Cold Streets? Undoubtedly a reference to the location, Anchorage, Alaska, but that is the only humour in this documentary. When Mindy Schloss failed to turn up for work or otherwise show her face, a friend grew suspicious, and the authorities were quickly on her trail. She had been tortured, robbed and murdered by Joshua Wade, but her body was not found for some time. Wade had forced her into her car, driven her out into the wilds, put a bullet in the back of her head, then partially burned her body. Why? Well, he withdrew $1,000 from her bank account in two $500 tranches. He also stole her watch.
The documentary makers speak to the men and women who ran the investigation, and her friend. Wade soon became a suspect, and it would shortly be revealed he had stood trial for murder some years earlier. He had murdered a woman named Della Brown, and then boasted to two friends about his crime, but at trial his attorney argued that he had stumbled upon Brown's body and made up the rest. Incredibly, he was cleared, although he served time for evidence tampering. Archive footage is also included of Wade, and there is an interview with both his father and Della Brown's mother.
Wade did a deal, confessing to the Brown murder to avoid the death penalty. He couldn't be retried for her murder because of double jeopardy. Not mentioned here is the fact that the death penalty was abolished in Alaska in 1957, but because Mindy Schloss died in a carjacking, he became eligible for execution under federal law.
Wade was described as a serial killer in the making. The last three words of that sentence may need to be dropped because since this documentary was made, he has confessed to murdering no fewer than three men, one when he was fourteen years old; the third the same night he murdered Della Brown. He is a truly nasty piece of work, something that comes out in this documentary with only the two murders and sundry other crimes including taking a woman hostage when the police caught up with him.