investigators he was at the stadium watching the football game as he texted with brooke on and off throughout the name. the game ended just before 7:00 p.m., brooke s body was found just after 8:00 p.m. if daniel was telling the truth, investigators had to figure out if he had enough time to get through the crush of vol fans, meet up with brooke and make the drive here to roan county to commit the murder all in about an hour. as investigators looked at daniel s tameline they found he was still texting brooke long after the game ended. the last text was just a little past midnight? it read, where are you darlin ? but then, brooke had been dead for almost four hours. until we clear him and rule him out we do consider someone like daniel hopkins person of interest. dan hopkins wasn t the only person texting with brooke. who else had brooke been texting with? shawn smoot. what did you learn about him?
because of the time the game ended, detectives concluded daniel couldn t have been in roan county at the time of the murder. he was eventually cleared by authorities. here s video of them at one of the restaurants he said they went to. here they are taking their drink on to the patio. another camera captured the couple leaving 6:30 p.m.. brooke is walking several steps ahead of shawn. something chief philips thought was telling. normally people were happy and all that stuff, you d think they d walk out together. if there was something going on, maybe she was like, i want to get away from him or whatever. i ll be glad when he droops me off at my car. this is the parking lot where smoot says he dropped brooke off at her car. none of the security cameras
we found out he ran an allstate office there in west knoxville. married, children? children. no longer married at that point in time. what were you impressions of shawn? seem like a nice enough person, outgoing. typical sales, easy to get along with. shawn smoot, the name ring a bell with brooke s family and friends. not long after brooke s divorce, shawn had hired brooke as an assistant in the office. i remember the day that she had the interview, we had lunch right before and she was so excited, you know. it was a real job. and i said, there s going to be so much potential for you to move up in this company, you know. i was really proud of her. did you feel like this was kind of a fresh start brooke needed? yeah we did. we all thought it was going to be a good thing for her. did she seem happy? oh yeah, she loved it. i think there was a couple other ladies in the office that she worked with. everybody got along and she
and it was page after page of crazy stuff that he did to her. and i m just like, this is horrifying, like i didn t even know any of this was happening. the document details a litany of alleged violent outbursts by shawn, including the time brooke says he broke into her apartment and attacked her. why didn t she just tell us, you know, that this is what i m going through, i need help? why did you think she didn t want to share with you what was going on in her life? she knew we d have a fit. i would have hunted him myself for hurting her in any way. and i think she knew that. brooke s friends who knew about the order of protection were surprised to find out she and shawn were talking on the day of the football game.
intensified. beyond emotional abuse was it physical? uh-huh, yes. she had just told me that shawn was getting violent. he broke into her apartment one night, came in through the bathroom window, threw her head up against the tile floor. brooke s family didn t know about any of this, the relationship, the alleged violence. it wasn t until after her death that her family finally learned brooke s secret. did that give you chills when you found that envelope? yeah it was horrible. it was brittany who discovered it when she went about the task of cleaning out brooke s apartment. we were getting stuff in order to pack away and send. i went in her kitchen and on top of the refrigerator was a manila folder. brittany opened the folder, it was an order of protection brooke taken out a year before her murder against her former boss, shawn smoot.