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
please, you know, spend your time looking for the person that did. pope was distraught over darrell s murder. he came through the receiving line crying, and i thought he was so touched by darrell s death. and he said, i loved darrell. he was better to me than my own father. pope was 40 years old, married, with a young daughter. he did, however, have a police record consisting of arrests for petty theft. since he was the last known person to see darrell alive, he was automatically considered a suspect. pope agreed to take a polygraph examination and passed. it is not likely that somebody could come in and intentionally be untruthful and still pass the polygraph test. the next suspect was bob johnson, a roofing contractor. darrell fired johnson just two weeks before his murder.
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
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. 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 time looking for the person that did.
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 the way 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.