Lilly and Valens reopen a presumed homicide from 1979 in which an unidentified victim's blood-drenched shoes, underwear and sheets were found in a trash bag, but no body. The investigation begins when a battered wife accuses her husband of murdering a girl in 1979 and brings in an amateur film from the time that supposedly shows him committing the crime.

The team re-opens the case of Matthew Adams, a teen-aged cult member who apparently committed suicide back in 1978, when his sister comes forth with new evidence about the deprogrammer her family hired to rescue her brother.

A 6-month-old girl's 1982 death, originally ruled to be a result of sudden-infant-death syndrome, is investigated when new evidence reveals the baby may have drowned. Also, Lilly learns that Ray is in the hospital after apparently being beaten.

The 1979 murder of a schoolteacher who was stabbed to death in a wooded area is reopened when the victim's bloodstained jacket is found stuffed in a tree trunk with a happy-face key chain in a pocket. The case was originally investigated by Jeffries when he was a rookie detective.

Lilly investigates the murder of a 17-year-old prep-school student who disappeared in early 2006 and whose body is found stuffed in an oil drum outside an abandoned warehouse in a drug-infested part of the city. Also, Vera pays a parking ticket for his neighbor and later asks her out on a date.

A father pushes a registered sex offender off of a building and threatens to kill a different sex offender each day until the cold-case unit solves his son's 1987 rape and murder.