arms and his hands for injuries. he didn t have any. there was no cuts. on the night of darrell north s murder, the dallas/ft. worth area was hit with a driving rainstorm, causing flash floods and power outages. the storm was so bad, darrell sent his construction crew home early, but he stayed behind because he had a 5:00 p.m. appointment with curtis pope. they were going to discuss quality problems with the swimming pool pope was installing at the hotel. pope was having financial problems. his company was headed towards bankruptcy, and darrell north was his only large client, although it s unclear whether darrell knew this. no one knows what the two men said to each other. but prosecutors believe curtis pope snapped and attacked darrell with a knife.
seen before. some bruising under his eye. there was no cut, but it was a slight bruising. a background check revealed pope s business was faltering. he had a reputation of just not being very good at what he did, as far as the construction of the swimming pools. pope s business records indicated he was deeply in debt, wasn t able to pay his suppliers, and the only big client he had left was darrell north. if darrell fired pope during their meeting, it would have been the end of pope s company. pope s finances were in terrible shape. he was on the fine edge of disaster all the time. with a warrant, investigators searched pope s home computer and found something suspicious. someone on that computer had visited a website on how to beat a polygraph and had, in fact,
how common are they? you re probably not from here if you don t have a pair. and it was impossible to tell the size of the boot from the print. in a justin boot heel, it is possible that you re going to have one physical size that would overlap into several different boot sizes. nevertheless, investigators asked both suspects, bob johnson and pool contractor curtis pope, if they owned a pair of justin brand boots. bob johnson owned a pair. but the heel of his boots was larger than those at the scene. curtis pope also owned a pair of justin brand boots, which appeared to be new, and willingly turned them over to investigators. in this case, my result was inconclusive. i could not eliminate or identify the boot as having made that mark. when investigators talked with pope about his boots, they noticed something they hadn t
darrell may have used it to defend himself, causing an injury, a facial cut, or nosebleed. to identify the killer, dna samples were collected from the two suspects, bob johnson and curtis pope. dna testing revealed it was curtis pope s blood at the crime scene. if darrell north had not taken some steps to defend himself, this case wouldn t have been solved. would have never dreamed that, you know, firing somebody, you know, would cause somebody to, you know, go postal. darrell s family couldn t believe that the man whom darrell had mentored in business and treated in many ways like a son could have done this. not until the day they came out here to the house and told me that it was his dna that had been identified did i really believe. the bruises police noticed under pope s eye were probably the result of the fight.
that afternoon, police in watertown, new york, just 25 miles from the canadian border, stopped a car from driving the wrong way down a one-way street. it was curtis pope. he tried to run but was arrested at a shopping center. curtis pope was returned to texas. he stood trial and was convicted of first-degree murder. he was sentenced to life in prison. it was an unusually bloody crime scene, but darrell north unwittingly provided the evidence needed to convict his killer. he probably bloodied curtis pope s nose. we have always thought darrell helped to convict curtis pope. the forensic evidence in this case was absolutely the linchpin of the entire case. this case stands out to me because it is one of the best of the uses of dna, combined with