In Mobile, a 21-year-old woman is shot dead in her hotel room by a mysterious visitor. When a 42-year-old music producer is found riddled with bullets in his Gwinnett County apartment, clues point toward a madman on a shooting spree.
In Atlanta, when a young father is found dead in his home by his girlfriend, detectives track down the killer and find things are not as they appear. In Tulsa, a teenager is fatally shot, sending the Tulsa team on a desperate search for the motive.
In Atlanta, a young man comes home for lunch and winds up murdered when he catches a brazen thief in the act. Then, in Tulsa, an ongoing feud between two gang members leads to a fateful encounter.
When a man is found shot dead in his driveway, an abandoned truck leads Tulsa Homicide to several potential suspects, but not everything is as it seems.
The First 48 follows detectives from around the country during these first critical hours as they race against time to find the suspect. Gritty and fast-paced, it takes viewers behind the scenes of real-life investigations with unprecedented access to crime scenes, autopsies, forensic processing, and interrogations.