Forensic Files Case Locations Map

The geographic distribution of the wide variety of cases across the 14 seasons of Forensic Files seemed compelling. From the coastal cities of California to my own home town of Fort Lauderdale, I wanted to document the proximity of the areas covered throughout the series. I encountered a few challenges with this process, and I've done my best to keep the information relevant and interesting.

First, a few of the crimes have taken place in multiple locations. For example, Timothy Spencer, often better known as the Southside Strangler, committed his offenses in both Richmond and Arlington, Virginia. Rather than have two different pins on the map and duplicate content, I used a version of Google Map's "line" to include both locations. Next, the variety of pin colors provides an additional mechanism for case categorization. Forensic Files covers a collection of four basic case types: Crime, Exoneration, Accident, and Outbreak. But since the vast majority of cases are crimes, it feels the other topics may end up under-represented.

Finally, Google Maps allows a title, description, and media elements to be added to each point-of-interest on a map. I've chosen each episode's title and position in the series and a link to the respective page on this site. For media, I thought to include a few of the episode's screen capture images, but ultimately elected to embed the YouTube video (when available). The downsides of video: YouTube doesn't share the video's thumbnail when it deems the content not age-appropriate. And, various copyright issues have seen multiple episodes removed - and FilmRise seems unable or unwilling to do much about this. Ultimately, the media data will be imperfect.

This idea came from the fantastic work of a YouTube channel I recently discovered. If you haven't already stumbled on Coffeehouse Crime, do yourself a favor and check it out. Adrian has found a balance of quality and detail that easily rivals any "professional" outfit. His thorough research, respectful demeanor, and case variety make Coffeehouse Crime one of the premier YouTube true crime channels. It's not surprising his subscriber base has exploded since his channel debuted in late 2020. I've borrowed more from Adrian than just the idea for this map - keep up the solid work!