cell, carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer. now back to dateline! now back to dateline welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. who killed karen pannell? florida investigators were taking a close look at her ex-boyfriend, roc, whose name was found scrawled in blood at the crime scene. roc admitted to having a stormy relationship with karen but insisted he didn t kill her. was there more to the bloody clue than met the eye? forensic specialist anna cox was trying to unlock what her naked eyes could not see. when she did, her discovery would send the investigation in a completely different direction. here again is dennis murphy with written in blood. the handwriting was on the wall and forensic specialist anna cox was intent on breaking down the key piece of evidence implicating karen s boyfriend, the three letters in blood, roc. you would spend hours looking at these letters? i did. you actually cut the sheet rock out of your place and took
be painted as a bad guy right away because of his sorted past. so he promised to cooperate in every way possible, and the cops took him up on it. i allowed them to photograph me. removed my clothing. i allowed them to go to my home. take anything they wanted. there was nothing about his clothing, his car, his person that led to us believe that he was involved in any other way than he said he was. he came over to see her, found her and was devastated. tim permenter 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. roc. this is a creepy scene. i mean, you got this scrawled in blood message saying this is my killer. i m now dead, you find this guy.
but no report was filed. still, karen s co-workers 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 when she didn t come in, she wore a turtleneck. in the summer months in florida, you don t wear a turtle neck. while the detectives chased down every lead, the crime lab made another big discovery. unlike the bogus message in blood, this message was something forensic analyst anna cox almost passed right over. a pizza box on karen s kitchen counter. you could walk right by and think it had no importance at all. it ended up being crucial in this case. cox was able to lift a clean fingerprint from the box. it was tim permenters, and it blew a hole in his account of what happened. he initially stated that he wasn t there when the pizza was delivered. he told the officers in the
going to get it pinned on me. i knew the minute i saw the body. detectives arrested him and sent him to county jail. bill lowry was the state prosecutor who got the case. what about your accused, timothy permentor? who is he? 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 really was like, she wanted out of that relationship, and that ultimately led to her death. prosecutor lowry said permentor thought he could outsmart the cops by playing the bereaved boyfriend, playing to the hilt at the crime scene. 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 said 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.