matter what you do, there s always going to be that spectre 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. but a violent one-time pump. the self-described escort king. i said, i have been waiting for the right time to tell you this. she was flabbergasted. i think that she became frightened of me. why didn t you shake hands and call it quits? because i loved her. karen s friends and brothers say she told them she was afraid. when she tried to pull away from tim, brother mike says those fears were quickly borne out. did you ever hear evidence 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.
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 ve got 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 pinnel 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.
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 they were traveling from far flung parts of the country for her funeral. shocked and in mourning for the lost sister who had always been their glue. all the boys kind of got involved in their own stuff. then there was karen. she was really what connected all of us to the family unit. what does that tell us about her? she was really 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 or a doctor or whatever. well, her friends loved her.
involved in their own stuff. then there was karen. she was really what connected all of us to the family unit. what does that tell us about her? she was really 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 or a doctor or whatever. well, her friends loved her. and she was hard not to love. even harder to forget what a cruel fate she had suffered at the hands of a killer unknown. during the viewing, there were invisible stab wounds on her hand. you know, so we kind of pulled flowers down a little further. a few days after the murder her many friends at the airport said their good-byes. there s a chapel in the main terminal at the airport.
karen, it s tim. i m at karen s apartment, she has been stabbed. stabbed? it s a horrible way, it s very 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. he said, karen s been murdered. any theories about what 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