end. now, all of these new years later, the two families, the thibodeau and islands are left with the same questions. what did happen to heidi and will we ever find a shallow grave? >> i think eventually something is going to happen. >> someone's going to say something. >> i might not know, i might have to wait. but i will die trying and fighting for her. >> she went to work early on on easter sunday morning and was never seen again. >> that's all for this edition of dateline. i'm craig melvin, thank you for. warren for. warren hello i'm gregg melvin and this is dateline. >> i'm in bed with my imagination and i would play out possibilities of what happened that night. i thought about how scared she

must have been, it was hard to go to sleep some night. >> our young woman living on her own, murdered in the middle of the. night >> she was at her most vulnerable, alone, and embed. >> a crime that jolted a sleepy seaside community. killer walking among them. >> i do not think it really sets in that we are all -- of that point. >> young, fun, and pretty. cory had plenty of admirers. and one of them like to do much. a strange coworker -- >> oh my god. >> i was, i was obsessed. >> that is scary stuff, right there. >> exactly. >> and a -- friend. >> her statements about how much she loved cory. >> and a young man who made some people very uncomfortable. >> she called him indict creepers. >> a gallery of potential suspects, piles of evidence,

but the truth would only be revealed by a tiny telltale clue. >> did raise jobs drop? >> my eyes filled with tears. i could not believe it. >> welcome to dateline. she was a 25-year-old woman enjoying her independents, working hard and playing harder. cory parker was the kind of woman who attracted a lot of attention and when she was found stabbed to death in her bedroom, please out a list of potential suspects to work through. it was an investigation that took them far and wide, but was a killer working closer to home? here is andrea canning with rear window. >> maybe it was the ape not a home of life coming to life.

then again, maybe it was just the boos of talk of easy money. >> we are all just sitting there having a couple of beers, fishing, relaxing, and enjoying. >> somehow, three families kicking back on the lakes side dog found the evening funding into the past, a brutal unsolved murder, an investigation stalled on an old name resurrected. as they remembered, their eyes grew wide. >> what is your gut tell you as you're sitting on that dark? >> probably on to something. >> and someone who would prefer to stay hidden. strange how the night can shine a light into the darkest places. like so many others, corey parker came to florida for the waves and weather, but stayed for the people. like amy -- >> jim are the first time you met cory parker? >> i do.

>> cory, a young 20 something when she and amy became fast friends. >> we were out beats barr on the beach and we were actually in the bathroom waiting in line. >> what did you say to her? >> i think she started the conversation. she said hey, i see around all the time. we should hang out. i said all right. >> did you to get into a lot of trouble? >> we did not get caught doing anything, or probably would have. >> cory it was a transplant from upstate new york. towering and sweet like a sugar maple. >> cory was 5:11 and she would wear heels, so she was so tall. i am very short, so i think every time she walked into a room people looked at her and she was so beautiful. >> did she look like a model at 5:11? >> she could model. she could've remodel. >> instead, she chose a humble route. taking classes at the local college and waiting tables at ragtime tavern near jacksonville beach.

amy says that was pure cory. >> did you like being a waitress? >> she loved it. she could talk to people and she was a super friendly. >> she is a people person? >> yes. >> another reason that she loved cory, both were fiercely independent. cory, in particular, had just moved into her own apartment. >> this was absolutely an exciting moment for her moving into this place because she was finally able to do it on our own. >> this was a big kind of independence day for her? >> it was a really big deal. >> i was excited that somebody else was going to be moving in that i might be able to talk with. >> ashley burke remembers cory moving day that september of 1998. ashley, is an 18, lived next door with her mom and older brother joe. cory, 25, seemed like a big sister. >> we would sit outside, she would do or laundrie, we would have a glass of wine and just talk. >> about work, school, and korea's new boyfriend, a young man she only met three weeks

earlier at one of her favorite late night haunts, the ritz. ashley sensed her neighbor was falling in love. >> it started getting pretty close for them. i really feel like that. >> but there was something troubling, too. cory it was feeling uneasy about her ground floor apartment. her bedroom and front door were across from another building. >> it was somebody else in our building that saw a peeping tom and saw that somebody was looking in to her window. >> ashley says for that reason, corey preferred hanging out in the back of the apartment in the kitchen. that is where they were the day before thanksgiving. cory was making deserve to bring to a friends house for the next days feast. >> so he drank a beer, started making some pies and she was telling me about thanksgiving. she was telling me where she was going. and i did not even know she could make. >> when she finished, corey

went out for the evening, and amy who had left town for thanksgiving, are being tempted to stick around jacksonville beach associate party with her best friend. >> looking back, i wish i had. but i opted to go down to my mom's the night before to spend the night. >> photos from that night show cory inside or hang out, the ritz. she seemed looking back at the camera. one of the women there was a new friend, her name was tiffany's iantha. >> we were young and in college and felt that we would all go and out. >> you inquiry went out of a lot >> you relationship kept getting closer closer? >> yes. i can't answer for corey of course, but guess. from my own vantage point. >> that night tiffany says cory, usually the published in the room, fizzled out early. >> she got in her car and i got a ride from a coworker.

>> she says cory promised to stop by her place the next day, but thanksgiving came and court was a no-show. >> i didn't think much about it, but i did tell my mom that i was a little bummed out that she did not call or come by. >> cory did not call -- issue the type that would've said i am going to bow out for tonight? >> correct. >> it was not until the day after thanksgiving, black friday, that somebody finally noticed cory missing. she did not show up for her morning shift at the restaurant. nobody had heard from her in more than a day. >> one of the cooks who is a friend of ours said i will check on her. she did not live far from where she worked. >> the man returned to the restaurant to report that cory had not answered her door. alarmed, the manager sent him back. >> he walked around the back of her apartment and her blinds were closed in the back, her bedroom. but there was a little opening,

and he could see her foot and there is blood on her foot. >> the coworker immediately raced back to work in a panic. police were called, corey parker had just been found. >> coming up, what happened to cory? >> you can tell that she had fought for her. lies >> inside her apartment, the first chilling clues. >> you could see what almost looked like hand prints and those were in blood. >> and why detectives are sure that her attacker was no stranger. >> that speaks to some sort of a relationship. >> when dateline continues. hen dateline continues ♪breeze driftin' on by...♪ ♪...you know how i feel.♪ you don't have to take... [coughing] ...copd sitting down. ♪it's a new dawn,...♪ ♪...it's a new day,♪ it's time to make a stand. ♪and i'm feelin' good.♪ start a new day with trelegy. no once-daily copd... ...medicine has the power

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andrea canning: it was just before noon on black friday. black friday. ashley woke up to banging on her front door. it was the police. >> they are like, are you cory parker? i said no, i am not. i said, i pointed out the window next to me, which is her house, and i said, she lives right there. >> moments later, officers or inquiries apartment. >> i heard what she said, there she is. i just felt my knees. >> 25-year-old cori parker was dead. it's clear that she had been murdered. investigators called former state attorney and look cory, then an assistant prosecutor.

>> the police were all there when i arrived and so they walked me through the scene. >> how hard was it seeing cory parker in that way? >> this was brutal because you could tell she had fought for her life. you could tell that she was at her most vulnerable, alone, in bed, and that she had been brutally and viciously stabbed in the middle of the night. >> stabbed more than 100 times. >> this was a second individual who do this? >> very. >> i did not take long for word of corey's death to spread from the tiny apartment. her mother got a call from corey's boyfriend. >> he was crying and he said, did you hear what it's going on? i am so confused. >> i said no, what's wrong. everything is fine. >> he said there's something wrong with corey, somebody found her in blood. and i said no, she is fine, i talked to her yesterday everything is fine.

>> still, she drove back into jacksonville please, straight to the police station just to make sure. >> did finally register at the police station eventually? >> i went into a room with the detective and they did confirm that she was found in her home, dead. i kept thinking something happened to her heart, i don't know why, i kept going back to that in my mind, i don't know why. >> tiffany santa who had been out with her two nights before it was finishing her bartending shift when the customer broke the news to her. >> i don't even wash over to me and called amy and asked her if it was true. she said it was. >> detectives on the scene while we're busy talking to cory's neighbor and sizing up the layout and location of her apartment. that in itself was a red flag. >> my first time here at first glance it does not feel like the safest situation for a

young woman living in this ground floor apartment. >> there's a lot of transient traffic that comes through here, the beach is three blocks. mere >> detectives billy carlisle and katie kingston, both now retired, worked the case. >> she's a beautiful woman and whenever she went to the front of apartment, i am sure that there were a lot of guys who are looking at her. >> there are a lot of apartments around here. you must have had to do a lot of canvassing? >> we did, a lot of individual canvassing. >> there was a lot of partying that goes on at the beach, and so you have people wondering up and on the streets here. two, 3:00 in the morning sometimes. so yeah, that is a concern. >> neighbors told police that other lately at been a peeping tom creeping around the area. so, it was possible that she was killed by a complete stranger who had broken into her apartment. >> it looked like the suspect had put his hand on the kitchen counter, right there at the lip of the sink in order to lift

himself up on the cabinet to be able to extricate himself from the window. >> you could see what almost looks like hand prints, like they lowered themselves out the window. and those were in blood. >> it was corey blood, traces of a murder left by the murderer, but the fact that this was a random killing did not sit well with detectives. >> what you're got telling you that this was someone she knew? >> yes, yes. >> why was it, why were you thinking that? >> because the extensive stabs, she was stabbed 101 times. that speaks to some sort of a relationship. >> they hope to find traces of her killer in the mass left behind. there was plenty of evidence to test. fingerprints on wineglasses and cigarette lighters. hair and blood everywhere. >> you never know what is valuable, so you try to photograph everything and examine everything that you can that you think is involved in it.

>> and everyone, the first person they needed to talk to was the new man inquiries life. >> you all wanted to talk to the boyfriend, a logical place to start. any red flags there with him? >> no we determined through paying for flight tickets that he was out of town, he wasn't even here in jacksonville beach. >> was it a solid alibi? >> solid confirmation. >> these were early days in the investigation, and there were many people in cory's world for police to rule in or out, including a man who lived right next door. ashley burke's brother. police had a reason to talk to him. >> coming up. questions about a neighbor's whereabouts. >> did he have a solid alibi? >> not really, no. >> and then, suspicions about a coworker's feelings for cory. >> do you think you are obsessed with her? >> i was. i was obsessed. >> when dateline continues. when dateline continues

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andrea canning: this was low key jacksonville beach, jacksonville florida. where the main concern of the day was how high the waves were riding. >> a young single woman attacked in the night in her bed, it just didn't happen here. >> i think this case, illustrates every woman's nightmare. that as hard as corey parker

tried, she was still the most vulnerable in the sanctity of her own home. >> women who lived alone were scared. >> melissa nelson, then turn assistant prosecutor who joined the case recalls the fear. >> neighbors were scared, people she worked with were alarmed. it was a very scary time for that community. >> tiffany's iantha raised in jacksonville beach couldn't believe this that happened to somebody she knew. >> i mean, they kept calling it the bloodiest crime scene at the beach and 25 years. hear. >> ashley burke was also frightened for another reason. detectives thought her brother joe had been too vague about where he'd been in the hour surrounding cory's death. >> did you have a solid alibi? >> not really. no. >> what was he doing? >> you know, he was at the apartment, just hang around. he comes and goes. so we were looking to establish a solid alibi at the time. >> their interest grew when they found a hair on a sock in cory's bedroom, the hair looked like it could've come from joe.

>> i know we did a microscopic comparison, and the microscopic comparison developed that lightness. >> the test they use back then was not definitive, but it was enough to make police suspicious, and for joe to worry. >> so they would ask, well why is your hair on her sock? he couldn't answer that. he was petrified. petrified. he didn't know, you know, what they were gonna do next. >> what police did was take a sample of joe's dna for testing. meanwhile, there was another young man they were interested in, a dishwasher named eric elie. >> eric was a coworker that worked with cory at ragtown tavern. >> and everyone knew he really liked cory. >> he had come on to her on multiple occasions, and had also done that to several other waitresses, they just thought he was a creepy guy,.

>> who'd grown stranger by the day. police found out he'd been pasture in court to have thanksgiving dinner with him alone. each time, she turned him down. detectives brought the young man in for questioning. >> did you ask cory out for thanksgiving dinner prior to calling? >> i may have mentioned it, but i don't, i know i did not score a direct question. >> but to the detectives, what the dishwasher did next was straight over norman bass playbook. >> he made this really nice thanksgiving dinner in hopes that he could call her and say i've made thanksgiving dinner, i'd like for you to come over, and enjoy thanksgiving dinner with me. >> so it made the dinner first? and then he called? >> right. >> that's a tiny bit, on the great beside. >> he was a little strange. >> it was clear, he was infatuated. >> do you think you are obsessed with our? >> >> yeah, i was slightly obsessed, but i wouldn't do anything. >> you are greatly obsessed, eric.

admit it. my god. >> i was, i was obsessed. >> from there, the interview took an even darker turn. the young man admitted to violent fantasies. >> tell me the things that you think about doing with women, that you, they wouldn't do cause you know it's not the right thing to do. >> you mean like take them into a bedroom and raped them? >> yeah, yeah. >> he's talking about rape, i mean that scary stuff right there. >> exactly. >> that paled in comparison to what he said next, he described how he thought cory had been killed. >> how would you contain her? how, how, how would you -- taking her, taking her down when she was tired. and he just poked, or you know, did whatever, stopped, or qatar, throat or -- >> in fact, that's a court was killed. >> did >> you think of the scenario that he might have felt really rejected by corey? and he snapped? >> anything is possible, yes that comes into your mind, he asked her multiple times to go, although she was cordial to him,

she just never went there. >> you sound like you know, a little bit more of what happened to cory. how would you -- >> how would i know? because maybe, maybe i would share the same thoughts as the person who did it. >> he sounded like an obvious suspect. >> i would like to have fantasize myself doing it, instead of him doing it. but i didn't do it. >> despite all of his incriminations, the dishwasher was adamant that he didn't kill cory. please don't have any hard evidence that put him inside of her bedroom. >> you have nothing to put on their. >> for the time being, police had to let the men go. just when it seemed their case couldn't get more complicated, it did. cory's friend had been talking around town about the murder, and she was saying all of the things to catch it detective's attention. >> coming up, are you ready for another potential suspect? this close girlfriend of course was she a little too close?

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do your homework even faster. come again. -sorry, what was that? introducing the next generation 10g network only from xfinity. hello i am katie phang, and the future starts now. here is what is happening. mexico will stop issuing permits to undocumented migrants traveling through the country unless they have legal documentation the. country's president announced friday right before title 42 expired, at least 26,000 migrants remained along mexico's northern borders. less than 48 hours after the expiration of title 42, this is the scene at the border. thousands of migrants are still waiting in limbo, the covid era policy allowed border officials to turn away migrants at a much faster pace to cut down processing time. now back to dateline. now back to dateline in the months after corey parker's murder, police had several potential suspects, including a next door neighbor

with a alibi and obsessed dishwasher. but they did not have enough to make an arrest. cory's family even offered a reward for information. former prosecutor melissa nelson. >> to that end, everybody is presented as a suspect -- potential suspect. could it be this person, is this person? >> amy lavin founder self looking around at corey's other friends and wondering if it could be one of them. >> everyone is an actual suspect, so that became a little bit fake carried me. >> her killer could've been right under your nose? >> yeah. >> tiffany zienta remembers just wanting to be helpful, like most of cory's friends, she met with detectives. >> they want to talk to you, the detectives? >> we -- all >> they wanted to talk to you. >> absolutely. >> tiffany told the detectives that she had been with corey at the ritz bore, wednesday night into the early hours of thanksgiving. they said they left the bar at the same time, around 1:30

a.m.. tiffany hitched a ride with another friend to go bar hopping. corey, she noted, got into her own car and headed home. later, tiffany said, she called corey's home phone. >> it was like 2:15, right after we left the original bar. >> detectives followed up on what tiffany had told them. carlisle said they quickly noticed a wrinkle in her story. >> her phone call is not on the phone records of corey parker's home residents. >> so she is starting to make inconsistent statements. >> inconsistent statements. >> more troubling to police were what they were hearing from cory's friends. they were saying that tiffany had been describing the murder, the stab wounds to the body, details that had not been made public. they also believed that she harbored a deep feelings for cory that were not mutual. >> tiffany was infatuated with cory? >> yes. >> what were you told? >> we were basically told it was bordering on a little

strange, with what we had heard about her statements and how much he cared about corey and how much she loved corey. it peaked our curiosity and interest. >> now, detectives wanted to sit down again with tiffany, but by then, more than five months had passed since corey's murder and tiffany had left town. for new orleans, the movie only made her look worse to police. so they tracked her down, hoping to confront her. but tiffany was not having it. >> she, at some point, decided she was not going to cooperate further and referred us to her lawyer. >> so detectives decided to get a warrant for tiffany's dna. >> we had to get a court order to get her standards. her hair and her blood. >> are you starting to think that she could be corey's killer? >> you have to follow that lead. based on what we knew at that point that she was a person of interest, definitely.

maybe a viable suspect. >> not the person who is going to kill somebody. >> looking back, tiffany is convinced that detectives set their sights on her from the moment she first talk to them. the fact that she is the last friend to see cory alive shaped everyone that followed. >> i knew is gonna come back to haunt me. the police are like well the killer was last one. until you think about it that way you do not think about it that way. >> first of, all she, says she never lied about that call to cory. no matter what the phone records said. >> how do you explain that? >> according to my attorney, he had had other clients that had called people that did not show up on phone records either. i don't know, i do not know why it did not show up. i have no idea. >> as for being in love with cory? >> is there any truth to that? >> no, because i am not gay.

i thought she was beautiful, i thought she was a great person. have i been infatuated with corey? no. >> everything else she did in this case as she says was out of innocence or panic. she learned about the bloody crime scene from a friend, a paramedic who had been there. if you want to new orleans to rest, not escape. she got a lawyer out of fear, not guilt. >> how are you feeling as this is getting more intense? this is a murder investigation. >> hopeless. bullied. hopeless. like they were going to be no answers. and this was going to be with me for the rest of my life. >> before they can make an arrest, detectives needed to link or dna to the crime scene. that is when things got really interesting. >> coming up, detectives get their hands on the one thing

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thanks, bro. take a lap, rookie. real mature. taandrea canning:e. jacksonville beach had jacksonville beach had been been home to tiffany zienta. home did tiffany -- now seemed home had turned on her. >> did you think there is a chance i could get arrested? >> yes, for something i didn't do. >> but she was not arrested, and neither was anybody else in the months following corey parker's murder. around by, former state

attorney angela cori. >> so this was not solved after the commercial break? >> no, no, we went into this knowing that we were in for the long haul. we knew it was going to be a marathon, not a sprint. >> they had their list of possible suspects, but they did not have the evidence or the science to get to be -- definitively link anyone to the crime. >> dna testing was actually in the middle of evolving at that time. >> eventually, the science and the evidence came together. investigators uncovered a strand of foreign hair from corps underwear. they believe that single strand was rich in dna. >> it had been clearly ripped out of a head. >> likely, they believe, the killers had. now they had to test it against their possible suspects. >> you essentially had your killer in your tests. you just -- >> locked in a tube. >> did noah's name. >> harris on slides. that's right. >> that's when the case took its most dramatic turn yet,

thanks to this man. >> would you call yourself a bounty hunter? >> i have been called bounty hunter before, but i prefer fugitive specialist. >> fugitive specialists, okay. >> william rensselaer knew about curry's murder, and knew that there had been a reward posted for information leading to her killer. >> so it's kind of like hey, why not take a look? >> so on his own he started talking to corey's old neighbors to see if officers had missed anything. >> when i came across one individual, something struck me as odd. >> the individual was a young man named robert danny, he was 17 years old, living in a nearby building when corey was killed. he had been questioned and dismissed by detectives early on in part because you're so young. which seemed odd to william was that the teen disappeared not long after the murder. as memorial day weekend rolled around, william sound himself on a dock with two friends.

>> we were fishing and having a couple of beers and i was going over my notes. >> suddenly, he remembered that robert denney had worked at the same restaurant as his friends. they recognized the name instantly. >> they felt that he wasn't offbeat individual. >> about two months after the murder, they said that robert denney seemed distraught, saying that he had to go home to texas, that his child had just been killed. they quickly found out that he made it all up. >> so he is a liar. >> correct. >> he lives near the victim. >> correct. >> he moved out of town shortly after the murder? >> correct. >> what is your gut telling you as you are sitting on that doc? >> it is highly unusual and i'm probably on something. >> william sherr it is suspicions with detective katie kingston. he then went over to check out robert denney's old apartment for herself. >> you can see how close it. is >> it department number four, and it's back balcony was less than three feet from corey's old kitchen.

when police met with robert denney's coworkers, they said that they had talked about watching a young woman from his balcony. >> do you think you've been watching here for? while >> no question. >> it was something straight out of hitchcock. a rear window, a vulnerable young woman, a man watching, seeing, but unseen. robert denney did not match the description that police got an earlier in the case of that peeping tom, but that did not mean that he had not been spying on corey, said detectives. >> it would not take much if she had her lights on for him to sit up there in the dark and be able to watch her, as much as he wanted to. >> kingston did not know where the man lived now, but she found out that he had a sister in the area. the woman told the detective about her brother was on settling to say the least. >> she called him a night cream for. she said that he would creep around the house at night, she had woken up before, he was staring at her. >> the sister said that kingston could find her brother in eastern maryland. he had moved there to be with a woman that she met online.

kingston and carolyn mediately edit north. they needed to compare their suspect that harris fan poll from the crime scene. >> you need his dna? >> absolutely. >> with the help of police, they called up their suspect and flat out lied. they made up a story about a recent assault. could he come in for questioning? >> he agreed to come in and sat down with us. >> what followed was a vintage cat and mouse. please try to get his dna of a cigarette. for robert denney one for a smoke, but when he was finished -- >> he took the cigarette butt and put it behind his ear. would not put it in the cigarette ashtray. >> so they moved on to plan b. they offered him a bottle of water. >> he takes the water, but he does not take the top off of it. he sat there the whole time and never drank from the water bottle. so now you are on plan c. >> which was this. they asked denis to fill out some forms. please procedural stuff, they said. >> what we are going to do is

have him signed those reforms and then put them in an envelope and seal the envelope. there are three different envelope. >> he filled out the forms, but did not like the envelopes. >> he looks at us and said you guys have tried three separate times to get my dna sample. he says, you can seal them yourselves, is there anything else? >> the best laid plans -- >> the best laid plans of mice and, then he didn't fall for. it >> robert denney was done, but carlisle wasn't. >> i was not going anywhere without a dna sample. >> so they staked him out at the computer store where he worked. and snapped these photos as their prey came outside for cigarette breaks. once again, their mouths was a step ahead. >> he was smoking the cigarette and then when he was finished he would take it and put it behind us here. >> do you think he knew that maybe you are watching him? >> i am sure. >> but on the second day, denny did something he probably had

done 1000 times before. >> he starts spitting on the ground, out of the clear blue. >> spit has dna in it. >> and we were jumping for joy at that point. >> you've never been so happy in your life to see somebody spit? >> when robert denney, carlisle raced over, collector the sample, and drove straight to the fbi dna lab. all there was off to do now is wait. just a little bit longer. >> no matter how the tests come back, detectives will have to explain a lot of other evidence at the scene. >> coming up. >> there are unidentified fingerprints and hairs in the victims hands. >> had somebody else been at corey's. then we sit down with robert denney. >> did you murder corey parker? >> when dateline continues. teline continues -whoo-hoo! -[ laughs ] well done, ma'am.

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welcome back to "dateline." i'm craig melvin. robert denney was engaged in a high stakes game of cat and mouse with police when he slipped up, unwittingly giving them the dna that they badly wanted. but, investigators knew that they could not rely on friends and evidence alone. so, they said about the task of proving their case the old-fashioned way. here is andrea canning with the conclusion of rear window. >> it had been a year and a half since corey parker's

murder when they discovered, or rediscover robert denney. her old neighbor. >> we are on robert any at that. point >> here is why, robert denney lived right behind the victim. he disappeared soon after her murder and detectives learned this. robert denney had an older brother in prison for murder. >> you are starting to think that this might run in the family? >> you cannot tell the things that. >> robert denney's brother had been convicted years earlier in texas and his crime was eerily similar to this case. >> the interesting thing about the brother was that his case in el paso, he stabbed that woman 96 times and we are dealing with a homicide where our victims has been stabbed 101 times, so the similarity was just too much to overlook. >> the detectives had to wonder if robert denney had killed corey in a twisted attempt to outdo his sibling. one thing detectives were sure, if he had become fixated on her. a coworker recalled being in

robert denney's apartment. >> robert pointed down too corey's and said i watched that go down. there >> they were convinced that robert denney was the killer, but they needed proof. so they waited for tests to compare robert denney's saliva sample to the hair found at the scene. wouldn't you know, robert denney's dna was a match. not just to that hair, but also to a tiny speck of blood recovered near her kitchen sink. all of the other possible suspects, the next door neighbor, the dishwater, and tiffany were cleared in the case. >> we were jumping up and down. >> we wanted to go get him. then >> prosecutor angela cori said no. >> he could come up with a story to explain that dni away. i carried her grocery is in for her, i cut my finger. you cannot give anybody a chance to explain it away. >> the prosecutor wanted him on the record, denying that he had ever set foot in the victims apartment. then they would hit him with the dna proof, trapping him.

so they sent katie kingston back up to marilyn, to robert denney's house. >> i was going to play like i did not know anything. >> you are acting. >> just acting down. >> they told denney that they had found the man who killed his old neighbor corey parker. the detective was just here to tie up loose ends. he seemed willing to help, but what he didn't know is that the detectives was wearing a wire. >> do you know corey? >> no. >> okay. no. >> then the detective asked the crucial question, had he ever been in corey's apartment? >> the only apartment everyone to, is the guy right next door. >> all right, sealed and go back and forth. >> no. >> and all that? stuff okay. >> that was all the detectives needed. the cat it seemed had finally gotten its mouse. >> when we heard the recording

i had the arrest warrant ready to go and i finished plugging in what they told me over the phone and we were ecstatic. we knew we had him. >> corey parker had been dead almost two years to the day when police slipped the handcuffs on robert denney. at the police station, right after his arrest, he protested his innocence. >> you can't have any evidence. it's impossible, because i didn't do it. i can't admit to something i didn't do. >> when carlile mentioned denney's brother, he again told the drive detective we had it all wrong. >> that's my brother. i understand that. that is my brother, i understand. that that's not. many >> detectives were not buying his fears. they were convinced that they had enough evidence to put robert denney away for life. and yet, it took almost five years to bring him to trial. it was, after all, a complicated investigation. denney's dna was found of the crime, seen but there is also

evidence that they could not linked to him. >> we had alternative suspects. we had a lot to explain in the form of the science. >> the defense seized the opportunity, noting that there were any number of people who might have killed corey. >> there are still unidentified pieces of evidence at this crime. seen >> robert denney's attorney, rick sitka. >> there are underfunded to find a seaman's saints, fingerprints, hairs, in the victims hands. so, it is a question of who done it. >> not a question of denney she did it, he says. >> to underscore, that denney even took the stand to show jurors that he was just a void extort, not a monster at the door. but it did not work. after a three-week trial, the jury needed less than an hour 200 verdict. guilty of first degree murder. >> denney was sentenced to life in prison, which is where we met for this interview.

>> did you murder corey parker? >> no i did not. >> he believes the sins of his brother made to please click to zero in on him. >> there has been a connection made as far as the theories of the police, prosecutors, that this was some twisted brotherly bond or rivalry. is there any truth to that? >> none at all. simply because my brother is convicted of murder does not make me a murderer. >> he says the police later got to his dna shows they were determined to link him to corey's murder. >> when i first heard that my spit was what they collected to match to dna at the crime scene it was unreal. i'm thinking to, myself how could this be? >> he is also convinced that the labs, including one of the fbi, did not follow protocol when they tested his dna against the evidence from the crime scene. >> there is definitely -- they may have mixed up samples. >> i think the hardest part about drop your head around is

that there could be contamination on both of the blood and there. >> right. i can understand why you would feel that way, and maybe that goes to explaining what the police might have done with the evidence. we do not know. if i knew i wouldn't be here. >> it just seems a little farfetched that the police would randomly pluck you out of obscurity years later and decide to frame you. >> i understand. i've thought about this for years and it happened. please do for him people, we see it all the time now. >> the police have framed two and two separate crime labs have contaminated the evidence? >> yes. >> you can see -- >> very farfetched, guess. i can understand that. >> the detective in this case says that he is 1000% certain that he has the right person. >> he is wrong.

he does not have the right person. >> so who did then? >> if i knew i would not be here right now. i wish i knew. >> yet, the people who arrested and prosecuted denney, insist to independent lab did follow protocol, linking his dna to evidence from the crime scene. a florida appeals court denied denney's motion for a new trial. >> i hope he trots in hell. i hate robert denney. >> as for tiffany zienta, she says it took a long time to get over what he and the police did to her. >> how did you deal with it? >> i drank more. tried to lose who i was. tried to change who i was. i did not like myself very much. it is taken me a while to get back. >> amy lavin has also struggled with a. passed >> i go to that, why didn't i invite her to

thanksgiving with, maybe she would've gone. even to this day, you know, there is a lot of guilt without. >> but there is also gratitude. to investigators who never gave up, to three strangers on a dock play armchair detective. and, most of, all to a best friend. >> i definitely feel blessed to have known her for the amount of time i did. i cannot imagine what she would've accomplished by now. >> whatever it was, amite feels a certain it would have been like the wooden herself, as vibrant as the northern sky. as unforgettable as a southern night. >> that's all for this edition of dateline, i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. u for watching ♪ ♪ ♪ >> welcome to morning joe weekend on the saturday morning. it was a busy week with news, including a big loss and court for donald trump. we'll get into that.