and i was able to examine his 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. darrell was caught off guard, and struck pope in the face with a paper punch, causing the nosebleed. pope stabbed darrell over 40 times. as he lay dying on the floor, a drop of blood from pope s nose fell on to darrell s pants. there s no way he could have explained away how his blood was dripped on to darrell north s pants. we knew we had eliminated any possible innocent explanation for his blood being at the scene, and we felt like we had him. curtis pope was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. he posted bail, but on the first day of his trial, pope didn t show up. we learned through an informant that he was headed toward canada.
darrell s secretary told police that everyone left the construction site early on the day of the murder because of the severe rainstorm. she said darrell stayed behind to meet with a contractor named curtis pope. curtis pope was a pool contractor. darrell was basically mentoring curtis into the construction business. and he stayed approximately 20, 25 minutes. he left darrell. darrell said he was going to wait out the rain and let the traffic die down before he headed home. darrell s wife told police curtis pope could not be the killer. curtis pope had done some repair work on our pool. i said, please don t spend your time looking at curtis pope. he did not kill darrell. please, you know, spend your
unfortunately, these boots weren t unique. 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 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