>> when she got dolled up, oh my god, gorgeous. >> did she write these letters? was this a hint to who killed her? >> this is a message saying this is my killer. >> like you would see in a movie. >> and the ending, that was just like a movie, too. >> i can't believe what people do to each other. hello, and welcome to "dateline." >> roc, in this case, those three letters would tell a story all their own. when karen pannell was found murdered in her south florida home, the letters scrawled in blood above her body seemed like a beacon that could lead detectives to her killer. but what exactly did they mean? what other crucial clues were in sight? it would take dogged specialist with a keen eye to unravel this mystery. here's dennis murphy with "written in blood." >> if year-round sun and water is your thing, florida's west coast should be high on your list of places to live. it was for one-time model and flight attendant got sand in her shoes, she never looked back. >> she loved the beach, diving, boating, that life. >> her friend worked the counter at american airlines in tampa with karen. if you were a frazzled passenger -- who isn't these days -- karen is the antidote. exactly the right agent to bump into to get you on your way. >> karen was very pretty. she was smart. smiled all the time. funny. >> reporter: but when the always capable and reliable karen didn't show up for her saturday morning shift on october 11th, 2003, clearly something was wrong. her boyfriend had tried calling her at home. >> when she wasn't at work or answering her calls, i began to get worried, but it was a couple hours before i really got panicky about it. >> reporter: the boyfriend drove over to karen's condo, the front door was unlocked. a bad sign. he said he stepped inside and looked to the right to the kitchen. >> i saw her body and i knew immediately, there was no doubt in my mind she was dead. i picked up the phone and i called 911. >> she's laying on the floor, there's blood everywhere. >> reporter: karen pannel, sprawled on her back, bloody. a murder victim in her own home. >> when the first deputies arrive on the scene, her boyfriend is in the front yard, he was hysterical. he actually threw up he was so upset about finding his girlfriend. >> depuies gave tim, the shaken boyfriend, a chance to collect himself in the back seat of the police car. he placed a call to her friend katherine with the unimaginable news. >> karen, it's tim. i'm at karen's apartment, she has been stabbed. >> stabbed? >> it's a horrible way, it's very horrible way to die. >> karen, the baby of the family with five older brothers suddenly gone. she had been especially close to her oldest brother mike. >> my brother called me. i was at the airport, and said, you better sit down. he said, karen's been murdered. >> any theories about what happened? >> i don't know. i was trying to figure out the why and relying on the police to do what they needed to do. >> and what they had to do was plenty. they processed the crime scene, filmed every inch of karen's home, knocked on doors, tried to figure out just who their victim was. detectives holbrooke and larry nelvin began with the man that made that 911 call. >> the first thing a lead investigator will do is talk to the people closest to her. in this case, we had timothy permente finding his girlfriend. we took mr. permenter back to the office and talked to him extensively. >> tim, a car salesman, gave them a run down in the hours leading up to the terrible discovery. he said he popped in briefly on karen the night before to drop off a gift. a photo calendar of kittens he knew his cat lover girlfriend would find irresistible. tim said he left around 7:30. that was the last time he saw karen alive. >> wouldn't it have been your routine to stay the night? >> not on a friday night. she had to go in work the next day. >> after saying good-bye, he said he ended up spending the night with friends, about an hour to the north. >> is he saying anything, he can't do it? i know boyfriends are figured suspicions, i want to talk to a lawyer? >> no, he's being more than cooperative. >> while tim says he was off with his friend, there appeared to have been a frenzied struggle at karen's house. forensic specialist, anna cox, assessed the aftermath. >> she put up a heck of a struggle. >> what are you looking at? >> she had defensive wounds, the way her body was contorted. i just remember thinking, she put up a heck of a struggle. she really fought for her life. >> do you think oh my goodness or have you seen anything different at this point? >> i can't believe what people do to each other. it was terrible. it's terrible. >> around back, cox, the crime scene tech, found the security bolt on a sliding glass door had been dislodged. there were other signs of tampering. >> there was a cable box that was open. you start to think to yourself, somebody's trying to cut the wires. there was a knocked over bird bath. so there was evidence outside that at first you need to think to yourself, i think that this might be a burglary. >> and karen's overturned purse on the stovetop supported the break-in theory. anna cox took an inventory of everything at the crime scene. a pizza box, a garden glove, a grocery receipt, all routine findings so far. but it's what authorities spotted next on the wall just above the body that would turn this case into something out of the movies. a three-letter message in blood. you didn't have to squint to make it out, either, roc. on the victim, karen's right hand index finger was clearly stained with blood. roc. what was the murdered woman try to tell the cops? >> all these theories were running through my mind? what does that mean? is that a word? is that a person, a thing? the clues pointed in so many different direction, it was a total mystery. >> reporter: there's a concept in the law known as a dying declaration. with those three letters scrawled in karen's own blood lead to the apprehension of her own killer. >> coming up, investigators dig into that three-letter mystery. who or what was roc? when "dateline" continues. ues. shampoos that care for your color as well as your hair? everpure by l'oreal. expert sulfate-free formulas. validated by colorists. non-stripping to keep any colored hair beautiful for weeks. everpure from l'oreal paris. what is humana doing sending me a diy test kit? beautiful for weeks. old health insurance reminds you to schedule a screening, say, for colon cancer. humana does you one better and sends you an at-home test kit, when it's overdue. huh! one of those tests could save your life, or at least a little hassle. or both. yeah! you get it, you do it, you send it back. i get it, i do it, i send it back. you get it, you do it, you send it back. yeah, i got it. you got it! ♪ ♪ humana. a more human way to healthcare. for skin that never holds you back don't settle for silver #1 for diabetic dry skin* #1 for psoriasis symptom relief* and #1 for eczema symptom relief* gold bond champion your skin the camera always liked karen pannell. she was both hard to miss and hard to forget. just ask her boyfriend tim permenter, who was smitten right away when he met her at the dealership where he worked. what did you think of her? >> she was gorgeous, she was beautiful. >> you were pinching yourself. you thought you were the luckiest guy. >> i thought she was the one. i thought she was the one i could settle down with. >> settling down hadn't been part of karen's growing up. she and her five brothers had been raised as military brats and moved bases a lot. now they were traveling from far flung parts of the country for her funeral. shocked and in mourning for the lost sister who had always been their glue. >> all the boys kind of got involved in their own stuff. then there was karen. she was really what connected all of us to the family unit. >> what does that tell us about her? >> she was really more important to us than we knew. i think she was always more interested in family as a whole than she was in herself. >> brother mike wasn't alone in thinking his kid sister could have been a sky's the limit person. >> she could have been anything she wanted, a scientist or a doctor or whatever. >> well, her friends loved her. >> and she was hard not to love. >> even harder to forget what a cruel fate she had suffered at the hands of a killer unknown. >> during the viewing, there were invisible stab wounds on her hand. you know, so we kind of pulled flowers down a little further. >> a few days after the murder her many friends at the airport said their good-byes. >> there's a chapel in the main terminal at the airport. there were so many people there from so many different airlines, the security people. it was incredible. >> meanwhile, the pinellas county sheriffs investigation was moving quickly on several fronts. first, they validated boyfriend tim's story. he said after visiting karen early that evening, he spent the night with a friend, george solomon in moon lake, about an hour to the north. >> he did, in fact, go up to where george was staying with his girlfriend if pasco county. there was confirmed by george and george's girlfriend. george gave us a time line consistent with what permaner gave us. >> tim's story on the night of the murder checked out. and he voluntarily came clean about something. he had a record. he had done time. >> early on in your life, you get in trouble. what was going on with you? >> i was running an escort service. got stupid, started it up small, basically, running an ad out of a newspaper, getting a small office. and it just expanded from there, it ballooned. >> what kind of money were you pulling down a week? >> i was grossing about 6,000, $7,000 a day. >> a day? you were how old? >> 20. that's the trap. why am i going to school when i'm making this kind of money? >> why go straight, huh? >> yes. >> it ended up in a gunfight? >> yes, sir. >> tim says he was worried he'd be painted as a bad guy right away because of his sorted past. so he promised to cooperate in every way possible, and the cops took him up on it. >> i allowed them to photograph me. removed my clothing. i allowed them to go to my home. take anything they wanted. >> there was nothing about his clothing, his car, his person that led to us believe that he was involved in any other way than he said he was. he came over to see her, found her and was devastated. >> tim permenter's alibi checked out. police dismissed any clues pointing to a home invasion. after all, karen had been stabbed 16 times, an attack so ferocious, it could only be a crime of passion. now the detectives were desperate to figure out what their biggest clue of all meant, those three letters written in blood. roc. this is a creepy scene. i mean, you got this scrawled in blood message saying this is my killer. i'm now dead, you find this guy. that's what it's suggesting, isn't it? >> absolutely, it's what it's suggesting. just like you would see in a movie. >> detectives soon discovered how those letters on the wall, roc, were, in fact, connected to the victim lying beneath them. roc, it turned out, was a man that spelled trouble for karen in the past. >> roc was an ex-boyfriend karen pannell had problems with previously. >> and whoever and wherever this roc was, he'd just become the prime target of the investigation into her murder. >> okay. well, there it is. that's what she meant to write was roc. they have to follow that lead, and off they go. >> to find roc? >> to find roc. >> coming up, mission accomplished. find him, they do. but what would they find next? >> i'm looking at murder, somebody's talking to me about a murder. >> when "dateline" continues. es flexible hours. that work around your schedule. jackson hewitt is here to fight for the biggest refund you deserve. whether you're a 9-5er or 5-9er. ♪♪ a stomach churning crime scene, with a cryptic message in blood. roc. roc was the unusual but proper spelling of karen pannell's ex-boyfriend. so tell me about the former boyfriend known as roc, letters scrawled in blood. who was he? >> roc was an ex-boyfriend. he had a little legal problems, a little substance abuse problem. >> roc had a personality as big and as loud as the pipes on the harleys he loved to cruise. he worked at an auto body shop handling claims. when he met karen, she was on a downward spiral. after being married five years, she recently had got an divorce. the doctor had given her awful news. she had multiple sclerosis, 38-years-old. >> to be a young, divorced woman, with this awful diagnosis, what do you think that did to her? that's a lot to put on your shoulders. >> right. i think that really affected herself esteem. frankly, i think it had an impact on the kind of men she was attracted to. >> karen came to rely on roc to take her to doctor's appointments and give her injections. but when she took the step of asking him to move in, her friends and family thought she was asking for trouble. >> i think that's true. but then is it my place to say, well, you need to go find somebody that is going to offer you a better future? >> you can't dictate terms to your kid sister? >> no, you can only fix yourself. >> as it turned out, roc wasn't a fix for karen either. the relationship soon took an ugly turn. >> they seemed to get along for a while and she was happy. and he turned into not a very nice guy. he was a little creepy. >> he was tough on her? >> there were some unexplained bruises. i used to tell her, what are you doing? he did not deserve her. she wouldn't listen. >> the fights got worse and police were called three separate times to intervene. one time roc allegedly broke down the front door. that was the last straw. karen filed a domestic battery complaint and roc moved out. tim says even a year later, he was still harassing karen about a rolltop desk he left behind. >> she was starting to get scared of him towards the end. >> the issue he had was i got a valuable piece of furniture, i want it back. >> right. but karen said that that was a ruse. >> trying to worm his way back in? is that the way she saw it? >> that's the way she put it to me. >> they knew they had to confront this roc, so they tracked him down and paid a surprise visit. he wasn't happy to see them. >> i'm in the garage of my home in north port, florida. unmarked car shows up, everybody know what is that is. i'm thinking, what the heck is that? >> detective holbrooke identified himself and said they need to talk to him about his friend karen. >> we sit down on the porch and he goes, well, she's dead. of course this doesn't register. and i just said you need to tell me what's going on. >> but the detective wanted roc to do the talking. he asked about his troubled relationship with karen. >> roc indicated that he was using drugs and that karen liked to drink and that they fought often. >> roc said he savored the good times with karen, too. >> when she got dolled up, oh, my god, gorgeous. i mean, picture perfect. wasn't anything out of place. >> were there some sparks there, roc? >> yeah, there was, she was all that, just by herself and ready to go. she looked hungry for attention and she was alone and it was perfect. it was a perfect setup. >> what do you think she saw in you? what was working from her side? >> probably the bad boy kind of thing. i wasn't your conventional straight-laced kind of guy. >> roc was open with the detectives. even came across as a good guy. but conceded there were screaming matches with karen and a few rip roaring fights but said she was the instigator. >> she'd get violent, physically violent. just stuff. things would happen. but nobody ever got arrested, but they'd come out. they would address the issue. >> as roc tells it, she gave as good as she got. he dodged a few pieces of thrown crockery. >> she was ready to stand up for herself at the drop of a hat. she was a tough girl. >> roc remembers karen playing hardball about that rolltop desk of his, too, not liking her attitude. >> i did call her on several occasions about my rolltop desk. >> the desk. >> that stupid desk and it was bugging me. i mean, it was a nice piece of furniture and i wanted to get it back. she pretty much said, you left, you're not getting it. >> he never did get. that roll top was still in karen's condo on the night she was stabbed to death. now, detective holbrooke pointedly wanted to know if roc had been there too. >> he says, where were you on such-and-such a day. i'm like, well, first of all, i'll have to look at the calendar because i don't know where i was that day but i guarantee you i wasn't in oldsmar. so we go from there to discussing where i was, who i had been with, where i lived. >> so are you getting a serious grilling? >> right. he ends up telling me that we found your name in blood on the wall. >> roc? >> yeah. so, obviously, i'm a suspect. i acknowledge that. i mean i'm looking at murder. i'm getting somebody's talking to me about a murder. >> roc waived his right to a lawyer and agreed to give fingerprints and swabbing. it looked as though police found yet another cooperative boyfriend of the victim. >> i said, if you are looking for fingerprints, they're all over that home. i lived there for a year, so you're going to find them. >> did you lose your patience? >> i did lose my patience when they cut the end of my finger off taking a fingernail. you take the end of my finger off, now i'm done. >> roc's cooperation had an edge to it. was he really trying to cover his tracks? detectives were determined to find out. and they put that bloody clue under the microscope. were those three little letters really what they had seen? >> coming up -- >> the csi of roc. i remember thinking, wow, i wonder if that's what wrote these letters. >> when "dateline" continues. ...with rinvoq. rinvoq a once-daily pill can dramatically improve symptoms... rinvoq helps tame pain, stiffness, swelling. and for some rinvoq can even significantly reduce ra fatigue. that's rinvoq relief. with ra, your overactive immune system attacks your joints. rinvoq regulates it to help stop the attack. rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious infections and blood clots, sometimes fatal, have occurred... ...as have certain cancers, including lymphoma, and tears in the stomach or intestines, and changes in lab results. your doctor should monitor your bloodwork. tell your doctor about any infections...and if you are or may become pregnant while taking rinvoq. take on ra. talk to your rheumatologist about rinvoq relief. rinvoq. make it your mission. if you can't afford your medicine, abbvie may be able to help. condos. i150k. can't afford your medicine, how are you, son? who's your friend? oh, um, this is eric. ooh. the big "e." [ chuckles ] great to meet ya. people love my nicknames. it's a whole thing. that's wonderful, sir. switch to progressive, and you can save hundreds. you know, like the sign says. every time we pre-rinse we waste up to 20 gallons. let's skip the rinse. finish quantum with activeblu technology, cleans without pre-rinsing. switch to finish and skip the rinse to save water. i'm dara brown. here's what's happening. health officials are warning that social gatherings for sunday's super bowl game could result in superspreader events, potentially disrupting a slightly downturn in cases in hospitalizations reported this week. dr. anthony fauci advised americans to stay at home this year to watch kansas city take on tampa bay. and christopher plummer known for his performance in "the sound of music" died yesterday. he was 91. now back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline." i'm craig melvin. who killed karen pannell? florida investigators were taking a close look at her ex-boyfriend, roc, whose name was found scrawled in blood at the crime scene. roc admitted to having a stormy relationship with karen but insisted he didn't kill her. was there more to the bloody clue than met the eye? forensic specialist anna cox was trying to unlock what her naked eyes could not see. when she did, her discovery would send the investigation in a completely different direction. here again is dennis murphy with written in blood. >> the handwriting was on the wall and forensic specialist anna cox was intent on breaking down the key piece of evidence implicating karen's boyfriend, the three letters in blood, roc. you would spend hours looking at these letters? >> i did. >> you actually cut the sheet rock out of your place and took it into your lab? >> yes. i have to look at those letters, everything about them. >> using a high powered microscope, she did an analysis of the specks of blood that stained the wall as karen was stabbed 16 times. that blood splatter served as a gruesome canvass with roc written over it. >> when the letters of roc was written on top of it. it scanned right over it and didn't disrupt at all. >> here was her specialization, roc must have been written after they dried, how long after? >> i have a special machine i used to make some spatter. >> in her lab, she used animal blood to test how long it took for blood spatter to dry on a similar surface. >> when i came back and was able to apply spatter to some sections of some cardboard, i was able to get some blood and writing the word roc. i must have written it a million times over different areas of spatter. >> in the lab it took at least 25 minutes of drying time before the forensic specialist could write without smearing the spatter. she concluded there must have been about that much time between the attack on karen and the word roc being written on the wall. next, she looked for fingerprints in the letters, themselves, sounds impossible, right? >> if she's writing and applying pressure to the wall, you would think there would be some type of transfer of ridge detail. >> ridge detail. we all have it. unique telltale patterns on every human finger and hand. but anna wasn't finding that here. rather she detected an unusual hint of a pattern. something almost like polka dots. >> and i thought back to myself, the garden glove on the counter that was missing its match, missing its pair. >> a garden glove was found in karen's kitchen, just one glove. the mate was never located. it had a distinctive dot pattern. >> on the interior side where the palm and the fingers were, it's like that rubber and it's got those little. >> bubbly surface. >> the knobby grippy surface. i remember thinking, wow, i wonder if that's what wrote these letters. >> cox bought similar gloves at a hardware store. after several more days of testing was satisfied that her hunch was correct. ana cox had come up with two important findings. the message in blood had likely been written with a gloved hand and it had been scrawled at least 20 minutes after the onset of the attack on karen. she reported her results to the detectives who by then had learned another pertinent fact about their victim. >> karen was exclusively left handed and her left hand did not have blood smear on it. >> not only that, when the autopsy report came in, it suggested karen couldn't have written anything with either hand. from what the medical examiner was seeing on this table, was this a victim who was going to dip in her own blood and write roc on the wall? >> no, absolutely not. over 90% of her spinal cord had been damaged by the knife wounds. >> she was incapacitated. >> incapacitated. it wasn't her. she didn't write that. >> the evidence was overwhelming. karen pannell did not write the letters roc in blood. it was a huge turning point in the case and the best news possible for the ex-boyfriend roc herpick. >> they confirmed 100% she could not have done that. she couldn't have done it. she would have been physically incapable of doing that and it certainly wasn't me. i mean, why would you write your own name on the wall? >> police agree, implicating yourself in a murder just made no sense. roc got more good news after police checked out his alibi, that he was home on the night of the murder. >> we got his cell phone records. the cell towers were hitting off at the time karen was killed, he's in north port, florida. that's a good you know hour, hour-and-a-half away. >> you went over these alleged beefs he might have had with her when they were boyfriend, girlfriend? >> yep. and he had moved on. >> the detectives were ready to move on, too. they officially cleared roc. it was a major development. karen's ex had suddenly gone from being a prime person of interest to a victim himself. victim of the real killer who tried to frame him for the crime and was still out there somewhere. whoever killed her did know that somebody named roc -- >> somebody knows my name. >> that's a part of the story. >> that's right. if you think about this, this is -- it's not even a smart thing to do. >> roc was right. the pool of suspects had suddenly narrowed to a small handful of karen's intimates who knew about him and knew the unusual way he spelled his name. roc. detectives holbrooke and nelvin were about to take a hard look at all of them. >> coming up. >> you could walk right by and think it has no importance at all. it ended up being crucial in this case. >> could a box of pizza help solve this puzzle? when "dateline" continues. are you one of the millions of americans who experience occasional bloating, gas, or abdominal discomfort? taking align can help. align contains a quality probiotic to naturally help soothe digestive upsets 24/7. try align, the pros in digestive health. startling conclusion, karen pannell did not write the name roc on the wall, her killer had. but those three letters were still a gift to police because investigators figured he had to know both karen and roc. detectives started questioning the other men in karen's life. >> karen had nicknames for her boyfriends, car guy, tim permenter. another she referred to as dr. pilot. >> dr. pilot, a british airways captain had recently been sending karen romantic texts. but he was aboard a flight over the middle east when karen was killed. so he was ruled out as were most of karen's known male friends, all can prove they were nowhere near her house in oldsmar that night. every boyfriend except car guy, tim permenter, the one who reported finding her body. >> is she conscious? >> no. >> is she breathing? >> i don't know. >> tim was inconsolable during that 911 call, and later would tell detectives he had lost the love of his life, the woman he was hoping to marry. but the people who knew karen best started telling police a very different story. >> i'm not sure why she stayed in that relationship or began a relationship like that. >> the relationship began with tim trying to sell karen a new car. police learned he sold her a bill of goods about himself, saying he had been a navy s.e.a.l., involved in top secret missions, never mentioned the sordid truth about his criminal past. >> karen told me he explained the scars as he got on a mission. >> super commando stuff? >> i think that was his impression of himself. >> why are you lying to her? giving her a crock? >> there's really no excuse for it, other than if you're an inmate or a convicted felon, no matter how good you do, no matter what you do, there's always going to be that spectre hanging over you. >> it was several months into the relationship before tim finally revealed his ugly secret. he was a felon that spent more than a decade behind bars, not a navy s.e.a.l. but a violent one-time pump. the self-described escort king. >> i said, i have been waiting for the right time to tell you this. she was flabbergasted. i think that she became frightened of me. >> why didn't you shake hands and call it quits? >> because i loved her. >> karen's friends and brothers say she told them she was afraid. when she tried to pull away from tim, brother mike says those fears were quickly borne out. >> did you ever hear evidence she was not being treated well? >> yes. and she called me and said that tim had choked her and i felt like after that conversation that i had convinced her to file a police report. >> but no report was filed. still, karen's co-workers could tell something was terribly wrong. >> she had bruising on her neck. in fact, one of her friends at work remembered her missing a day or two, and when she didn't come in, she wore a turtleneck. in the summer months in florida, you don't wear a turtle neck. >> while the detectives chased down every lead, the crime lab made another big discovery. unlike the bogus message in blood, this message was something forensic analyst anna cox almost passed right over. a pizza box on karen's kitchen counter. >> you could walk right by and think it had no importance at all. it ended up being crucial in this case. >> cox was able to lift a clean fingerprint from the box. it was tim permenters, and it blew a hole in his account of what happened. >> he initially stated that he wasn't there when the pizza was delivered. >> he told the officers in the initial interview i was out of there at 7:30? >> well, his fingerprints were on that box. >> and you had a receipt saying it was delivered at 8:48. >> yes. so he has now put himself right there at the scene and right there in the last crucial hours of her life. >> it's a poor set of facts? >> for him. >> and then tim's timeline, his alibi took another hit. he first said he was home when he called his friend george after 9:30. detective nelvin found evidence proving otherwise. >> once we get the phone records back and the cell tower site locations back, we are putting him at her house. >> so the tower is catching him in a lie? >> absolutely. his 911 phone call in the morning, it hits off the same tower he was hitting off when he called george at 9:36 the night before, which is directly north of karen pannell's house. >> they could only think of one reason for him to lie about those times. it was that karen's car guy was the killer. they brought him to headquarters again, this time for an official and much more aggressive interrogation. >> he gave the same timeline as he gave previously. we went through it with him. and he held true with what he told us. at that point we started attacking his story. >> tim had a simple explanation for the timeline problems, he was confused. >> this is what cooperation got me. confused. >> confused? >> we know you weren't confused, tim, you lied. >> when the pizza arrived, i was still there. >> 8:48 delivered. >> and it was right after the pizza arrived. i would say i was there another 10, maybe 15 minutes. >> why do you tell cops 7:30? >> i'm horrible at times and days and the problem was is that making a mistake became a i'm hiding something. >> cops call your mistake a lie? >> of course. >> why did you lie about the times? you were there at least 8:30 to 9:30. >> it's impossible. >> no, pizza man keeps a receipt, keeps track. >> tim had been tripped up by his own statements. detective holbrooke said the suspect knew the charade was over. >> he put his face in his hands, he literally covered his face for two or three minutes. tim ultimately looked up at us and the car salesman guy that we knew as tim permenter completely left the room. >> what did you see in his eyes, in his face? >> the first thing i thought was satan just walked in the room. >> coming up. >> i knew i was innocent. >> was he? 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who is he? >> he is a psychopath, someone who i think had gotten lucky to be with karen. 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 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 attorney. >> you have a complete lack of physical evidence -- no bloody fingerprints, no bloody footprints out the door. >> but prosecutor lowry was confident about the evidence he did have. >> frankly, i think circumstantial cases are sometimes the best, okay, because they don't lie. the circumstances don't lie. people lie. >> and that's the case lowry made to the jury. the circumstances showed tim permentor was the only one with the motive and the opportunity to kill karen. and everything he did afterwards was fabricated to cover up his horrendous crime. >> the issues in this case were the murder of karen by the only person that really could have done it, and that person lied about all these things. and you know, there's no reason for a person to lie about the death of their loved one, if that's really true. >> defense attorney clapp countered with common sense, arguing that karen's killer must have been just drenched in blood after such a frenzied attack, and there was no forensic evidence to show that his client was that person. >> in order to buy the state's case, you have to make assumption upon assumption upon assumption. that's not what our system is about. >> how did i do it? how on earth did not one single drop of blood get on my clothing, anything like that? >> or in your car, which was ripped apart. >> right. that's why i agreed to let them look. get what you want, because i knew i was innocent. >> the defense also tore into the credibility of the state's star witness, george solomon, saying it was ridiculous to think tim would get an invitation to spend the night with him after blurting out a murder confession. >> hey, i killed somebody. just now, or whatever. oh, really? oh, okay, well, come on, let's go see my wife and kids. no way. >> a confident tim permentor decided to speak directly to the jury. he took the stand in his own 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 by the judge, who ordered him to serve a life sentence with no chance for parole. >> how are you doing today? >> i'm fine. >> i spoke with him at florida's liberty correctional constitution. the convicted murderer says he's the victim of a justice system tilted against him from the start. did you murder karen? >> no. >> because this would be a great time to relieve her family of a lot of remorse and just fess to it. >> and i understand that, but i did not kill karen. i did not. and i'll probably spend the rest of my life here. and when i'm 80, if i'm still alive, i did not kill karen. i'll pay for it and i am paying for it, but i didn't do it. >> the detectives who cracked the case say they might have believed tim, if only he hadn't tried so hard to fake his alibi, starting with those three letters written in blood. so, this hollywood touch, as i think of it, roc did it, the tying declaration, it bit him. >> 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. >> maybe this smiling person, someone who loved her friends, loved the beach, and died too young. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. breaking on msnbc, president joe biden says he doesn't think donald trump should receive intelligence briefings due to his erratic behavior. >> i just think that there is no need for him to have that intelligence briefing. what value is giving him an intelligence briefing? what impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something? plus, the former president's defense team laying out their impeachment strategy, suggesting they may use videos of the protests of racial injustice from this summer in their

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