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tv   Dateline  MSNBC  September 30, 2018 2:00am-3:01am PDT

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one day he will be found. he'll be found. that's all for now. thanks for joining us. this is "dateline." >> what evidence doesn't lie, it actually tells a story. >> you're there at the crime scene. >> you can almost recreate the crime. >> right there on the wall, a mystery in blood. three cryptic letters. what would you make of this? >> is that a word? is that a person? the clues pointed so many different directions it was a total mystery. >> the case, the murder of a former model and flight
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attendant. >> when she got dolled up, oh my god, gorgeous. >> did she write these letters? was this a hint to who killed her? >> you got this message saying this was my killer. >> it's like you would see in a movie. >> and the ending, that was just like a movie too. >> i can't believe what people do to each other. >> hello and welcome to date line. r.o.c. those letters would tell a story all their own. the letters in blood above her body seemed like a beacon that could lead detectives to a killer, but what exactly did they need? and what other crucial clues were hiding in plain sight? it would take a dogged forensic specialist with a keen eye to
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unravel the mystery. here's dennis murphy. once the one time model and flight attendance got flight in her shoes, she never looked back. >> she loved the beach, diving, bo boating. >> catherine worked the counter at american airlines in tampa. if you were a frazzeled passenger, she was the right agent to bump into to get you underway. >> she was very pretty. smart. smiled all the time. funny. >> but when the always capable and reliable karen didn't show up for her saturday morning shift, october 11th, 2003, clearly something was wrong. her boyfriend had tried calling
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her at home. >> when she wasn't at work or answering her calls, i began to get worried, but it was a couple of hours before i got panicy about it. >> the boyfriend drove over to karen's condo. the front door was unlocked. a bad sign. he said he stepped inside and looked to the right to the kitchen. >> i saw her body and i knew immediately there was no doubt in my mind she was dead. i picked up the phone and i called 911. >> she is laying on the floor. there's blood everywhere. >> karen, sprawled on her back, a murder victim in her own home. michael holbrook would lead the investigati investigation. >> he was hysterical and actually threw up in the front yard. >> deputies gave tim a chance to
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collect himself in the backseat of an air conditioned patrol car. that's where he placed a call to karen's friend with the unimaginable news. >> catherine, it's tim, i'm at karen's department, there's blood everywhere and she has been stabbed. >> stabbed? >> it's a horrible way, it's a horrible way to die. >> karen, the baby of the family with five older brothers, suddenly gone. she had been especially close to her oldest brother mike. >> my brother called me. i was at the airport and said, you better sit down. and he said karen's been murdered. >> any theories about what had happened? >> i don't know. i was trying to figure out the
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why. and relied on the police to do what they had to do. >> they knocked on doors and tried to figure out who their victim was. the detectives began with the man that made that 911 call. >> the first thing a lead investigator will do is talk to the people closest to her. in this case we had timothy finding his girlfriend. we took him back to the office and talked to him extensively. >> tim, a car salesman gave the detectives a rundown of where he had been in the hours leading up to the terrible discovery. he said he popped in briefly on karen the night before to drop off a gift. a photo calendar of kittens that he knew his cat lover girlfriend would find irresistible. he left around 7:30 and that was the last time he saw karen alive. >> wouldn't it have been your routine to spend the night? >> not on a friday night, no.
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because she had to work the next day. she had to go to work early. >> after saying good-bye he ended up spending the night with friends about an hour to the north. >> is he saying anything at this point? i want to talk to a lawyer? >> he's being more than cooperative. >> while tim says he was off with his friend, there appeared to have been a struggle at karen's house. >> she put up a heck of a struggle. >> what are you looking at? >> she had defensive wounds. the way her body was contorted and i just remember thinking she put up a heck of a struggle. >> do you suck in your breath and say oh my goodness. or have you seen everything at this point? >> i can't believe what people do to each other. it was terrible. >> around back, the crime scene tech found the security bolt on the sliding glass door had been dislodged and there were other
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signs of tampering. >> there was a cable box that was open so then you start to think to yourself somebody trying to cut the wires. a knocked over bird bath so there was evidence outside that at first you need to think to yourself, i think this might be a burglary. >> and karen's overturned purse on the stove top supported the break-in theory. anna cox took an inventory of everything at the crime scene, a pizza box, a garden glove, a grocery receipt but it's what authorities spotted on the wall just above the body that would turn this case into something out of the movies. a three letter message in blood. you didn't have to squint to make it out either. roc. on the victim, her right hand index finger was clearly stained with blood. r.o.c. what was the murdered woman trying to tell the cops.
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>> all of these theories were running through my mind. what does that mean? is that a word? is that a person? is that a thing? the clues pointed so many different directions, it was a total mystery. >> there's a concept in the law known as a dying declaration. with those three letters in karen's own blood lead to the aprehengs ap apprehension of her killer. >> investigators dig into the 3-letter mystery. who or what was r.o.c.? when dateline continues. r.o.c. when dateline continues. tennis partner's... chatty coworker's... youngest daughter's... entire judo class. one shot can make a world of difference. walgreens has specially trained pharmacists, that know which flu shot is right for you. protecting the world... over 60 million flu shots and counting. starts with protecting yours. walgreens trusted since 1901.
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the camera always liked karen. she was hard to miss and hard to forget, just as her boyfriend that was submiten right away when he met her at the dealership where he worked. >> what did you think of her? >> she was gorgeous. she was beautiful. >> you thought you were the luckiest guy around. >> i thought she was the one. i thought she was the one i could settle down with. >> settling down wasn't part of her growing up. she and her brothers were raised as military brats. now they were gathering for her funeral. >> kind of got involved in our own stuff but then there was
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karen. she was what connected all of us to the family unit. >> what does that tell us about her? >> she was more important to us than we knew. i think she was always more interested in family as a whole than she was in herself. >> brother mike wasn't alone in thinking his kid sister could have been a sky's the limit person. >> she could have been anything she wanted. a scientist, a doctor, whatever. her friends loved her and she was hard not to love. >> even harder to forget what a cruel fate she suffered at the hands of a killer unknown. >> during the viewing, there were visible stab wounds on her hand. so we kind of pulled the flowers down a little further. >> a few days after the murder her many friends at the airport said their good-byes.
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>> there was so many people there from all different airlines, security people. it was incredible. >> meanwhile, the investigation was moving quickly on several fronts. first they validated tim's story. he spent the night with a friend in moon lake about an hour to the north. >> he did go up to where george was staying with his girlfriend. this was confirmed. george gave us a time line that was consistent with what he gave us. >> tim's story about the night of the murder checked out. he even voluntarily came clean on something right from the start. he had a record. he had done time. >> no early on in your life, tim, you get in trouble. what was going on with you? >> i was running an escort service and got stupid and
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started it up small, basically, running an ad out of a newspaper. getting a small office and it just expanded from there. it ballooned. >> what kind of money were you pulling down per week? >> i was grossing 6 to $7,000 a day. >> a day. >> you're how old? >> at that time 20. why am i even going to school when i'm making this kind of money. >> why go straight? >> and ended up in a gun fight. >> yes, sir. >> tim says he was worried he would be painted as a bad guy right away because of his sorted past. so he promised to cooperate in every way possible. the cops took him up. >> i allowed them to photograph me. removed all of my clothing. i allowed them to go to my home. take anything they wanted. >> and there was nothing about his clothing, his car, his person that lead us to believe that he was involved in any other way than he said he was. that he came over to see her and found her and was devastated.
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>> his alibi checked out and police also dismissed any clues pointing to a home invasion. after all, karen had been stabbed 16 times. an attack so ferocious it could only be a crime of passion. now the detectives were desperate to figure out what the biggest clue of all meant. those three letters written in blood, r.o.c. >> this is a pretty creepy scene. you have this message in blood saying this is my killer. i'm not dead but you find this guy. that's what it suggested, isn't it? >> absolutely. just like you'd see in a movie. >> detectives discovered how the letters on the wall, r.o.c. were connected to the victim. it was a person. the name of a man who had spelled trouble for karen in the past. >> roc was an ex-boyfriend who karen had problems with previously. >> and who ever and where ever
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this roc was he was the target of the investigation into her murder. >> there it is. that's what she meant to write was roc and we have to follow that lead and off they go. to find roc. >> coming up, mission accomplished. find him they do. but what would they find next? >> i'm looking at murder. somebody's talking to me about a murder. >> when dateline continues. murder. >> when dateline continues i can't believe it. that everything sticks to stefon diggs's hands? no, i can't believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on my car insurance with geico. cool, huh? yeah. he plays football, huh? yeah. believe it. geico could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.
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a stomach churning crime scene with a cryptic message written in blood. r.o.c. but it wasn't a big mystery for long. roc was the unusual but proper spelling of karen's ex-boyfriend. >> so tell me about the former boyfrie boyfriend. who is he? >> the ex-boyfriend with a little bit of legal problems. a little bit of substance abuse problem. >> roc had a personality as big and loud as the harleys he liked to cruise. when he met karen, she was on a downward spiral. she had recently gotten a divorce and a doctor had just given her awful news. she had multiple sclerosis, 38
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years old. to be a young divorced woman with this awful diagnosis, what do you think it did to her? that's a lot to put on your shoulders? >> right. that really effected her self-establish steaself self-esteem. frankly i think it had an impact on the kind of men she was attracted to. she relied on roc to take her to doctor's appointments and give her injections but when she asked him to move in, her friends and family thought she was in trouble. >> i think that's true and is it my place to think well you need to go find somebody that's going to offer you a better future. >> you can only fix yourself. >> and as it turned out, roc wasn't a fix for karen either. the relationship took an ugly turn. >> she was happy and he turned
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into not a very nice guy. he was a little creepy. >> he was tough on her. >> there was some unexplained bruises and i used to tell her, what are you doing? he did not deserve her. but she wouldn't listen. >> the fights got worse and police were called three separate times the intervene. one time roc allegedly broke down the front door. it was the last straw. karen filed domestic battery complaint and roc moved out. a year later he was still harassing her about a roll top desk he left behind. >> this issue he had was i have a valuable piece of furniture. i want it back. >> she said that was a ruse. >> trying to worm his way back in? >> that's the way she portrayed it to me. >> they tracked him down and paid a surprise visit. he wasn't happy to see them.
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>> i'm in the garage at my home, black unmarked shows up and i'm like, well, everybody knows what that is. i'm thinking what the heck is that. >> detective holbrook said they needed to talk to him about his friend karen. we sit down on the porch. well, she's dead. >> this just doesn't register so i just said you need to tell me what's going on. >> but the detective wanted roc to do the talking. he asked about his troubled relationship with karen. >> roc indicated he was using drugs and karen liked to drink and that they fought often. >> but roc said he savored the god times with karen too. >> when she got dolled up, oh my god. gorgeous. picture perfect. wasn't anything out of place. >> were there some sparks there. >> yeah, there was. >> she was all that. just ready to go.
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she was hungry for attention and she was alone. it was the perfect set up. >> what do you think she saw in you? what was working from her side? >> probably the bad boy kind of thing. i wasn't your conventional straight laced kind of guy. >> he was open with the detectives and even came across as a good guy but conceded there were screaming matches with karen and rip roaring fights but she was the instigator. >> she would get violent. physically violent. just stuff. things would happen but nobody ever got arrested, but they'd come out and they would address the issue. >> as roc tells it, she gave as good as she got. >> she was ready to stand up for herself at the drop of a hat. she was a tough girl. >> he remembers not liking her
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attitude. >> i did call her on several occasions about the roll top desk. >> the desk. >> that stupid desk and it was bugging me. it was a nice piece of furniture and i wanted to get it back and she pretty much said you left, you're not getting it. >> it was still in her condo on the night she was stabbed to death. now the detective wanted to know if roc had been there too. >> he said where were you on such and such a day. first of all i'll have to look at the calendar because i don't know where i was that day but i guarantee you i wasn't there. we go from there to discussing where i was and where i had
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been. he tells me we found your name in blood on the wall. i'm a suspect. i acknowledge that. i'm looking at murder. somebody is talking to me about a murder. >> roc waved his right to a lawyer and agreed to give fingerprints and swabbing. police had strangely found yet another cooperative boyfriend of the victim. >> i said if you're looking for fingerprints, they're all over that home. i lived there for a year so i'm going to find them. >> did you lose your patience? >> i did when they cut the end of my finger off. you take the end of my finger off, now we're done. now i'm done. >> roc's cooperation had an edge to it. was he really trying to cover his tracks? detectives were determined to find out. >> and they put that bloody clue under the microscope. were those three little letters really what they seemed? >> coming up, the csi of roc.
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>> i remember thinking, wow, i wonder if that's what wrote these letters. when dateline continues. tters. when dateline continues. game changer. the moment you take staining to the next level. of great savings and service. with such a long history, it's easy to trust geico! thank you todd. it's not just easy. it's-being-a-master-of-hypnotism easy. hey, i got your text- sleep! doug, when i snap my fingers you're going to clean my gutters. ooh i should clean your gutters! great idea. it's not just easy. it's geico easy. todd, you will go make me a frittata. feeclaritin and relief fromwsy symptoms caused by over 200 allergens. like those from buddy. because stuffed animals are clearly no substitute for real ones.
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>> president trump rallying for candidates in west virginia last night and calling democrats a disgrace. >> senator elizabeth warren telling constituents that she'll take a hard look at running for president after the november 6th midterm elections. she went on to say time is up and more women need to help washington to fix our broken government. now back to dateline. welcome back to dateline. i'm craig melvin. who killed karen? investigators were taking a close look at her ex-boyfriend whose name was found in blood at the crime scene. roc admitted to having a stormy
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relationship with karen but insisted he didn't kill her. was there more to the bloody clue than met the eye? anna cox was trying to unlock what her naked eyes could not see and when she did, her discovery would send the investigation in a completely new direction. here is dennis murphy with written in blood. >> the handwriting was on the wall and forensic specialist anna cox was intend t on breaki down the key piece of evidence. those three letters in blood. roc. >> you spent hours looking at these letters. >> i did. >> you cut the sheet rock out and took it into your lab. >> yes. i have to look at those letters and everything about them. >> using a high powered microscope, anna did an analysis of the specks of blood that stained the wall as karen was
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stabbed 16 times. that served as a gruesome canvas for the letters r.o.c. >> when the letters r.o.c. were written on top of it, it just skimmed right over it and didn't disrupt it at all. >> here was her central observation. since the specks of blood weren't smeared, roc must have been written after they dried but how long after? >> i have a special machine i used to make some spatter. >> in her lab, she used animal blood to test how long it took for spatter to dry on a similar surface. >> so once i was able to apply spatter to sections of cardboard then i was able to get blood and start writing the word roc. i must have written it a million times. >> it took 20 minutes of writing time. she concluded there must have been about that much time between the attack on karen and
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the word roc being written on the wall. next she looked for fingerprints in the letters themselves. sounds impossible, right? >> if she's writing and applying pressure to the wall you'd think there would be some type of transfer of ridge detail. >> ridge detail, we all have it. unique tell-tell patterns on every human finger and hand but anna wasn't finding that here. rather she detected an unusual pattern, something like polka dots. >> i thought to myself the garden glove on the counter missing it's match. missing it's pair. >> a garden glove was found in the kitchen and the mate was never located. it has a dot pattern. >> it's like rubber and it has those little nubby things that stick up for gripping purposes
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and i remember thinking, wow, i wonder if that's what wrote these letters. >> cox bought similar gloves at a hardware store and after several more days of testing was satisfied that her hunch was correct. anna cox had come up with two important findings. the message in blood had likely been written with a gloved hand and it had been scrawled at least 20 minutes after the on set of the attack on karen. she reported her results to the detectives that by then learned another pimportant fact about their victim. karen was exclusively left-handed and her left hand didn't have blood on it. >> when the autopsy report came in it suggested she couldn't have written anything with either hand. >> was this a victim that was going to be able to dip in her own blood and able to write roc on the wall? >> absolutely not.
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over 90% of her spinal cord was damaged. >> she was incapacitated. >> incapacitated. it wasn't her. she didn't write that. >> the evidence was overwhelming. she didn't write the letters roc in blood. it was a huge turning point in the case and the best news possible for the ex-boyfriend. >> they confirmed 100% that she could not have done it. she couldn't have done it. she would have been physically incapable of doing it. it surely wasn't me. why would you write your own name on the wall. >> police agreed. implicated yourself in a murder just made no sense. he got more good news after police checked out his alibi that he was home on the night of the murder. >> we got his cell phone records and the cell towers he's hitting off around the same time we know karen was killed he's in north port, florida and that's a good hour and a half away. >> and you went over the alleged
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beeves he might have with her. >> yeah. >> and he had moved on. >> detectives were ready to move on too. they officially cleared roc. it was a major development. karen's ex had gone from being a prime person of interest to a victim himself. victim of the real killer who tried to frame him for the crime and was still out there somewhere. >> whoever killed her did know that somebody named roc is part of the story here. >> somebody knows my name. but if you think about this, it's not even a smart thing to do. >> roc was right. the pool of suspects suddenly narrowed to a small hand full of karen's intimates that knew about him and also knew the unusual way he spelled his name. roc. the detectives were about to take a hard look at all of them. >> coming up. you could walk right by and think it has no importance at all. it ended up being crucial in
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this case. >> could a box of pizza help solve this puzzle? when dateline continues. when dateline continues. ahhhhh! shhhhh! new nyquil severe with vicks vapocool. the vaporizing, nightime coughing, aching, stuffy head, best sleep with a cold, medicine. thyou know what i do instead?eny your cravings. i snack on blue diamond almonds. wasabi & soy sauce?! mmm! don't deny your cravings. eat 'em! all the flavors you crave, in a superfood. blue diamond almonds. crave victoriously. ...that's why i've got the power of 1-2-3 medicines with trelegy. the only fda-approved 3-in-1 copd treatment. ♪ trelegy. the power of 1-2-3
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>> police reached a startling conclusion. karen did not write the word roc on the wall. her killer had. investigators figured he had to
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know both cakaren and roc. >> karen had nicknames for her boyfriends. car guy. that was tim. another one she referred to as dr. pilot. >> dr. pilot, a british airways captain had been sending karen romantic texts but he was aboard a flight over the middle east when karen was killed. so he was ruled out as were most of karen's known male friends. all could prove they were nowhere near her house that night. every boyfriend except for car guy, the one that reported finding karen's body. >> is she conscious? >> no. >> is she breathing? >> i don't know. >> tim was inconsolable during the 911 call and later would tell detectives he had lost the love of his life. the woman he was hoping to marry. but the people that knew karen best started telling police a different story. >> i'm not sure why she stayed in that relationship or even
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began a relationship like that. >> the relationship began with tim trying to sell karen a new car, but police learned he also told her a bill of goods about himself saying he had been a navy s.e.a.l. involved in top secret missions. never mentioning the sorted truth about his painful past. >> karen told me that he explained his cars as he got injured on a mission. >> that would have been his impression of himself. >> why are you lying to her? >> there's no excuse for it. other than if you're an inmate or convicted felon, no matter how good you do, no matter what you do, there's always going to be that hanging over you. >> it was several months into the relationship before tim finally revealed his ugly secret. he was a felon that spent more than a decade behind bars. not a navy s.e.a.l. the self-described escort king. >> i said i've been waiting for
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the right time to tell you this. she was flabbergasted. i think that she became frightened of me. >> so why didn't you shake hands and go. >> because i loved her. >> karen's friends and brother say she told them she was afraid and when she tried to pull away from tim, brother mike says those fears were quickly out. >> did you ever hear evidence? >> yes. she called me and said that tim had choked her, and i felt like after that conversation that i had convinced her to file a police report. >> but no report was filed. still her co-workers could tell something was terribly wrong. >> she had a bruise on her neck. one of her friends at work
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remembered her missing a day or two and then when she did come in wearing a turtleneck. >> while detectives chased down every lead, the crime lab made another big discovery. unlike the mellow dramatic and bogus messaging, this is something that anna cox almost passed right over. a pizza box on the kitchen counter. >> you could walk right by and think it has no importance at all. it was crucial in this case. >> she was able to lift a clear fingerprint on the box and blew a hole in his account of the night karen was killed. >> he stated he wasn't there when the pizza was delivered. >> he told the officers i was out of there at 7:30. >> well, his fingerprints were on that box. >> and you had a receipt saying it was delivered at 8:48. >> so he has now put himself right there at the scene and right there in the last crucial hours of her life.
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>> it's a poor set of facts. >> for him. >> and then his alibi took another hit. he first said he was home when he called his friend george just after 9:30. the detective found evidence proving otherwise. >> once we get the phone records back and the cell tower sight locations back we're putting him at her house. >> so the tower, was that catching him in a lie? >> absolutely. his 911 phone call in the morning hits off the same tower he was hitting off when he called george at 9:36 the night before which is directly north of karen's house. >> they could think of only one reason for tim to lie about those times. it was that karen's car guy was the killer. they brought him to headquaters again. this time for an official and much more aggressive interrogation. >> he gave the same time line as he gave previously. he held true to what he told us and at that point we started
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attacking his story. >> tim had a simple explanation for the time line problems, he was confused. >> this is what cooperation got me. confused. >> confused? >> you know what gets you confused, tim? when you lie. >> when the pizza arrived i was still there. >> 8:48. >> i would say i was there for maybe another 10 or 15 minutes. >> why did you tell the cops something different? >> i'm horrible at times and days and the problem was is that making a mistake became a i'm hiding something. >> cops called your mistake a lie. >> of course. >> why did you lie? >> you were there at least from 8:30 to 9:30. >> i don't see how. it's impossible. >> no, pizza man keeps a reseat. >> tim had been tripped up by his own statements and detective
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holbrook says his suspect knew the cherade was over. >> he put his face in his hands and covered his face for two or three minutes. tim ultimately looked up at us and the car salesman guy completely left the room. what did you think in his case? >> first thing i thought is satan just walked into the room. >> coming up. >> i knew i was innocent. >> was he? >> juries like to see forensics. dna, blood samples, and they didn't have it. >> that was the biggest concern for me. >> the trial and the verdict, when dateline continues. the ve when dateline continues. with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe eczema, or atopic dermatitis,
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to low-cost, high-speed internet at home. i'm trying to do some homework here. so they're ready for anything. s. detectives were now convinced that tim herman, the boyfriend who helped solve the murder, was really the killer, but similar says police had nothing on him and were only targeting him because of his criminal record. detectives arrested him and sent him to the county jail. bill was the state prosecutor who got got the case. >> i think timothy i'm lucky to
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be can karen. got past the super official aspect of him and realized what he was like, wanted out of that relationship. thought he could outsmart the cops by playing the bereaved boyfriend. the prosecutor says he got thrown off his script when he called the best friend soon after making that 911 calls. >> katherine, it's tim. i'm at karen's parent. she's lays on the floor. there's blood everywhere and she's been stabbed. >> he tellser hn the phone, according . >> she has been stabbed. >> we didn't know that at that point in time. >> he knew something he
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shouldn't have noun. >> becau >>. >> prosecutor sized up the case. rejected lover with a violent history. man the evidence showed was at the scene of the skpriem lied abo and lied about it. decided to seek the death penalty. weeks before the trial was scheduled to start. tim's friend is sleepover all by witness recanted story. >> tells me whole new story that he admitted he killed karen. that night. >> blurted out a confession. >> when he got up there. >> that's a holy you moment for you. >> death penalty cases can sometimes take a tort torturous path. prosecutors did not have a pl d murder weapon or other physical evidence linking him to the stabbing. the defense attorney. >> you have complete lack of physical evidence. no bloody fingerprints.
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no bloody footprints out the door. >> prosecutor was confident about the evidence he did have. they don't lie. circumstances don't lie. people lie. >> if that's the case lowry made to the jury. showed he's the only one with motive and opportunity to kill karen. everything afterwards was fabricated to coverup horrendous crime. >> issues in this case or the murder of karen by the only person that really could have done it and that person lied about all of these things. and, you know, there's no reason for a person to lie about the death of their loved one if that's really true. >> defense attorney clap countered with common sense. arguing that karen's killer must have been just drenched in blood after an attack and no forensic evidence that his client was
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that person. >> in order to buy the state's case, you have to make assumption upon assumption. >> that's not what our system is about. >> how did i do it? how on earth did not one single drop of blood get on my clothing or anything like that. >> or your car. >> right. that's why i agreed to let them look. get what you want because i knew i was innocent. >> the defense also tore into the credibility of the state star witness, george solomon. saying it was ridiculous to think he would get an invitation to spend the night with him after blurting out a murder confession. >> hey, i killed somebody just now. or whatever. oh, really, okay. come on. let's go see my wife and kids. no way. >> a confident tim decided to speak directly to the jury.
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he took the stand in his own defense. >> the attitude was, look, you've got to get up here and talk to these people. >> how do you remember him on the stabbed. >> i think he was calm. i think he answered questions as best he could. very simply and completely. we felt we had made a showing to them the state had not met the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. >> mike had waited four long years to get justice for his sister, but now, he wasn't sure what the jury would do. there were times that i felt the evidence was very circumstantial. >> we know juries really like to see forensics. dna, blood sampling. they didn't have it. >> that was the biggest concern for me.
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>> it took the jury only four hours to find him guilty. >> i spoke to him at florida liberty correctional institution. the convicted murder say he's the victim of justice system tilted against him from the start. >> did you murder karen. >> no. >> is this a great time to relieve her family of a lot of remorse and just fess to it. >> i understand, but i did not kill karen. i did not. and i'll probably spend the rest of my life here and when i'm 80 if i'm still alive, i did not kill karen. i'll pay for it. and i am paying for it, but i didn't do it. >> the detectives who cracked the case say they might have believed him if only he hadn't tried to hard terror fake his all alibi. >> the declaration, the bid.
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>> bit him hard. very hard. he outsmarted himself. that's why he's in prison. >> free to ride harley, but it's still eats him up that a man he never met tried to frame him with murder. >> you could sit down and talk to him, what would you say to him. >> i am retrained, right. i couldn't get to him, right. >> i would not be a good communicator in that conversation mode with him sitting there. i couldn't do it. >> mike couldn't do it either. he rather not think about tim's last moments of his precious baby sister's life. >> i'm not interested in remembering karen associated with that crime. >> it's been a long ordeal for you. >> yes. i want to remember karen as the brilliant beautiful young woman
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she was. >> maybe this smiling person. someone who loved her friends. loved the beach and died too young. >> that's all for this edition of dateline. i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is dateline. >> i don't go undercover every day. that's what made me nervous. >> they had a secret plan. >> were you armed. >> yes. >> and you were wearing a wire. >> yes. >> to solve a baffling case. a college student on a friday night out who vanished. >> dewane: very shy girl, but she was something special. >> the possible suspects, just about everyone. the friend, the boyfriend, the mysterious older man, even her

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