and i was so frustrated. reporter: most people who knew brooke morris remember her radiance and zest for life. she was always, always, always dancing everywhere she went. reporter: kaitlyn okal met brooke when they were teenagers, growing up just outside knoxville, tennessee. brooke the yin to kaitlyn s yang. we kind of balanced each other out. she was a girly girl and i was more the tomboy. so i d go to her house. and change into a thousand outfits and try on makeup and do our hair. and then she d come into my house. and we d ride four wheelers and play on the farm. reporter: sounds like you two were almost more like sisters? oh yeah, we even fought like sisters. we reporter: that s when you know you re good friends. yes, yes. for sure. reporter: this is brooke s real sister brittany and their mom, tina. what did she like to do clothes. clothes
spent the night at dina s house. i called it hotel dina like everyone just stayed. yeah. left it unlocked for everyone, you know. reporter: the next day, saturday, was the tennessee lsu football game and everyone was looking forward to tailgating. but the fun day turned sour. brooke borrowed something out of dina s closet, the girlfriends had an argument about it. and i had found out she had wore it without asking. reporter: it was a silly fight, but it stuck with brooke. she didn t tailgate for long. she had been calling all these people to pick her up to take her to her car because she wanted to change her outfit for the night, for that night. reporter: brooke s friend albert dotson had been tailgating with her earlier in the day. so we would, like, break off, and i was with some other friends of ours at that time. so i m not really sure where she was. reporter: neither dina nor albert ever saw brooke again. and with more than a hundred thousand football fans floo
read people and and, you know, people throw off body language but he just seemed like, what in the world s goin on? reporter: and despite the tension during the marriage and divorce, those who knew brooke best didn t think her ex-husband was a killer. i just never entertained that thought. clayton was a good person. so i didn t think that, you know, he would be capable of doing something like that to brooke. reporter: more importantly, clayton s alibi checked out. investigators cleared him. if not the ex-husband, then who? who had brooke come in contact with that weekend? investigators retraced brooke s steps, starting not with the game on saturday, but with the night before, friday. friends told investigators they had tickets to a concert. she was super excited about going to that. so she was just, like, okay, i ve gotta go i ve gotta go find something to wear. i m gonna go to dinner. reporter: after dinner, brooke left her car in a shopping center parking lot nea
and if he wasn t, where did they really go? so they decided to trace his steps. they pulled his cell phone records and found something unusual. in the two and a half hours after shawn and brooke had last been seen together, there was no activity on his cell phone. and here s what also stood out around 11:00 p.m. his phone started pinging off towers along this major interstate heading out of knoxville. then it looked like shawn turned around. his phone started pinging in the other direction, all the way back to his house. did he talk about why he was maybe about to leave town but didn t or why he turned around? well, initially talking to him, he he had told us that he was home all night. so that s an inconsistency for you? it is. reporter: investigators were becoming increasingly suspicious of shawn smoot. and they weren t the only ones. brooke s closest friends never really suspected her ex-husband clayton, or daniel hawkins, but they knew her relationship with shawn had be
reporter: brooke left the job after just a few months. but it was clear, to investigators, at least, that brooke and shawn were still in touch. her phone showed calls between them on the day of the football game. and they d been texting back and forth. did you call him? our attempts to call him were unsuccessful. another one who s not around? that s correct. reporter: detectives decided not to wait for shawn to pick up his phone. they went to his house in the early morning hours after brooke s murder. you go over there. is he home? he is. reporter: shawn told investigators he had seen brooke the day before. she d called him from downtown knoxville asking for help. remember brooke s tailgating plans had gone awry and she d wanted to go home and change her clothes. she needed a ride to her car which had been left at a restaurant the night before. shawn said he agreed to give her a lift, but said they went to a bar to watch the game first. he had picked her up and they