Chalk one up for “Cold Justice.”
Dick Wolf’s true-life TNT series — in which a former prosecutor (Kelly Siegler) and ex-FBI agent (Yolanda McClary) re-open and investigate cold cases — has already resulted in a suspect pleading guilty to murder.
Ronnie Joe Hendrick, 41, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Texas to killing girlfriend Pamela Shelly in 2001.
Hendrick was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his crime, according to cuerorecord.com, a local news site in DeWitt County, Texas.
Hendrick was featured on the premiere episode of “Cold Justice,” which aired Sept. 3 on TNT.
In the episode, he claimed he found Shelly dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in their house in the small town of Westhoff, Texas.
The case was declared a “probable” suicide, but Shelly’s daughter, who was 10 at the time, insisted that she saw Hendrick shoot her mother in the head.
When Siegler and McClary investigated the case — and traveled to the crime scene in Cuero, Texas — they deduced that Shelly could not have shot herself because of the trajectory of her head wound.
The evidence they collected was the presented to a Grand Jury, which indicted Hendrick for murder and set a September trial date.
Hendrick’s guilty plea was entered with District Judge Skipper Koetter just before his trial was set to begin.
With its “victory,” “Cold Justice” joins its TV cousin, the now-cancelled “America’s Most Wanted,” in helping authorities solve cases after they’ve been showcased on national TV.