For years, the producers and reporters of “48 Hours” have been particularly fixated on one cold case.
And they picked the recent trial for this case — the 2002 double murder of Mike Sisco and his fiancée, Karen Harkness — in which to open the show’s 25th season tonight.
The case was cold for five years after the then-Topeka, Kan., DA felt that without any physical evidence whatsoever there was no way to charge the only suspect, Sisco’s ex-wife, Dana Chandler, with the double homicide.
For one thing, she lived eight hours away in Denver, and for another, there was not one surveillance camera, credit-card receipt or cell-phone record that put Chandler anywhere in Kansas at the time of the murder.
Nevertheless, even Chandler’s own children believed that their mother killed their father. And so they fought alongside Sisco’s sister and parents to get their mother placed behind bars.
On tonight’s show, all the players are in place, and we see the most dramatic moments of the recent dramatic trial that took place under a new DA.
If you’ve followed this case on “48 Hours,” and any of the other true-crime shows, you know that this was an almost-impossible case to prove.
Worse, the only “evidence” was the word of a convenience store clerk who was 70 percent sure she’d sold Dana Chandler cigarettes in Kansas on the night of the murder, had died.
And when you see Chandler’s defense attorney, Mark Bennett, in action it becomes clear that a jury won’t convict Chandler without physical evidence — even after own children testify against her.
Yes, there is a verdict in this trial — but I won’t ruin this anniversary surprise.