The show's most spectacular success was the case of John List, who had murdered his entire family almost 20 years earlier. Thanks to an amazingly accurate forensic sculpture to account for his age since his last known photograph, List was captured on June 1, 1989, less than a week after the broadcast. He had adopted the pseudonym Robert Clark, and lived in Denver, Colorado and Midlothian, Virginia. On April 12, 1990, a New Jersey court convicted him of five counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to five life terms in prison. List died March 21, 2008, in a Trenton, New Jersey prison from complications of pneumonia. He was 82.
The Fox network cancelled the show in 1996, but reversed the decision because of a public outcry from viewers, politicians, and law enforcement agencies. The series was off the air for six weeks before it was finally reinstated.
The series debuted on seven Fox stations on February 7, 1988. It debuted nationally on April 10, 1988.
According to John Walsh's 1997 autobiography, "Tears of Rage", the following people were considered for the show's hosting duties: Treat Williams, Ed Marinaro, Brian Dennehy, Brian Keith, Theresa Saldana, and Joseph Wambaugh.
One actress on the show played the role of the criminal she was portraying so well that she herself ended up arrested not once but twice in a case of mistaken identity. Each time she was released from custody after her identity as the actress and not the criminal was confirmed by authorities.