and i asked him if there was anything i could do, and he said, turn back time. reporter: amy had already heard about the murder, and that investigators had been to smoot s house. she told the jury what the defendant said next. and at that point i asked him if he was directly or indirectly involved and he said both. reporter: did you take that as a total admission of guilt? absolutely. absolutely. reporter: it had taken nearly five years after brooke s murder to get her alleged killer before a jury. it took the jury less than four hours to reach its verdict. we the jury find the defendant, shawn nelson smoot, guilty of premeditated first degree murder of brooke nicole morris. reporter: what s the emotions that you re feeling when you hear that word? well, of course, we can t show emotion in court. reporter: okay, what s going on, on the inside? on the inside, i m screaming. i m jumping for joy.
prosecute it and be successful. we would have never indicted with it or proceeded with it. circumstantial cases allow you to be creative. you can take a set of facts and weave a story together for your theory of prosecution. shawn smoot insisted he was innocent. he cycled through five different defense attorneys and the trial was delayed again and again. it was surreal. really. it had been reset 22 times. 22 times. torture. it is. it is torture. the trial finally started in july 2016. nearly five years after brook died. robert jolly, smooth s fifth attorney, believed the state s case was weak for one simple reason. i don t think that he did very thorough investigations of anyone other than mr. smoot and even his investigation wasn t
she would just, you know, tell me little things here and there. 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 didnt 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 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, calling her multiple times, and texting her, and then stalking her.
brooke s body was found just after 8:00pm. so if daniel was telling the truth, investigators had to figure out if he had enough time to get through the crush of vols fans, meet up with brooke and make the 40 mile drive here to roane county to commit the murder, all within about an hour. as investigators looked at daniel s timeline, they saw he was still texting brooke long after the game ended. the last text was just a little past midnight. it read, where are u darlin? by then brooke had been dead for more than four hours. until we clear him and rule him out, we do consider people like daniel hawkins a person of interest. reporter: but daniel hawkins wasn t the only person texting with brooke. who else had brooke been texting with? shawn smoot. what did you learn about shawn smoot? we found out that he ran an allstate office there in west knoxville. married, children?
verified. he was really at the game? yes. reporter: because of the time the game ended, detectives concluded daniel hawkins couldn t have been in roane county at the time of the murder. he was eventually cleared by authorities. but could they verify shawn smoot s story? he told investigators he and brooke grabbed a drink after he picked her up. sure enough, here s video of them at one of the restuarants he said they went to. here they are taking their drinks out to the patio. another camera captured the couple leaving at about 6:30p.m. brooke is walking several steps ahead of shawn, something chief phillips thought was telling. normally if people are happy and all that stuff, you think they would walk out together. and if there was something going on, maybe she was like, you know, i wanna just get away from him, or whatever. i d be glad when he drops me off at my car. reporter: this is the parking lot where shawn smoot said he dropped brooke off at her car. none of the se