mike pannell: i don't know. i was trying to figure out the why and relying on the police to do what they needed to do. dennis murphy (voiceover): 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 holbrook and larry nalven began with the man who had made that 911 call. michael holbrook: the first thing, as a lead investigator, we'll do is talk to the people closest to her. in this case, we had timothy permenter finding his girlfriend. we took mr. permenter back to the office and talked to him extensively. dennis murphy (voiceover): tim, a car salesman, gave the detectives a rundown of where he'd been in the hours leading up to the terrible discovery. he said he'd popped in briefly on karen the night before to drop off a gift, a photo calendar of kittens that he knew was cat-lover girlfriend would find irresistible. tim said he left around 7:30, and that was the last time he saw karen al