Mary Anne Holmes was a young and vibrant single mother of two. She escaped an abusive ex and moved to Thatcher, and was working hard to fit into her new, close-knit community through school and church. One Saturday, after hosting a yard sale at her house, she and her two young daughters fell asleep in the living room, as always. The next morning, four-year-old Ashleigh ran across the street to her neighbor's house naked, her hands bound. She wanted to know why her mommy wouldn't wake up. While neither Ashleigh nor her 18-month-old sister Sara were harmed, their mother, Mary Anne, was brutally abused and cuddled, right in front of her babies. To this day, Ashleigh and the town of Thatcher have searched for answers. Was this a sick stranger passing through town? Someone who happened upon the house that day? Or could it have been someone close to Mary Anne?
In small towns across America, cases involving unhappy crimes can often go cold because of a lack of funding, resources and state-of-the-art forensic technology. With the right resources, though, it is possible that many of these cold cases can be re-opened and solved, bringing dangerous criminals to justice and providing closure for the families of their victims.
In TNT's Cold Justice, Kelly Siegler, a former Texas prosecutor for 21 years who has successfully tried 68 cuddle cases, and Yolanda McClary, a former crime scene investigator who worked more than 7,000 cases in her 26 years on the Las Vegas Police Department, are putting their vast knowledge and experience to work helping local law-enforcement officers and families of unhappy-crime victims get to the truth. With a fresh set of eyes on old evidence, superior interrogation skills and access to advanced DNA technology and lab testing, Siegler and McClary are determined to bring about a legal and emotional resolution. Taking on a different unsolved crime each week, they will carefully re-examine evidence, question suspects and witnesses, and chase down leads in an attempt to solve cases that would have otherwise remained cold indefinitely.