defense. the attitude was, look, you ve got to get up here and talk to these people. how do you remember him on the stand? i think he was calm. i think he answered the questions as best he could. very simply, i think very completely. we felt that we had made a showing that the state had not met the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. mike pinnel had waited four long years to get justice for his sister, but now he wasn t sure what the jury would do. there were times that i felt the evidence was very circumstantial. in this day in age, we know that juries really like to see forensics. right. the dna, the blood samples. and they didn t have it. that was the biggest concern for me. but it took the jury just four hours to find tim permentor guilty of first-degree murder. he was spared the death penalty
point in time. he knew something crucial he shouldn t have known. he knew something he shouldn t have known because he s the one that stabbed her. the prosecutor looked at the rejected lover and they showed was at the scene of the crime and lied about it. he charged permentor with first-degree murder and decided to seek the death penalty. then, just weeks before the trial was scheduled to start, tim s friend, george solomon, his sleepover alibi witness, recanted his story. he tells me this whole new story that permentor admitted that he had killed karen that night. blurted out a confession. when he got up there. so, that s a hole aye cow moment for you. it is. death penalty cases can sometimes take a torturous path in reaching a courtroom. this one had taken four long years, and despite building a strong circumstantial case, prosecutors did not have a murder weapon or other physical evidence linking tim permentor to the stabbing. dudley clapp was tim s defense attorne
it bit him hard, very hard. he outsmarted himself, and that s why he s in prison. after the trial, roc herpic was free to ride his harley, but he tells us it still eats him up that a man he never met tried to frame him for murder. if you could talk to him, just the way we re sitting here, what would you say to him? i am restrained, correct? i couldn t get to him, right? should we tie you to the chair in this scenario? i would not be a good communicator in that conversation mode with him sitting there. i couldn t do it. mike pinnel couldn t do it, either. he d rather not think about tim permentor and the last moments of his precious baby sister s life. i m not interested in remembering karen associated with that crime. it s been a long ordeal for you. mm-hmm. i want to remember karen as a brilliant, beautiful young woman she was.
once she got past the superficial aspect of him and realized what he really was like, she wanted out of that relationship, and that ultimately led to her death. prosecutor lowry said permentor thought he could outsmart the cops by playing the bereaved boyfriend, playing to the hilt at the crime scene. oh, god! the prosecutor said permentor got thrown off the tear-stained script when he called karen s best friend soon after making the 911 call. he said katherine, it s tim. i m a karen s apartment and she is laying on the floor and there is blood everywhere. she has been stabbed. stabbed? stabbed. not she s dead, i don t know what happened. he said she s been stabbed. he said on the phone that she has been stabbed. okay. she has been stabbed. we didn t know that at that
Transcripts for MSNBC Dateline 20210206 10:52:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.