stunned, and then furious. and now my daughter, who is the perfect victim for someone like jermeir stroud, has now been convicted of a murder that he committed. of course, miss smith s family is still in pain, too, i m sure. and we prayed for them constantly. they ve lost a child, but so have we. reporter: and now, nearly five years after that verdict have a seat. reporter: shannon herself has a lot more to say about jermeir stroud and about what happened the day denita died. her very first interview. i don t know jermeir but the voice on the tapes does not sound to me like him. it s him. that s all i can tell you. it s him. and believe it or not, denita s mother has an apology for shannon. i know that was wrong, and i never should have said it.
allowed themselves to be led in that direction. and if they had any suspicions that another police officer was involved, they decided not to follow that up. you were in law enforcement. you cover up crimes by other officers? no, i never did. and what you re suggesting is that durham cops, who didn t even know jermeir, looked away from a murder committed by a guy who worked for another department in another city? they re risking prison time for this guy they don t even know? cops will protect other cops regardless of what department they re in. there are always that few, not many. reporter: to the contrary, assistant district attorney david saacks, who was assigned to prosecute, says he was extra careful in building his case against shannon precisely because jermeir was a police officer. i needed to make sure that everything was done by the book and we vetted everything as well as we could, and delved into everything as deep as we could because he was a cop.
what are you doing up there? and just it got to the point where she didn t want to answer the phone. he wanted her to come back to him? he wanted her to come back to him. and she didn t. he was so possessive. she just didn t want that type of relationship. reporter: police coaxed more details from jermeir, and he insisted shannon had been demanding more and more attention. the woman he really wanted to be with, he said, was denita. but shannon wouldn t go away. he complained on her, you know? her coming around the house and keep calling. we had a relationship. she keeps calling after we agreed not to do this. reporter: jermeir insisted shannon wouldn t take no for an answer, and it got to the point where he needed help. he had filed an internal affairs complaint against her. well, i don t know if it was actually official. he had a buddy that was in the internal affairs department. but he disclosed that to somebody? he did. he did say that, you know, she she j
kind of something, you know, on the shirt. reporter: a patch like on the uniform shannon wore as a 911 dispatcher. and there was more. investigators discovered shannon clocked in at about 10:00 a.m., some two hours after denita smith had been murdered. more than enough time for the 55-mile drive from durham to her job at the 911 center in greensboro. so police obtained a search warrant for shannon s house. and we do find greensboro communication 911 center uniforms. and they are exactly as described by the maintenance supervisor down to the color of the patch and the shape. reporter: you find a gun? no gun was found. no bullets were found. nothing incriminating other than that. reporter: and then came this. shannon had told police she had never been to durham, but her cell phone records clearly showed she had been there. not on the day denita was killed. shannon or at least her phone had been there the day before.
reporter: and as for where she was on that chilly january morning? she told me she was at a doctor s appointment with one of her children. that was easy to check out. her supervisor was on scene. and she did tell her supervisor that she was taking her child to reporter: shannon s story seemed to add up. maybe she wasn t the distraught woman the eyewitness saw leaving the scene of denita s murder, 50 miles away from where shannon lived and worked. detective pate was just about out of questions. and then an interesting thing happened. as we re leaving, getting ready to finish up the interview with her, someone hands me a note. and it s from a supervisor. and it says, a gentleman, one of her co-workers would like to speak with you before you leave. reporter: and what that co-worker had to say would raise serious questions. not just for shannon crawley but