes of the show ever, particularly the death of the strip club owner, and the episode where Schillaci dresses up as a homeless man.

Det. Ken Penrod (Dallas) - Not nearly as flashy as the first two detectives. It would be easy to miss Penrod's ability, but if you pay attention, it seems like he is "natural police." Has a tough but talkative, clearly Texan, interrogation style. He shows up in other people's cases alot, and is introduced as "veteran detective" or "one of Dallas' best interrogators". When he is the feature detective, you see someone who has a total handle on the investigation.

Det. Eddie Ibarra (Dallas) - He only has two years in homicide, and of anyone on the list, he might be the biggest stretch, but he stands out as a strong investigator and excellent interrogator. I would be very suprised if Ibarra doesn't survive in homicide. Seems to work his cases solo, works very hard, and doesn't crack easily. Speaks fluent Spanish, so does the interrogation for other people's cases regularly. Dallas has a lot of humps, so like Penrod, Ibarra stands out and carries a lot of the work load.

Sgt. Tony Mullins (Memphis) - Mason's partner. They are an amazing team. It's hard to say exactly how good he is as an interrogator because most of his work is done in tandem. However he definitely holds his own in the box and has the same outgoing personality of everyone else on this list that enables them to get suspects talking. Like Ibarra, it seems like he has the right temperament for homicide, and has a lot of enthusiasm for the job.

Honorable mentions go to William Brown in Louisville (only seen him handle two cases, but shows a lot of promise), Emiliano Tamayo in Miami (rarely featured but got one of the most clutch, amazing confessions ever), and Toney Armstrong in Memphis (unit leader who got a huge confession in "The Last Yard", one of the most high profile cases on the show ever.)

Cutest detectives are Jennifer Mitsch in Cincinnati, Jennifer Whitfield in Phoenix, and Leigh Maroni in Lousville.

Best name for a homicide detective is obviously Sgt. Connie Justice in Memphis.

I like this show a lot too, vry addictive

No ones mentioned the follow up shows? I like how they show waht happens after they catch the guy, the trial, conviction, courtroom drama, etc. Those are just as good as the original case episodes.

I was unaware that they aired those follow up shows, but that's pretty cool.

Joe Schillaci, are you kidding me???

That dude is the biggest windbag on the show, I'm glad we haven't seen him in a few years. Just spends all his time spouting cliches and trying to sound cool on camera, so hard to take.

I used to feel exactly the same way. But after watching more and more cases with him, I realized that the guy consistently delivers. He has great rapport with witnesses and suspects. And his final case before his promotion is an absolutely incredible interrogation of a suspect who 100% would have walked had Schillaci not gotten a confession.

I agree that he is a huge windbag though.

Fernando Bosch is another excellent Miami detective, who is sort of the opposite of Schillaci. He is so low key that its hard to notice how good he is.

Nice post. I liked Kevin Lundy from Memphis, wish that Dept. were still signed on with the show. In general, I like watching how the teams interact in Miami and Birmingham. The Miami detectives can get pretty animated in the interview room.


I've seen maybe 3 of these - all very well done. They are sobering to say the least, with much greater focus on the affected families and how their lives are torn apart. There's one OnDemand now, updating two cases, one in Dallas and another in Tucson I believe.

Hope that the series continues, maybe with some new cities signing on.

I'm watching an episode now. One of the killers has the nickname Little Boobie.

^lol. This show is almost non-stop idiot-on-idiot violence. Usually nigs (and I use that term because there is a difference between black people and nigs as Chris Rock would say) killing other nigs because one looked at the other funny, or owed the other $10 from a crack deal. It's pretty sad how little these people value life and how quickly they resort to killing someone over petty BS.

Yea I saw this episode last night.

So hilarious that in the other case, they found the .45 in a car b/c the dude got pulled over a week later and let them search the trunk. He even had the same sweatshirt in there.

HOW THE **** DO YOU NOT GET RID OF THE STUFF?

It just blows my mind away how f'ing stupid people are sometimes.

I just saw an episode that featured two murders. One of them was called "Devil Inside" and took place in Tucson. The confession was the craziest thing I've ever seen on the show. The guy was talking about how the devil made him commit all these heinous crimes and it was really really creepy to watch.

yes this really really really creeped me out

I think I would have been completely terrified if I was one of the detectives in that room with him. Like I'd be worried that he'd kill me right there with his bare hands.

I'm often curious about what happens in sentencing (sometimes it's hard to find via standard Google search or b/c length of trial phase), and this guy was sentenced to two life terms w/out possibility of parole. He committed these crimes (2 murders/1 attempted) in a 3-week span in 2008.

brief news link

The thing that really creeped me out about that guy's confession was how calm, soft-spoken and polite he was throughout. Like it was just another run of the mill killing spree for him, no big deal.

I really thought that guy would be able to plead insanity and get locked up in a mental institution rather than prison. Especially if the confession was deemed admissible.

I saw an episode last night that was in Detroit. A guy murdered his 25 year-old g/f and also a 2 year-old girl. My head just can't wrap around what kind of monster someone has to be to murder a 2 year-old.

The guy ended up drowning himself. Why didn't he just use a gun? Very strange.

This is probably my favorite show too. What I find neat about the show is how all of the detectives are so similar in the way they approach the cases. There really isn't much different in how a homicide is investigated in Minneapolis compared to Miami, or how they eventually catch the killers. By the way, for whoever mentioned Jennifer Whitfield, she works in Tuscon, not Phoenix.

One of the greatest ones I saw was where the homicide occurred during a car chase. So the car with the killers shoots into the victims car a bunch of times and then speeds off, but collides with another car as it's racing away, though not enough to stop it.

So the detectives are looking at the scene where the second collision happens and there's some trash and stuff on the ground there, and the one detective goes through it and finds like a utility bill or something and wonders if the trash fell out of the back of the car because of the collision. So they go pick up the guy who's named on the utility bill and sure enough he's the killer. Totally the only reason they caught him!

Another one I thought was great was when a guy was killed in a robbery when he went to score drugs. So the police thought that the dude who went with him had conspired with the killer to set the whole thing up, and then chopped up the money before calling 911. So in the interrogation it goes like this:

"So did you know the guy who shot your friend?"

"No sir, not hardly at all."

"But you knew you could buy drugs from him?"

"Well yes, I guess. Like I knew him bein' in the neighborhood and all. But that's all."

"I see. So you didn't plan the whole robbery with him at all then?"

"No sir! I had no idea that was going to happen! I was lucky to not get killed myself!"

"So that money you had on you when we brought you in, that was money you had from before, or was that from the robbery?"

"No sir! That was money I had on me from before."

"Okay..." Long pause. "So was that blood on that money?"

So now the guy totally gets out of the chair and curls up in a fetal position on the floor and starts crying. Um...Busted!

Just saw a frustrating episode. Both murders took place in Miami and neither one was solved. Sucked.

No more Detroit episodes after the incident where the First 48 was filming an an seven year old sleeping on the couch got shot in the face.

Saw there is a new episode tonight, is this the start of a season or have there been new ones for a while and I just missed them?

Can you elaborate on this? About what are you talking? TIA.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/WorldNews/d...ry?id=10677976

After this happened Mayor Bing barred The First 48 from filming anything with DPD in the future.

very interesting article. thanks for posting.

Following your post, I looked up on Memphis PD, also no longer working with First 48 - in the Jessie Dotson trial currently underway (charged with 6 murders "Lester Street Massacre"), the prosecution will not be able to use Dotson's taped confession aired on the show.

CBS link

From a separate article on this trial:
"The judge [Beasley] said he has presided over past cases in which "First 48" was involved, and officers who appeared on the program testified that scenes sometimes were not shown in the order in which they occurred.

"I have a real problem with the fact that we're dealing with an edited, sometimes staged, production," Beasley said. "It may be a reality TV show, but what is reality? Reality is what an editor says it is."

Their website lists new episodes for the rest of July, still in Season 10 (sometimes they air out of order to the final episode listings):

http://www.aetv.com/the_first_48/episodes/

Interested in next week's, based on the synopsis:
"In Harris County, Dep. Mario Quintanilla investigates the murder of a woman shot during a robbery of her illegal game room. Acting on a tip that his suspects are from Central America, Quintanilla races to find them before they can flee the country. And in Miami, Det. Fabio Sanchez heads to Little Haiti to investigate the homicide of two young men shot in their living room. Sanchez must track down a friend of the victims who was with them before they were shot--to find out what he knows."