Ep 3. Daniela

The show Cold Case season 2 episode 3 titled "Daniela" focuses on a case that has remained unsolved for almost two decades.

In 1982, a teenage girl named Daniela Martinez disappeared while on her way home from a friend's house. Her parents reported her missing to the police, but no leads ever turned up despite extensive investigation. The case went cold and remained so until 2001, when a construction crew discovered a girl’s body buried on a worksite. After DNA testing confirmed what had long been suspected, the police investigation into Daniela’s disappearance and murder was reopened.

Detective Lilly Rush, the head of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Cold Case Unit, is assigned to the case. Lilly is known for her tenacity and dedication when working on cold cases, and this one is no exception. She begins by interviewing Daniela’s parents and friends, all of whom are still utterly devastated by her loss.

As Lilly deepens her investigation, she discovers that Daniela was a popular girl at her high school and had aspirations to become a fashion designer. However, she had fallen in with the wrong crowd, which included a group of older men. Her parents, conservative and strict, didn’t approve of her “friends” and forbade her from seeing them. But Daniela continued to sneak out to see them anyway, sometimes spending the night away from home.

Lilly focuses on the group of men Daniela hung out with and soon discovers that one of them, named Juan Carlos, went to jail just a few years after Daniela’s disappearance. Lilly believes that Juan Carlos was a key figure in Daniela’s case and sets out to question him. However, Juan Carlos is uncooperative, and Lilly has to use all her skills to get him to talk.

At the same time, Lilly and her team are trying to make sense of evidence that they find at the crime scene. They discover that Daniela had been strangled with a length of wire and that her body had been buried less than a mile from where she was last seen. They are also able to gather DNA from the wire that was used to strangle her.

Despite the lack of cooperation from Juan Carlos, Lilly and her team are able to piece together what happened to Daniela. They learn that Juan Carlos and several other men had been drinking with Daniela on the night she disappeared and that she had ended up going home with Juan Carlos. But instead of taking her home, Juan Carlos took her to the construction site where he worked and raped and killed her.

Despite the devastating details of the case, the resolution brings some closure to Daniela’s parents and friends. Lilly and her team are able to prove what happened to Daniela, even after all these years, and bring her killer to justice.

The episode is a stunning example of both gritty detective work and the emotional toll that cold cases can have on families and communities. Through the perspective of Detective Lilly Rush, viewers gain insight into the importance of closure in these cases – not only for the victim and their family but also for society as a whole.