going on that shouldn t be going on? uh-huh. 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
we know who did it? absolutely, but that didn t happen. i kept thinking surely any day now, any day now. investigators had suspicions and are trying to build a case against smoot, he was the last to see her alive. they had an allegedly violent relationship, and he lied to investigators. but so far they found no physical evidence tying him to the crime. you were able to search shawn smoot s apartment? we were. did you find anything? empty box that once contained a firearm with ammunition. no gun? no gun. the box was for a 32 caliber pistol, the same as the murder weapon. and the ammo? same style of ammunition found at the murder scene. without the gun itself, the circumstantial case wasn t strong enough to charge smoot with murder.
reporter: her friends say shawn had a temper and kaitlyn witnessed it first hand one night after a dinner. shawn was drunk, kaitlyn says, so she didn t want brooke to drive home with him. he did not like that. he began to get very angry. and we drove just down the street, pulled into the parking lot. and i pulled up right beside her car and she opened the door. and shawn was, like, right there, grabbed her by the arm. i told her, brooke, just get back in the car. and so she did. she got back in the car. and we drove off. reporter: friends say similar incidents followed, brooke felt shawn was stalking her. showing up unannounced and uninvited when she was out with friends. even after she stopped working for him. she definitely knew that something was wrong, you know, after he was obsessive with her,
worked with. everybody got along, and she enjoyed it. she had formed a really, i guess, tight relationship with her boss. reporter: but brooke s family had no idea how close brooke s relationship with her boss shawn smoot actually was. some of her friends did. well, she had told me, in the beginning, that she had started working for this guy, shawn smoot. and a little bit down the road, i had, like, saw them out eating or something like that. as things progressed in their relationship, i was, like, what s going on here? i was like, this guy, he seems a bit older. you know, does he have a family or anything like that? and she was like, yeah, he s married. reporter: an affair with a married man. i don t really think that she was, like, committed to that relationship. i think it was just her just coming through a divorce. and she had this attention from this man. but there s still something
reporter: brooke reached her breaking point, and in january 2011, did something she thought would get shawn out of her life forever. she was just, like, i m done with this situation. he won t leave me alone. i m you know, i m going to the wife. she needs to know about the situation. i think she was probably tired of you know, living in this this secret. you know, she wanted to be free from the situation. the wife knows, he ll leave me alone. yeah. i mean, you know, if i m honest with the wife, then maybe, you know, they can try to work out their problems. and he ll leave me alone. reporter: but it backfired. shawn s marriage imploded. she was just, like, i ve gone to the wife. she s getting a divorce. she s made him move out. he lost everything after that. yeah. reporter: and friends say shawn continued to harrass brooke. in fact, they say, things only intensified. beyond emotional abuse? was it physical? yes. she had just told me that