affected me. i still think about denise. i still think about her family. up next, an exotic dancer vanishes. >> it was driving me crazy that she didn't come home. >> was a jealous boyfriend involved? >> he was kind of vague. >> or was she simply a runaway? >> she could have met someone who had money, someone who would improve her life. >> but a police cadaver dog and a burned key point to a violent confrontation. >> i watch "forensic files" and "csi." i just feel like there's no hope. there's no hope. is ♪

>> instead of finishing high school, shamaia smith dropped out and worked as a dancer at the kahoots gentleman's club in east hartford, connecticut. >> i didn't approve of it. i always talked to her about getting a job that's a lot safer. >> one night shamaia didn't return home after work. concerned her family called police. >> she's a very special young lady, and all we want is her to come home safe and sound. >> in a search for answers, police questioned shamaia's boyfriend. >> the boyfriend reportedly had some drug involvement. he was living with shamaia smith at her parents' home when she went missing and he had seen her the day she went missing. >> he told police she left for work around 3:00 p.m. but said he didn't know who had given her a ride. >> the boyfriend's story that

your girlfriend is leaving and meeting a stranger, this would lead most people to conclude that maybe the story wasn't true. shamaia's family gave police a potential clue. someone had left a message on shamaia's cell phone at 11:55 a.m., before shamaia left for work. >> first saved message. >> hey, i'm back in town. give me a call. let me know if you want to get together. okay. bye. >> the significance of this message was enormous. it gave the police and investigators another avenue to go down. >> the number was traced to a wealthy local businessman, 56-year-old kenneth otto. >> we found out that mr. otto was an upstanding person. he had a family, a wife and kids. >> he was a somewhat successful industrial business owner, had no prior criminal record and liked to hang around the strip clubs.

>> ken otto was a regular at the kahoots club where shamaia worked and he admitted he had given shamaia a ride to work that afternoon. >> he said that he called shamaia nd when he called her, she requested that he bring her to work because she didn't have any transportation. so he agreed to bring her to work. >> he said that he last saw her going through the front doors of the kahoots and that he drove off. >> but police found another customer who insisted he had given shamaia a ride to kahoots that afternoon. his name was harold brown, another regular customer. he claimed he not only dropped shamaia off at the club, he stayed and went inside for a few hours. >> he also claimed he drove shamaia home later that night but according to her family, she never made it inside. so police now had two men, both

insisting they were the last ones to see shamaia alive, and shamaia's boyfriend was still a suspect. but where was shamaia?

two customers of the kahoots gentlemen's club both claimed they drove shamaia smith to work on the day she disappeared. one of those men, ken otto, took a particular interest in shamaia. >> other dancers at the kahoots said that kenneth otto would spend more time with shamaia. he would give her extra attention and sit next to her and buy her drinks and talk with her. >> ken otto also admitted he had given shamaia $500 to continue her education. >> and i told her nobody is going to give you $500 just for nothing. you had to do something, and i was like just promise me you won't never go alone with anybody again like that because people -- you don't -- you just can't trust everybody. >> in ken otto's version, he

claimed shamaia walked into the club on the day he gave her a ride. but the club's security tapes disputed that. >> we viewed the surveillance tapes from kahoots and found that she never entered the establishment on the day she went missing. >> in harold brown's version, he not only claimed that shamaia went into the club after he dropped her off, he also said he went in, too, and stayed for several hours. again, the security tapes didn't show shamaia or harold brown in the club that day, but the security tapes from the day before explained brown's confusion. it was determined he brought her home the day prior to her going missing. >> brown had simply gotten his dates confused. >> it was apparent that he was being truthful. there was no motive that we could establish why he would commit a crime.

>> so police focused their attention on ken otto since he had left a message on shamaia's phone several hours before he admitted picking her up. on a hunch, shamaia's sister decided to try subterfuge. she called ken otto and left a message on his voicemail. >> i called him to pretend to be shamaia. i was like, hey, kenny, it's mia. just wanted to know if you wanted to hook up. just call me when you get this message. >> she never received a phone call back and that was very telling because now you ask yourself, why wouldn't he call her back then and ask how she's doing? >> when police asked ken otto directly if he'd ever had a sexual relationship with shamaia, he said, that was impossible. >> he told us that he was unable to perform sexually due to some

surgery, a condition that he had. >> he has erectile dysfunction. it was not very successful. >> investigators checked shamaia's cell phone records and discovered that five days before her disappearance, she made two cell phone calls that bounced off a tower directly across the street from a 75-acre piece of land owned by ken otto. >> we thought maybe there was a possibility she might be there being held against her will. >> we had officers on the ground, and i directed that they go onto the property and confirm that there was no one there in need of assistance. >> police asked ken otto if they could search the property. >> he agreed to consent search of his property on easter sunday. >> when police arrived, they noticed construction equipment, a trailer, some vehicles and a fire pit. >> there was heavy burning in the fire pit.

there was the smell of fuel. >> but something else bothered investigators. >> apparently otto didn't mind the police looking around but the cadaver dogs were another story. >> he became very upset when the dogs arrived. it appeared to me he was worried we were going to find something. there was a wood chipper on the property. there's history of cases in the past where people have used wood chippers to dispose of human bodies. >> at this point, convinced he had cooperated as much as he needed to, otto asked the police to leave. >> you know what? i need you to wrap this up. >> all right. >> now. >> when someone grants a consent to search their property, they are entitled to revoke that, but by this time the cadaver dogs had already picked up a scent in the fire pit. >> one of the dogs found a chunk of flesh that we -- it appeared to be animal flesh.

>> once again, ken otto had an explanation. >> he might find a beaver there. >> excuse me? >> a beaver. i shot one a while back and burned in the pit. >> okay. >> there was no obvious evidence of a beaver being in the fire pit. ken otto explained that he liked to kill animals and chop them up and spread them in the sand. it was disappointing that mr. otto revoked his consent, but we knew we would be back.

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two weeks after shamaia smith's disappearance, investigators no longer considered her boyfriend a suspect. >> the boyfriend saw shamaia leave the house and walk out, and that was the last time that he saw her. >> i believe that the boyfriend was telling the truth. >> investigators were more interested in shamaia's relationship with ken otto, a customer at kahoots gentleman's club and a piece of land he owned in rural connecticut. >> it's about 75 acres large. it's landlocked. there's one road access to it.

>> by his own admission, otto was the last known person to see shamaia alive when he picked her up at her home on the day she disappeared. otto allowed police to conduct an initial search of his property, but asked them to leave when he realized they brought cadaver dogs. in order to perform a more detailed search, detectives needed both a warrant and lots of heavy equipment and manpower. >> there were two jurisdictions involved in this. there was a substantial rainstorm that came during that week that hampered the efforts and they all came together causing an eight-day delay. >> not only could the rain storm have washed away any evidence, but eight days gave otto plenty of time to clean up a possible crime scene. >> all of our fears are realized when the police go on the property. ken otto is in a full-sized tractor, attempting to bury the

frame of his 30-foot trailer that was demolished and burned. >> mr. otto's property looked like manmade hell, a person that was in the process of destroying everything. trees, digging holes, destroying the dirt road that goes into the property. >> but the one thing otto hadn't yet destroyed was the fire pit. >> i was very happy to see that the fire pit hadn't been disrupted all that much. >> almost immediately detectives got a break. in the embers they found a house key. >> i took the key, cleaned it up, placed it in the door lock of shamaia smith's home and it unlocked and opened the house. so it was shamaia smith's house key. >> but this didn't prove otto killed her. >> in the fire pit, police also

found a spent bullet and three shell casings from a .40 caliber handgun. on the ground near the burned out trailer, investigators found a mop, a vacuum cleaner and a large piece of carpet. >> serologists looked for blood, even though it had been sitting in the rain and mud for days. >> it's definitely a forensic science nightmare, especially when you're dealing with mother nature tampering with the evidence and really just presenting extra challenges. >> the carpet was marked with a grid of four-inch squares, which were then swabbed with phenolthalene and hydrogen peroxide, a chemical combination which turns pink when it comes in contact with blood. >> i started getting areas that were positive with my screening test. >> each area that tested positive was marked with a piece of tape. slowly, an unmistakable pattern began to emerge.

>> it ended up being an area that was four feet by one foot in size. >> to everyone who saw it, it appeared to be a human body. >> the outline was in human blood, but when it was tested for dna, investigators got a setback. >> no dna was present. it was just too much bacterial contamination. >> investigators were beginning to wonder if they would ever solve this case. female announcer: through memorial day at sleep train,

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in the search for shamaia smith, investigators collected dozens of what appeared to be bone chips from the fire pit on ken otto's property and sent them to the forensics lab. >> this skeleton was burned so significantly that it was nearly destroyed as if it would have been in a commercial cremation. the fragmentation was so severe that you had pieces that were the size of a fingernail. it really is like a needle in a haystack. it's an anthropologist's nightmare. >> after close examination, forensic anthropologists concluded the majority of the bones were human, but that didn't mean police were any closer to knowing if the bone

chips were shamaia's. >> there was a lot of thermal destruction. this would suggest a tremendous fire that lasted for as much as days. >> i had never worked with samples that had been so charred and so burnt before, so i was very hesitant as to whether i would be able to generate a dna profile from these remains. >> but in a case with so few lucky breaks, the forensic anthropologists finally got one. they found a piece of a foot with soft tissue. >> there was still organic material. there was still definitely the potential of getting dna out of that foot. >> the other big challenge was that we didn't have a known sample from shamaia smith. so what we had to do in that case was take those dna profiles we generated from tissue and burnt skin and bone and then

make a comparison to shamaia smith's biological mother and biological father. >> dna tests revealed that the bone and tissue found in ken otto's fire pit was from shamaia smith. >> we have enough evidence to establish that the reason he destroyed all that evidence is because he violently caused her death. >> two months after shamaia's murder, ken otto was arrested at a local airport. he was carrying a briefcase containing $10,000. >> he had toiletries, his passport and various other items. and he also had a small bag with some condoms in it and some cialis, which is basically viagra, generic viagra. >> i have no doubt he would have bought a ticket and flown to parts unknown. >> taking mr. otto into custody was a pretty proud moment in my life. >> by his own admission, ken

otto picked shamaia up for work, but the evidence shows that instead of taking her to the kahoots gentleman's club, he drove 30 miles to his property on the outskirts of town. no one knows what happened after that. >> just sit down for a second. >> i have to go to work. >> sit down. >> but prosecutors believe that at some point otto shot and killed shamaia inside the trailer with a .40-caliber handgun. then he rolled her body in a piece of carpet, creating the bloodstains later found by forensic analysis. then he burned shamaia's body for days in the fire pit.

when cadaver dogs picked up the scent in the fire pit, otto asked police to leave. and he had eight days to carry out the most extensive cover-up investigators had ever seen. but he couldn't destroy everything. investigators found shell casings, a spent bullet, shamaia's house key, hundreds of bone fragments, and even part of her foot, which all told the gruesome tale of a needless murder. >> i think she was very naive about everyone she knew. like she just put her trust in everyone, and you cannot do that. >> ken otto was tried and convicted of shamaia's murder and tampering with evidence. >> at the end of the day, he's a cold-blooded killer.

whatever you say, mr. otto, you can stand up. on the count of murder, into the custody of commissioner of corrections for a period of 60 years. >> that was a great feeling, not only to bring the case to an end, but also, again, for the family, you know, to have a -- a good outcome for the family was very important to me. >> for virtually everyone involved, the most difficult aspect of the crime was determining ken otto's motive. >> mr. otto exhibited sadistic behavior with his treatment of animals and he may have been deciding to carry that kind of behavior to a higher level and harm a human being. couldn't understand why he would do what he did. >> we all have unanswered questions. we couldn't even have a proper funeral for her because there was nothing to have. >> it may look like a pile of burned fragments that are completely unrecognizable, but in the hands of a trained forensic anthropologist, they

will find something uniquely human and they will tie him to that victim. >> mr. otto thought he was going to outsmart us, and he was pretty sure of it. and he was going to do anything he could to try to outsmart us, but it didn't work. rebels in yemen claim they shot down a saudi fighter jet. >> i find the defendant not guilty on count one and two. the state did -- >> that's the word in the state of ohio. a police officer is acquitted in the death of unarmed couples. dozens of activists march for peace. from cnn world headquarters in atlanta, i'm george howell. this is cnn news room. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. we start this hour wit