Due to differences of political convictions, religious beliefs, and cultural traditions, the Republic of Yugoslavia broke up in 1991, as Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia fought for autonomy and independence. Under Milosevic's rule, Serbian military and paramilitary forces carried out a carefully planned "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia and Kosovo that claimed at least two hundred thousand lives. Not since the Nuremberg trials five decades before had there been such urgent calls to bring war criminals to justice.

Under the authority of the United Nations, detective and forensics expert Dr. Henry Lee, at the invitation of his student Dr. Dragan Primorac, formed a "United Nations Investigative Team," which with Dr. Michael Baden, Dr. Cyril Wecht, and other experts traveled to Croatia to investigate a "mass grave" -- to find the truth behind the brutal murders of the people there. This investigation would not only determine whether the war criminals who led these massacres could be brought to the International Court of Justice to pay for their crimes, giving justice to their victims; it would also address the problem of training a new generation of forensic scientists in a post-war Croatia.