when 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 scrawled 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 that it was a total mystery. >> the case, the murder of a former model and flight attendant. >> when she got dolled up, oh,

my god. gorgeous. >> did she write these letters? was this a hint to who killed her? you've got this message saying, this is my killer. >> just 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. >> "written in blood." hello and welcome to "dateline" extra. i'm craig melvin. karen penel was the youngest in her family, the only girl, sharing a house with five ram burning rambunctious boys. she was smart as she was beautiful. then karen was found murdered in her florida home. a coded message scrawled above her head that baffled investigators. it with take a dogged forensic specialist with a keen eye to crack the code and unravel the mystery. here's dennis murphy. >> if year round sun and water is your thing, florida's west

coast should be high on your check-out list of places to live. it was for pretty karen panel. once the one-time months he will and flight attendant got sand in her shoes, she never looked back. >> she loved the beach, diving, boating, wildlife. i just remember jumping on the boat and going to these little islands and having picnics and coming back at sunset and it was just so much fun. >> good friend kathryn worked the counter at american airlines in tampa with karen. if you were a frazzled passenger -- and who isn't these days -- karen was the antedote. exactly the right agent to bump into to get you on your way. >> karen was very pretty. she was smart. smiled all the time. funny. >> but when the always capable and reliable karen didn't show up for her saturday morning shift on october 11, 2003, clearly something was wrong.

her boyfriend tim tried calling 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 really got panicky about it. >> the boyfriend drove over to karen's condo in the quiet town of olsmar. 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 laying on the floor and there's blood everywhere. >> karen panel sprawled on the floor, bloody, a murder victim in her own home. michael, the county detective would lead the investigation. >> when the first deputies arrive on the scene, tim was in the front yard. he was hysterical. he threw up in the front yard over finding his girlfriend.

>> deputies gave tim the shaken boyfriend a chance to collect himself in the back seat of an air conditioned patrol car. that's where he placed a call to karen's friend kathryn with the unimaginable news. >> he said, kathryn, it's tim. i'm at karen's apartment. she's laying on the floor. there's blood everywhere and she's been stabbed. >> stabbed? >> stabbed. it's a horrible way -- it's really a horrible way to die. >> karen, the baby of the family with five older brothers, suddenly gone. she'd 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 why.

and relying on the police to do what they needed to do. >> and what they had to do was plenty. they processed the crime scene, filmed every inch of karen's home, knocked on doors, tried to figure out just who their victim was. detectives holbrooke and letter i melvin began with the man who made the 911 call. >> the first thing a lead investigator will do is talk to people closest to her. in this case we had timothy permenter finding his girlfriend. we took him back to the office and talked to him extensively. >> tim, a car salesman, gave them a run down into what he found upon discovery. he popped in to drop off a gift. a photo calendar of kittens he knew his cat-lover girlfriend would find irresistible. tim said 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. she had to go in to work the next day, she had to go in early. >> after saying good-bye to karen he said he spent time with friends an hour to the north. is he saying there's something you can't do it, i know boy friends are suspicions, i need a lawyer, is anything coming out of him? >> he's being more than cooperative. >> while tim said he was off with his friend, there appeared to be a frenzied struggle at karen's house. she assessed the bloody aftermath. >> she put up a heck of a struggle. >> what are you looking at? >> she had defensive wounds. the way her body was contorted. i just remember thinking she put up a heck of a strug. . she really fought for her life. >> do you suck in your breath and say, i've seen everything at this point? >> oh, i can't believe what people do to each other. and it was terrible. it's terrible. >> around back, cox, the crime

scene tech found the bolt on the security door had been dislodged. there were other signs of tampering. >> there was a cable box that was open. then you start to think to yourself, somebody trying to cut the wires. there was 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 to an inventory of everything at the crime scene. a pizza box, a garden glove, a grocery receipt. all routine findings so far. but it's what authorities spotted next on the wall just above the body that would turn this case into something out of the movies. a three-letter message in blood, and you didn't have to squint to make it out, either. r.o.c. on the victim, karen's right index finger was clearly stained with blood. r.o.c., what was the murdered woman trying to tell the cops?

>> all 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 that it really was -- it was a total mystery. >> there is a concept in the law known as a dying declaration. would those three letters scrawled in karen's own blood lead to the apprehension of her killer? >> coming up. investigators dig into that three-letter mystery. >> we've got this scrawled in blood message saying, this is my killer. >> absolutely. >> or what was r.o.c.? when written in blood continues. . good morning, blair. [ chuckles ] whoo. i'm gonna grow big and strong. yes, you are. i'm gonna get this place all clean. i'll give you a hand. and i'm gonna put lisa on crutches! wait, what? said she's gonna need crutches. she fell pretty hard.

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hey. ♪hey. you must be steven's phone. now you can take control of your home wifi and get a notification the instant someone new joins your network... only with xfinity xfi. download the xfi app today. >> welcome back. when karen didn't show up for her saturday shift, her boyfriend tim permenter went to

check on her. he made a discovery, karen had been murdered. a curious clue, r.o.c., written in blood next to her body. had karen tried to identify her killer? the search for answers would soon lead detectives to a man from karen's past. here again is dennis murphy. >> reporter: the camera always liked karen. she was hard to miss and hard to forget. just ask her boyfriend, tim permentor who was smitten right away when he met her at the vw dealership where he worked. >> what are did you think? >> she was gorgeous. beautiful. >> you were pinching yourself. >> oh, yeah. karen was one of the best women i have ever known. i thought she was the one. i thought she was a person i could settle down with. >> settling down hadn't been part of karen's growing up. she and her five brothers had been raised as military brats

and moved bases a lot. now that family was gathering from far flung parts of the country for her funeral. shocked and in mourning for the lost sister who had been their glue. >> all the boys got involved in their own stuff, but then there was karen. she was really what connected all of us to the family unit. >> what does that tell us about her? >> um, she was a lot more important to us than we knew. um, 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 is the limit person. >> she could have been anything she wanted. a scientist or a doctor or whatever. she was just really nimble minded. >> her friends loved her. >> yeah, she was hard not to love. >> even harder to forget what a cruel fate she'd suffered at the hands of a killer unknown. >> during the viewing, there were visible stab wounds on her

hand, you know, so we kind of pulled the flowers down a little farther. >> a few days after the murder, her many friends at the airport said their good-byes. >> there's a chuckle in the main terminal in tampa at the airport. there were so many people there from all different airlines, the security people -- it was incredible. >> meanwhile, the county sheriff's department investigation was moving quickly on several fronts. first they validated boyfriend tim's story. he said after visiting karen early that evening, he spent the night with a friend named george solomon in moon lake, about an hour to the north. >> he did, in fact, go up to where george was staying with his girlfriend in pasco county. this was confirmed through interviews with george as well as george's girlfriend. george gave us a time line that was consistent with what per $mentor 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. heed done time. now, early on in your life, tim, you get involved in trouble. what was going on with you? >> i was running an escort service, and got stupid. 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 about 6 to $7,000 a day. >> a day? >> yes, sir. >> and you're how old? >> at that time 20, and that's the trap. why am i even going to school when i'm making this kind of money? >> why go straight, huh? >> yegs. >> yes, sir. >> and it ended up in a gun fight. >> yes, sir. >> tim says heed be worried heetd be painted a bad guy right away because of his sordid past. so he promised to cooperate every way possible. the cops took him up on it. >> i allowed them to photograph

me, removed all my clothing. i allowed them to go to my home, take anything that they wanted. >> and there was nothing about his clothing, his car, his person that led 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. >> tim permentor's alibi checked out. police 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 their biggest clue of all meant. those three letters written in blood, r.o.c. so this is a pretty creepy scene. i mean, you've got this scrawled in blood message saying, this is my killer. i'm now dead, but you find this guy. that's what it's suggesting, isn't it? >> absolutely that's whats it' suggesting. like you would see in a movie. >> detectives soon discovered how those letters on the wall, r.o.c., were, in fact, connected

to the victim lying beneath them. rock, it turned out, was a person, the name of a man who had spelled trouble for karen in the past. >> rock was an ex-boyfriend who karen panel had problems with previously. >> and whoever and wherever this rock was, heed just become the prime target of the investigation into her murder. >> okay, well, there it is. that's what she meant to write, was rock, and they have to follow that lead. and off they go. >> to find rock? >> to find rock. >> coming up. mission accomplished. find him, they do. what do you think she saw in you? >> the bad boy kind of thing. >> but what would they find next? >> i'm looking at murder. somebody's talking to me about a murder. >> when "written in blood" continues. thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer, which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, are living in the moment and taking ibrance.

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welcome back. to detectives, the murder of karen pannell certainly looked like a crime of passion. karen's boyfriend tim admitted that he had a criminal record, but he had an alibi for the night of the murder. what about her ex boyfriend rock

herpick? a message scrawled in blood near karen's body seemed to point directly at him, and police soon learned about their troubled relationship. it was now time to talk to rock. here's dennis murphy. >> reporter: a stomach-churning crime scene with an at first cryptic message written in blood, r.o.c. but it wasn't a big mystery for long. r.o.c. was the unusual but proper spelling of karen pannell's ex-boyfriend rock herpeck. who was he? >> r.o.c. was an ex-boyfriend. heed had a bit of legal problems, little bit of substance abuse problem. >> r.o.c. had a personality as big and as loud as the pipes on the harleys he loved to cruise. he worked at an auto body shop handling insurance claims. when he met karen, she was on a downward spiral. after being married for five

years, she'd recently gotten a divorce and a doctor had just given her some awful news. she had multiple sclerosis, 38 years old. to be a young divorced woman with this awful diagnosis, what do you think that did to her? that's a lot to put on your shoulders. >> right. i think that really affected her self-esteem. frankly, i think it may have had an impact on the kind of men she was attracted to. >> karen came to rely on rock to take her to doctors appointments and give her injections. but when she took the step of asking her to move in, her friends and family thought she was asking for trouble. your worry was this is way ahead for my sister? >> i think that's true. is it my place to say, well, you need to go find somebody that is going to offer you a getter future. >> you can't dictate terms to your sister.

>> no, you can only fix yourself. >> it turns out rock wasn't a fix for karen. their relationship soon took an ugly term. >> the two seemed to get along for a while and she was happy. and he turned into not a very nice guy. he was a little creepy. >> it was tough on her? >> there were some unexplained bruises. 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 to intervene. one time rock allegedly broke down the front door. that was the last straw. karen filed a domestic battery complaint and rock moved out. tim permentor rock was harassing karen about a roll top desk he left behind. >> she was starting to get scared of him towards the end. >> this issue he had i've got a valuable piece of furniture, i want it back? >> right. but karen said that was a ruse. >> trying to worm his way back

in? >> that's the way she portrayed it to me. >> the detectives knew they had to confront this rock. so they tracked him down and paid a surprise visit. he wasn't happy to see them. >> i'm in the garage at my home in north port, florida. black unmarked shows up and i'm like, everybody knows what that is. i'm thinking what the heck is is that? >> detective holbrooke identified himself and said we need to talk about his friend karen. >> we sat down on the porch and said, well, she's dead. this doesn't even register. so i just said, you just need to tell me what's going on. >> but the detective wanted rock to do the talking. he asked about his troubled relationship with karen. >> rock indicated that he was using drugs and that karen liked to drink, and that they fought often. >> but rock said he savored the good times with karen, too. >> when she got dolled up, oh, my god, gorgeous. i mean, picture-perfect.

wasn't anything out of place. >> were there some sparks there, rock? was there something going on -- >> yeah, there was. she was all that. she was all by herself. she was ready to go. she looked hungry for attention and she was alone. and it was perfect, it was a 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 lace kind of guy. >> rock was open with the detectives. even came across as a good guy. but conceded, there had been screaming matches with karen and a few rip roaring fights. but said she was the instigator. >> she'd 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. >> rock tells us he gave it as good as she got. he dodged a few pieces of throne crockery. >> she was ready to stand up for herself at the drop of a hat.

she was a tough girl. >> rock remembers karen playing hardball about that roll top desk of his, too. not liking her attitude. >> i did call her on several occasions about my role top desk. >> the desk. >> that stupid desk. and it was bugging me. i mean, it was a nice piece of furniture and i really wanted to get it back. she pretty much said, you left, you're not getting it. >> he never did get it. that roll top was still in karen's condo on the night she was stabbed to death. now detective holbrooke pointedly wanted to know if rock had been there, too. >> he says, where were you on such and such a day? and i'm like, well, 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 in olds mar. so we go from there to discussing where i was, who i had been with, where i've --

where i lived. >> so you're getting a serious grilling. >> right. he ends up telling me, we found your name in blood on the wall. >> r.o.c. >> yeah. so obviously i'm a suspect and i acknowledge that. i mean, i'm looking at murder. i'm getting somebody's talking to me about a murder. >> rock waived his right to a lawyer and agreed to give fingerprints and swabbing. it looked as though police had strangely found yet another cooperative boyfriend of their victim. >> i said, if you're looking for fingerprints, they're all over that home because i lived there for a year, so you're going to find them. >> did you lose your patience with them, that's it for today, fellas? >> i did lose my patients when they cut the end of my finger off taking a finger nail. you take the end of my finger off, now we're done. now i'm done. >> rock's cooperation had an edge to it. was he really trying to cover his tracks? detectives were determined to find out. >> coming up.

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i'm richard lui. thousands taking to the streets of iran for a second day of protests after the iranian government admitted to shooting down a ukrainian passenger jet killing all 176 on board. president trump voiced his support for the demonstrations on twitter, urging the iranian leaders not to kill their protesters. a volcanic eruption near the philippine capital caused tens of thousands to evacuate. the blast was up to 9 miles high forcing the manila airport to shutdown. now back to "dateline." >> welcome back to "dateline" extra. i'm craig melvin. a message scrawled in blood had

become a key piece of evidence in the karen pannell murder investigation. the letters, r.o.c., smeared on a wall matched the name of karen's former boyfriend rock herpeck. he was quick to cooperate with police and soon a forensic breakthrough would force detectives to reconsider the bloody clue. not only what it meant, but who wrote it. here again is dennis murphy. >> reporter: the handwriting was on the wall, and forensic specialist anna cox was intent on breaking down the key piece of evidence implicating karen pannell's ex-boyfriend rock herpeck. those three letters in blood, r.o.c. you would spend hours looking at those letters. >> i did. we ended up -- >> you actually cut the sheetrock out of the place and took it to your lab. >> yes. i have to look at those letters, at everything about them. >> using a high-powered microscope, anna did an analysis

of the specs of blood that sustained the wall as karen was stabbed 16 times. that flung spatter served as a gruesome canvas for the letters r.o.c. then written over it. >> 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. >> reporter: here was her central observation. since the specs of blood weren't smeared, that meant r.o.c. must have been written after they dried. but how long after? >> i have a special machine that i use to make some spatter. >> reporter: in her lab, she used animal blood to test how long it took for spatter to dry on a similar surface. >> so once i came back and was able to apply spatter to some sections of some cardboard, then i was able to get some blood and to start writing the word r.o.c. i must have written this word a million times over different areas of spatter. >> reporter: in the lab, it took at least 20 minutes of drying time before the forensic specialist could write without smearing the spatter. she concluded there must have been about that much time

between the attack on karen and the word r.o.c. 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 would think that there would be some type of transfer of ridge detail. >> reporter: ridge detail, we all have it. unique telltale patterns on every human finger and hand. but anna wasn't finding that here. rather, she detected an unusual hint of a pattern, something almost like polka dots. and i thought back to myself, the garden glove on the counter that was missing its match, missing its pair. >> reporter: a garden glove was found in karen's kitchen, just one glove. the mate was never located the. it had a distinctive dot pattern. >> on the interior side where the palm and the fingers were, it's like that rubber and it's got those little --

>> reporter: nubbly -- >> it has those the so it doesn't slip. i remember thinking, wow, i wonder if that's what wrote these letters. >> reporter: 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 who by then had learned another pertinent fact about their victim. >> karen was exclusively left-handed, and karen's left hand did not have blood smeared on it. >> reporter: not only that. when the autopsy report came in, it suggested karen couldn't have written anything with either hand. from what the medical examiner was seeing on his table, was this a victim who was going to be able to dip in her own blood and write r.o.c. on

the wall? >> absolutely not. over 90% of her spinal cord had been damaged by the knife wounds. >> reporter: she was incapacitated? >> incapacitated -- it wasn't her. she didn't write that. >> reporter: the evidence was overwhelming. karen pannell did not write the letters r.o.c. in blood. it was a huge turning point in the case, and the best news possible for the ex-boyfriend rock herpeck. >> they confirmed 100% she could not have done that. she couldn't have done it. she would have been physically incapable of doing that, and it surely wasn't me. i mean, why would you write your own name on the wall? >> reporter: police agreed. implicating yourself in a murder just made no sense. rock 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 that we know karen was killed, he's in north port, florida, and that's a good, you know, hour, hour and a half away.

>> reporter: and you went overall these alleged beeves that he might have had with her. >> absolutely. >> reporter: they were boyfriend, girlfriend. >> he had moved on. >> reporter: detectives melvin and holbrooke were ready to move on, too. they officially cleared rock. it was a major development. karen's ex had sudsly 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 r.o.c. -- >> somebody knows my name. >> reporter: is part of the story here. >> that's right. but if you think about this, this is -- it's not even a smart thing to do. >> reporter: rock was right. the pool of suspects had suddenly narrowed to a small handful of karen's intimates who knew about him and knew the unusual way he name, r.o.c. detectives holbrooke and melvin 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

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welcome back. forensic specialist anna cox had made a big breakthrough in the karen pannell murder investigation. after painstaking work, she determined that the letters left in blood at the crime scene were written, not by karen, but by someone wearing a gardening glove. detectives were now convinced the killer was trying to frame karen's ex-boyfriend r.o.c.. and that theory would push a familiar name to the top of their suspect list. here again is dennis murphy. >> reporter: police had reached a startling conclusion. karen pannell did not write the name r.o.c. on the wall. her killer had. but those three letters were still a gift to police because investigators figured he had to

know both karen and r.o.c. detectives started questioning the other men in karen's life. >> karen had nicknames for her boy friends. car guy. that was tim permentor. another one she referred to as dr. pilot. >> reporter: dr. pilot, a british airways captain, had recently 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 in olds martha night. every boyfriend except car guy, tim permentor, the one who reported finding karen's body. >> is she conscious? >> no. >> is she breathing? >> i don't know. >> reporter: tim was inconsolable during that 911 call and later would tell detectives heed lost the love of his life, the woman he was hoping to marry. but the people who knew karen best started telling police a very different story. >> i'm not sure why she stayed

in that relationship or she even began a relationship like that. >> reporter: the relationship began with tim trying to sell karen a new car, but police learned he also sold her a bill of goods about himself, saying heed been a navy s.e.a.l., involved in top secret missions. never mentioning the sordid truth about his criminal past. >> karen told me he explained his scars as he got injured on a mission. >> reporter: super commando stuff? >> well, i think that would have been his impression of himself. >> reporter: so why are you lying to her? you're giving her a crock. >> there's really no excuse for it. i mean, other than if you're an inmate or you're a convicted felon, no matter how good you do, no matter what you do, there's always going to be that spectre hanging over you. >> reporter: it was several months into the relationship before tim finally revealed his ugly secret. he was a felon who had spent more than a decade behind bars. not a navy s.e.a.l., but a violent one-time pick.

the self-described escort king. >> i said, been waiting for the right time to tell you this. and she was flabbergasted. i think that she, she became frightened of me. >> reporter: so why didn't you just shake hands and call it quits? >> because i loved her. >> reporter: 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 borne out. did you ever hear evidence that she was not being treated well? >> yes. and 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. >> reporter: but no report was filed. still, karen's coworkers could tell something was terribly wrong. >> she had bruising on her neck. in fact, one of her friends at work remembered her missing a

day or two and then when she did come in, she wore a turtleneck. over the summer months here in florida, you don't wear a turtleneck. >> reporter: while detectives holbrooke and melvin chased down every lead, the crime lab made another big discovery. unlike the mellow dramatic and bogus message in blood, this evidence was something forensic tech anna cox almost passed right over. a pizza box on karen's kitchen counter. >> you could walk right by and think it has no importance at all. it ended up being crucial in this case. >> reporter: cox was able to lift a clean fingerprint from the box. it was tim permentor's and it blew a hole in his minute by minute account of the night karen was killed. >> he initially stated he wasn't there when the pizza was delivered. >> reporter: he told the officers in the initial interview i was out of there at 7:30. >> well, his fingerprints were on that box. >> reporter: and you had a receipt saying it was delivered at 8:48. >> yes. so he has now put himself right there at the scene and right

there in the last crucial hours of her life. >> reporter: it's a poor set of facts. >> for him. >> reporter: and then tim's time line, his alibi took another hit. heed first said he was home when he called his friend george just after 9:30. detective melvin found evidence proving otherwise. >> once we get the phone records back and the cell tower site locations back, we are putting him at her house. >> reporter: so the tower is catching him out in a lie? >> absolutely. his 911 phone call in the morning hits off the same tower that he was hitting off when he called george at 9:46 the night before. which is directly north of karen pannell's house. >> reporter: melvin and holbrooke could only think 6 one reason for tim to lie about those times. it was that karen's car guy was the killer. they brought him to headquarters again. this time for an official and much more aggressive interrogation. >> he gave the same time line as he gave previously. we went through it again with

him and he held true to what he told us. and at that point we started attacking the story. >> reporter: tim had a simple explanation for the time line problems. he was confused. >> this sort of corroboration got me confused. >> confused? we got you confused, tim? when you lie. >> when the pizza arrived, i was still there. >> reporter: 8:48 delivered. >> and it was right after the pizza arrived, i would say i was there another 10, maybe 15 minutes. >> reporter: why did you tell the cops 7:30? >> i'm horrible at times and days. and the problem was is that making a mistake became a, i'm hiding something. >> reporter: cops call your mistake a lie. >> of course. >> why did you lie to us about times? you were there from at least 8:30 to 9:30. >> that's impossible. >> no. pizza man gives you a receipt.

>> reporter: tim had been tripped up by his own statements. as detective holbrooke said, his suspect knew the charade was over. >> he put his face in his hands and he literally covered his face for two or three minutes. tim ultimately looked up at us and the car salesman guy that we knew as tim per meamentor had completely left the room. >> reporter: what did you see in his eyes, what did you see in his face? >> that satan just walked into the room. >> coming up. >> i knew i was innocent. >> was he? the trial and the verdict. when "written in blood" continues. continues. power over pain, so the whole world looks different. the unbeatable strength and speed of advil liqui-gels. what pain? stimulant laxatives forcefully stimulate i switched to miralax for my constipation. the nerves in your colon. miralax works with the water in your

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welcome back. a fingerprint on a pizza box shattered tim per. er.

he'd soon be tested for her murder. but with no dna or blood items tying the crime against himself. would the case hold up? now with the conclusion of our story, here's dennis murphy. >> the detectives were convinced that tim per. or, the boyfriend who plenled to help solve karen's murder was really the killer. tim said police had nothing on him and were only targeting him because of his criminal record. >> i didn't do it. i knew somehow, some way i was going to get it pinned on me. i knew the minute i saw the body. >> detectives arrested him and sent him to county jail. the state attorney got the case. >> what are about timothy permentor? >> he is a psychopath, someone who i think had gotten lucky to be with karen. once she got past the superficial aspect of him and realized what he was like, she wanted out of that relationship

and that ultimately lead to her death. . >> the prosecutor said he thought he could get out of the crime by acting like the bereaved boyfriend. >> oh, god! >> the prosecutor said permentor got thrown off the tear-stained script when he called karen's best friend soon after making the 911 call. >> he says katherine, it's tim. i'm a karen's apartment and she is laying on the floor and there is blood everywhere. she has been stabbed. >> stabbed? >> stabbed. not she is dead, but she's been stabbed. >> he said she has been stabbed. >> okay. she has been stabbed. >> we didn't know that at that point in time. >> so he knew something crucial he shouldn't have known. >> because he's the one that stabbed her. >> the prosecutor looked at the rejected lover and they showed was at the scene of the crime and lied about it. he charged permentor with first-degree murder and decided to seek the death penalty.

then just weeks before the trial was scheduled to start, tim's friend george solomon, his sleep over alibi witness recanted his story, and how. >> he came up with a new story that permentor admitted he killed karen that night. >> blurted out a confession? . >> when he got up there. >> that's a holy cow moment for you? . >> it is. >> death penalty cases can take a torturous path when reaching a courtroom. this had taken long years and despite building a strong circumstantial case, prosecutors did not have a murder weapon or physical evidence linking tim to the stabbing. tim's defense attorney dudley kline. >> you have a complete lack of physical evidence. no bloody fingerprints. no bloody footprints or the door. >> the prosecutor was confident about the evidence he did have.

>> i think circumstantial cases are sometimes the best. they don't lie. the circumstances don't lie. people lie. >> and that's the case lawry made to the jury. the circumstances showed tim permentor was the only one with a motive and opportunity to kill karen. and everything he did afterwards was fabricated to cover up the crime. >> the 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 these things. and you know, there was no reason for a person to lie about the death of their loved one if that's true. >> defense attorney countered with common sense, arguing that karen's killer must have been drenched in blood after a frenzied attack. there was no forensic evidence show his client was that person. >> in order to buy the state's case, you have to make assumption upon 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 in your car which was ripped apart? >> right. that's why i agreed to let them look. get what you want. i knew i was innocent. >> the defense also to into the credibility of the state's star witness, george solomon saying it was ridiculous to think timed get an invitation to spend the night after blurting out a murder confession. >> hey i killed somebody just now. really? let's go see my wife and kids. no way. >> a confident tim permentor decided to speak directly to the jury. he took the stand in his own defense. >> the attitude was look, you have to get up here and talk to these people. >> how do you remember him on the stand? >> i think he was calm.

i think he answered the questions as best he could. very simply. i think very completely. we felt that we had made a showing that the state had not met the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. >> mike pannell 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. >> in this day and age, we know that juries really like to see forensics. the dna and the blood samples. and they didn't have it. >> that was the biggest concern for me. >> but it took the jury just four hours to find tim permentor guilty of first-degree murder. she was spared the death penalty by the judge who ordered him to

serve a life sentence with no chance for parole . i spoke to permentor at florida's liberty correctional institution. the murderer said he is the victim of a justice system tilted against him from the start. >> did you murder karen? >> no. >> because this would be a great time to relieve her family of a lot of remorse and fess to it. >> i understand that, but i did not kill karen. i did not. i will probably spend the rest of my life here and when i'm 80 if i'm still alive, i did not kill karen. i will 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 had not tried so hard to fake his alibi. starting with the three letters written in blood. >> so this hollywood touch as i think of it, roc did it. the declaration. it bit him? >> it bit him hard. very hard. he outsmarted himself and that's why he is in prison.

>> after the trial, roc is free to ride his harley these days, but it still eats him up that a man he never met tried to frame him for murder. >> for you could talk to him the way we are sitting here, what would you say? >> i am restrained, correct? i couldn't get to him? right? >> should we tie you to the chair? >> i would not be a good communicator in that conversation mode with him sitting there. i couldn't do it. >> mike pannell couldn't do it either. he would rather not think about tim permentor and the last moments of his precious baby sister's life. >> i am not interested in remembering karen associated with that crime. >> it's been a long ordeal for you. >> i want to remember karen as a brilliant, beautiful, young woman that 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 very much. melvin thank you very much. [ music playing ] one of the investigators brought someone over to me saying this is our violent crime advocate. i was stilling mafl for it already because of the massive police presence. they said that they believed that he had been murdered. >> craig rideout, dad of seven, cared deeply about his kids. >> he was a loving man, provider, warm. >> so it was puzzling and alarming when he vanished. >> she said, craig is not here. i said, that's weird.

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