Online Sleuthing

They are linked almost like a pair of handcuffs--Tim Johnson, the spare, 31-year-old producer who always wanted to be a cop, and Sgt. Jon Perkins, the husky, 44-year-old Glendale homicide chief who, knowing others were doing “street story” scripts for Hollywood, yearned to produce.

Now each has a piece of the other’s action with CBS’ “Cold Case,” an unusual, interactive one-hour docudrama airing Friday. Here the actual detectives reexamine their unsolved homicides and the real family members invariably relive their grief, with the suspects and certain ancillary characters played by actors.

Yet whatever happens to “Cold Case”--whether it becomes a hot series, as Johnson and Perkins hope, or goes into the deep freeze--it will have left an imprint as the first time a major television network made the Internet an integral part of its programming. For the past two weeks, the show’s trio of cases--along with a fourth that Perkins helped solve last fall in South Carolina--have been laid out on its own Web site--that would be https://www.coldcase.com--ready for viewers to download and try their hand at solving real-life whodunits.

“I pitched this as a hybrid of ‘NYPD Blue’ and ‘Unsolved Mysteries,’ ” says executive producer Johnson, who for four years was a producer on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” for CBS. “Other reality-based crime shows have asked viewers to be informants. We’re asking them to be detectives.”

Or as “Cold Case” host Richard Crenna invites viewers: “Now it’s your turn to take part in the investigation.”

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The TV show lays out the crime in dramatic terms, while the Web site contains the actual police files for anyone to examine and offer suggestions or leads. “There’s the autopsy report, the crime scene or incident report, scene sketch, witness statements,” Johnson explains. “In fact, there’s a section that shows you where all the stuff is--it’s in the Help file. And most important, all the crime scene photos are [included]--the real photos of the body. I try to be tasteful, but a picture tells a thousand words.”

In the program, Cold Case 1 focuses on Det. Martha Sanders as she investigates the 1986 kidnapping and slaying of 9-year-old Christie Proctor, one of 12 unsolved child abductions in the Dallas area. “Every police officer always has one case that stands out above the others,” she says toward the close of the segment, “and this is mine.”

Cold Case 2 tracks Lt. Jimm Redmond and Lt. Charlie Sharman of neighboring Florida counties as they hunt for the killer of two deer hunters in 1993.

Closer to home, on Cold Case 3, Det. Bob Blackburn investigates the slaying of Arlene Hoffman, secretary to Orange County Supervisor James W. Silva, who was found slain in December 1994 in her Laguna Niguel home. The weapon was a crossbow.

Perkins suggested the idea of a TV show about “cold cases” with Internet interaction to Johnson, whom he has known for six years, last June.

“Tim had always been intrigued with my pursuits of murderers,” he says. “The hardest thing in the world is to reach a dead end where there’s still an answer that’s out there, or still justice that needs to be served.”

What clicked for Johnson--and almost immediately for CBS--was that Perkins, a homicide detective for 14 years, had used computers to catch a murder suspect who lived in the Philippines.

Explaining how he tracked his suspect, Perkins says that when he took over Glendale’s homicide unit four years ago, he “went through all the old cold cases.” One had particular potential--the 1981 slaying of a Filipino man. Another Filipino had been arrested but fled. “We knew there was family back in the Philippines of the dead guy. So we started talking with them, and they knew [the suspect] had remarried and had a [second] family.”

Because the United States does not have an extradition treaty with the Philippines, he explains, the suspect had been able to elude capture.

Next, Perkins talked to family and friends of the victim who lived in the same town as the suspect. “The only way we could do that,” he continues, “was on AOL [America Online] because it was cheaper. We saved on phone calls. We had daily updates.”

They learned that the daughter from the first marriage was about to get married somewhere on the West Coast. From old school records, Perkins got the daughter’s name. Figuring she had to be registered some place nice for wedding gifts, the detective began searching department store Web site bridal registries.

“Bingo!” he said.

The rest was simple. Perkins phoned the store, pretending to be a close relative who wanted to send flowers to the church, got the name of the church, then phoned the church for the wedding date--and, not quite wanting to capture the father as he was walking his daughter down the aisle, made the arrest at a rehearsal. (The man was convicted of murder last December and is now in prison, he reports.)

Perkins served as technical advisor and co-producer on “Cold Case.” Among his duties was acting as “basically a diplomat” to law enforcement to ensure cooperation.

“Police departments have to know we’re on their side,” Johnson says. “We’re not ’60 Minutes.’ And we’re in there to help out. Ultimately, they all come around.”

If “Cold Case” becomes a series, Johnson hopes the Web site will become a national database of unsolved homicides. In the meantime, to help motivate the public to get involved, he has put up a pair of $25,000 rewards out of his own pocket on the Dallas child murder and the slaying of Arlene Hoffman. (The Florida case already carried a $45,000 reward.)

“A homicide detective is much more of an artist than a public servant,” Johnson notes. “It’s creating something backward. You walk into a murder scene, see the whole scene, the body, the evidence, that’s your painting. Now back it up. How did you get there? It’s an art to reconstruct how a murder happens.”

* “Cold Case” airs 9-10 p.m. Friday on CBS (Channel 2).