Dateline NBC - Written in Blood

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

In this Dateline classic, Karen Pannell, a one-time model and flight attendant, is found murdered in her kitchen. On the wall next to her body is a message written in her own blood: the letters R O C. What does it mean? Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on August 17, 2012.

Blood evidence doesn't lie. It actually tells a story. Tonight, you're there at the crime scene. You can almost recreate the crime. Right there on the wall, a mystery scrawled in blood. Three cryptic letters. What would you make of this? Is that a word? Is that a person? The clues pointed so many different directions that it was a total mystery. The case, the murder of a former model and flight attendant.

When she got dolled up, oh my God, gorgeous. Did she write these letters? She really fought for her life. Was this a hint to who killed her? You've got this message saying, this is my killer, just 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. Written in blood.

If year-round sun and water is your thing, Florida's West Coast should be high on your checkout list of places to live. It was for pretty Karen Pinnell. Once the one-time model and flight attendant got sand in her shoes, she never looked back. She loved the beach, diving, boating, wildlife. And I remember just, you know, jumping off the boat and going to these little islands and having picnics

and coming back at sunset, and it was just so much fun. Good friend Catherine Mallet worked the counter at American Airlines in Tampa with Karen. If you were a frazzled passenger, and who isn't these days, Karen was 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. But when the always capable and reliable Karen didn't show up for her Saturday morning shift on October 11,

2003, clearly something was wrong. Her boyfriend, Tim Permenter, 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 of hours before I really got panicky about it. The boyfriend drove over to Karen's condo in the quiet town of Oldsmar. 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 is laying on the floor. There's blood everywhere. Karen Pinnell sprawled on her back, bloody, a murder victim in her own home. Pinellas County Homicide Detective Michael Holbrook would lead the investigation. When the first deputies arrive on scene, Tim Perlman is in the front yard. He's hysterical. He actually threw up in the front yard that he was so upset over finding his girlfriend. Deputies gave Tim, the shaken boyfriend, a chance to collect himself in the backseat of an air-conditioned patrol car. That's where he placed a call to

Karen's friend, Catherine, with the unimaginable news. He says, Catherine, it's Tim. I'm at Karen's apartment. She's laying on the floor. There's blood everywhere and she's been stabbed. Stabbed? Stabbed. It's a horrible way. It's really a horrible way to die. Karen, the baby of the family with five older brothers, suddenly gone. She'd been especially close to her oldest brother, Mike. My brother called me. I was at the airport and said, you better sit down. And he said, Karen's been murdered. Any theories about what had 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 Holbrook and Larry Nalvin began with the man who'd 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 Perlmanner finding his girlfriend. We took Mr. Perlmanner back to the office and talked to him extensively.

Tim, a car salesman, gave the detectives a rundown of where he'd been in the hours leading up to the terrible discovery. He said he'd popped in briefly on Karen the night before to drop off a gift, a photo calendar of kittens that he knew his cat lover girlfriend would find irresistible. Tim said he left around 7 30 and that was the last time he saw Karen alive. Wouldn't it have been your routine to spend the night? Not on a Friday night, no. Because she had to work the next day. She had to go in and work early. After saying goodbye to Karen, he said he ended up spending the night with friends about an hour to the north.

Is he saying anything at this point, detective, like you can't do it, or I know boyfriends are often figure suspicions, I want to talk to a lawyer. Is any of that stuff coming out of him? 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 bloody aftermath.

She put up a heck of a struggle. And what are you looking at? She had defensive wounds, the way her body was contorted. And I just remember thinking, she put up a heck of a struggle. She really fought for her life. Do you suck in your breath and say, oh my goodness, or have you seen everything at this point? Oh, I can't believe what people do to each other. And 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, and there were other signs of tampering. There was a cable box that was open, so then you start to think to yourself, somebody trying to cut the wires, there was a knocked over birdbath. 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. And you didn't have to squint to make it out, either. R.O.C.

On the victim, Karen's right-hand index finger was clearly stained with blood. R.O.C. What was the murdered woman trying to tell the cops? All these theories were running through my mind. What does that mean? Is that a word? Is that a person? Is that a thing? The clues pointed so many different directions that it really was, it was a total mystery. There's a concept in the law known as a dying declaration. Would those three letters scrawled in Karen's own blood

lead to the apprehension of her killer? Coming up. You've got this scrawled in blood message saying this is my killer. Absolutely. Who or what was ROC

when Written in Blood continues. The camera always liked Karen Pinnell. 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 VW dealership where he worked. What did you think of her? Oh, she was gorgeous. She was beautiful. You were pinching yourself. You thought you were the luckiest guy around. Oh, yeah. Karen was one of the best women I've ever known. I thought she was the one. I thought she was a person that 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 that family was gathering from far-flung parts of the country for her funeral. Shocked and in mourning for the lost sister who'd long been their glue. All the boys kind of got involved in our own stuff, but 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 a lot 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. She was just really nimble minded. Well, her friends loved her. And she was hard not to love. Even harder to forget what a cruel fate she'd suffered at the hands of a killer unknown. During the viewing, there were visible stab wounds on her hand. You know, so we kind of pull the flowers down a little farther.

A few days after the murder, her many friends at the airport said their goodbyes. There's a chapel in the main terminal in Tampa at the airport. There were so many people there from all different airlines, the security people. It was incredible. Meanwhile, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department 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 named George Solomon in Moon Lake, about an hour to the north. He did in fact go up to where George Solomon was staying with his girlfriend in Pasco County. This was confirmed through interviews with George as well as George's girlfriend. George gave us a timeline that was consistent with what Permenter gave us.

Tim's story about the night of the murder checked out. He even voluntarily came clean on something right from the start. He had a record. He'd done time. Now, early on in your life, Tim, you get involved in trouble. What was going on with you? I was running an escort service and 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 per week?

I was grossing about $6,000 to $ seven thousand dollars a day. A day? Yes. And you're how old? At that time, 20. And that's the trap. Why am I even going to school when I'm making this kind of money? Why go straight, huh? Yes, sir. And 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 sordid past. So he promised to cooperate in every way possible. The cops took him up on it. I allowed them to photograph me, removed all my clothing. I allowed them to go to my home, take anything that they wanted. And there was nothing about his clothing, his car, his person,

that led us to believe that he was involved in any other way than he said he was, that he came over to see her and found her and was devastated. Tim Permenter's alibi had checked out, and police also 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. R-O-C. So this is a pretty creepy scene.

I mean, you've got this scrawled in blood message saying, this is my killer, I'm now dead, but you find this guy. That's what it's suggesting, isn't it? Absolutely, that's what it's suggesting. I mean, 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. Rock, it turned out, was a person, the name of a man who had spelled trouble for Karen in the past. Rock was an ex-boyfriend who Karen Purnell

had had problems with previously. And whoever and wherever this Rock 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 Rock. And then they have to follow that lead and off they go. To find Rock. To find Rock. Coming up, mission accomplished. Find him, they do. What do you think she saw in you? The bad boy kind of thing. But what would they find next?

I'm looking at murder. Somebody's talking to me about a murder. When Dateline continues. A stomach-churning crying scene with an at-first-glance cryptic message written in blood. ROC. But it wasn't a big mystery for long. ROC was the unusual but proper spelling of Karen Pinnell's ex-boyfriend, Rock Herpich. So tell me about the former boyfriend known as Rock, R.O.C., letters scrawled in blood. Who was he? Rock was an ex-boyfriend. He'd had a little bit of legal problems, a little bit of a substance abuse problem.

Rock 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 insurance claims. When he met Karen, she was on a downward spiral. After being married for five years, she'd recently gotten a divorce. And a doctor had just given her some 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 her self-esteem. Frankly, I think it may have had an impact on the kind of men that she was attracted to.

Karen came to rely on Rock 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. Do you worry, is this the way ahead for my sister? I think that was true. To be on the back way ahead for my sister? I think that was true. I think that's true. And 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, huh? No. You can only fix yourself. And as it turned out, Rock wasn't a fix for Karen either. Their 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. Was it tough on her? There were some unexplained bruises and I used to tell her, why, you know, what are you doing? He did not deserve her. But she wouldn't listen. The fights got worse and police were called three separate times to intervene.

One time, Rock allegedly broke down the front door. It was the last straw. Karen filed a domestic battery complaint, and Rock moved out. Tim Permenter says that even a year later, Rock was still harassing Karen about a roll-top desk he'd left behind. She was starting to get scared of him towards the end. This 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 portrayed it to me. Detectives Holbrook and Nalvin knew they had to confront this Rock. So they tracked him down and paid a surprise visit. He wasn't happy to see them. I'm in the garage at my home in North Port, Florida. Black Unmarked shows up, and I'm like, well, everybody knows what that is. I'm thinking, now what the heck's that?

Detective Holbrook identified himself and said they needed to talk to Rock about his friend, Karen. We sit down on the porch, and he goes, well, she's dead. Detective Holbrook identified himself and said they needed to talk to Rock about his friend, Karen. We sat down on the porch and he goes, well, she's dead. Of course, this just doesn't even register. So I just said, you just need to tell me what's going on. But the detective wanted Rock to do the talking. He asked about his troubled relationship with Karen. Rock indicated that he was using drugs and that Karen liked to drink and that they fought often.

But Rock 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, Rock? Could you feel something going on? Yeah, there was. She was all that. She was just all by herself, and she was just 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. Rock was open with the detectives, even came across as a good guy, but conceded there had

been screaming matches with Karen and a few rip-roaring fights, but said she was the instigator. She'd get violent. She'd get physically violent. This stuff. Things would happen. But nobody ever got arrested, but they'd come out and they would address the issue. As Rock tells it, she gave as good as she got. That 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. Rock remembers Karen playing hardball about that roll-top desk of his, too, not liking her attitude. I did call her on several occasions about my roll-top desk.

The desk. That stupid desk, and it was bugging me. I mean, it was a nice piece of furniture, and I really wanted to get it back. And she pretty much said, you left, you're not getting it. He never did get it. That roll top was still in Karen's condo in Oldsmar on the night she was stabbed to death.

Now Detective Holbrook pointedly wanted to know if Rock had been there too. He says, where were you on such and such a day? And 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've been with, where I live. So you're getting a serious grilling. Right. He ends up telling me that we found your name in blood on the wall. R-O-C.

Yeah. So obviously I'm a suspect and I acknowledge that. I mean, I'm looking at murder. I'm getting somebody's talking to me about a murder. Rock waived his right to a lawyer and agreed to give fingerprints and swabbing. It looked as though police had strangely found yet another cooperative boyfriend murder. Rock waived his right to a lawyer and agreed to give fingerprints and swabbing. It looked as though police had strangely found yet another cooperative boyfriend of their victim. I said, if you're looking for fingerprints, they're all over that home. Because I lived

there for a year, so you're going to find them. Did you lose your patience with them? That's it for today. 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 we're done. Now I'm done. Rock's cooperation had an edge to it. Was he really trying to cover his tracks? Detectives were determined to find out. Coming up, the CSI of ROC. I remember thinking, wow, I wonder if that's what wrote these letters.

Were those three little letters really what they seemed? When Written in Blood continues. The handwriting was on the wall. And forensic specialist Anna Cox was intent on breaking down the key piece of evidence implicating Karen Pinnell's ex-boyfriend, Rock Herping. Those three letters in blood. R-O-C. You would spend hours looking at these letters. I did.

You actually cut the sheetrock out of the place and took it into your lab? Yes. I have to look at those letters, at everything about them. Using a high-powered microscope, Anna did an analysis of the specks of blood that stained the wall as Karen was stabbed 16 times. That flung spatter served as a gruesome canvas for the letters ROC then written over it. When the letters ROC were written on top of it, it just skimmed right over it and didn't disrupt it at all. Here was her central observation. Since the specks of blood weren't smeared, that meant rock must have been written after they dried.

But how long after? I have a special machine that I use to make some spatter. In her lab, she used animal blood to test how long it took for spatter to dry on a similar surface. So once I came back and was able to apply spatter to some sections of some cardboard, then I was able to get some blood and to start writing the word rock. I must have written this word a million times over different areas of spatter. In the lab, it took at least 20 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 rock 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 that there would be some type of transfer of rich detail. Rich 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 nubbly things that stick up for gripping purposes so when you're gardening it doesn't slip. And I remember thinking, wow, I wonder if that's what wrote these letters. Cox bought similar gloves at a hardware store.

And after several more days of testing, was satisfied that her hunch was correct. Anna 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 Karen's left hand did not have blood smeared 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 his table, was this a victim who was going to be able 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 Pinnell 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, Rock Herpik. They confirmed 100% that she could not have done that. She couldn't have done it. She would have been physically incapable of doing that. And it surely wouldn't me. I mean, why would you write your own name on the wall? Police agreed. Implicating yourself in a murder just made no sense. Rock 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 and the cell towers he's hitting off around the same time that we know Karen was killed. He's in North Port, Florida, and that's a good, you know, hour,

hour and a half away. And you went over all these alleged beefs that he might have had with her. Absolutely. Boyfriend, girlfriend. Yep. And he had moved on. Detectives Nalvin and Holbrook were ready to move on, too. They officially cleared Rock. 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 Rock... Somebody knows my name. ...is part of the story here. That's right.

But if you think about this, this is... It's not even a smart thing to do. Rock was right. The pool of suspects had suddenly narrowed to a small handful of Karen's intimates who knew about him and also knew the unusual way he spelled his name, R-O-C. Detectives Holbrook and Nelvin were about to take a hard look at all of them. Coming up, a surprise in the crime lab. A new clue emerges from something so ordinary it was almost overlooked.

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? Police had reached a startling conclusion. Karen Pinnell did not write the name Rock 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 Rock.

Detectives started questioning the other men in Karen's life. Karen had nicknames for her boyfriends. A car guy, that was Tim Perlmutter. Another one that 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 could prove they were nowhere near her house in Oldsmar that night. Every boyfriend except Cargott, Tim Permenter, the one who reported finding Karen's 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'd 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 she even began a relationship like that. The relationship began with Tim trying to sell Karen a new car. But police learned he also sold her a bill of goods about himself, saying he'd been a Navy SEAL involved in top secret missions, never mentioning the sordid truth about his criminal past. Karen told me that he explained his scars as he got injured on a mission. Super commando stuff. huh? Well, I think that would have been his impression of himself. So why are you lying to her? You're giving her a crock. There's really no excuse for it.

I mean, other than if you're an inmate or you're a convicted felon, no matter how good you do, no matter what you do, there's always going to be that specter hanging over you. It was several months into the relationship before Tim finally revealed his ugly secret. He was a felon who had spent more than a decade behind bars. Not a Navy SEAL, but a violent one-time pimp. The self-described escort king. I said, been waiting for the right time to tell you this. And she was flabbergasted.

I think that she, she became frightened of me. So why didn't you just shake hands and call a quits? Because I loved her. Karen's friends and brothers say she told them she was afraid and when she tried to pull away from Tim brother Mike says those fears were quickly borne out. Did you ever hear evidence that 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. And in fact, one of her friends at work remembered her missing a day or two. And then when she did come in, she wore a turtleneck. You know, in the summer months here in Florida, you don't wear a turtleneck then. While detectives Holbrook and Nalvin chased down every lead, the crime lab made another big discovery. Unlike the melodramatic and bogus message in blood, this evidence was something forensic tech Anna Cox almost passed right over. A pizza box on Karen's kitchen counter. You could walk right by and think it has 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 Permenter's, and it blew a hole in his minute-by-minute account of the night Karen was killed. He had 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 848. 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'd first said he was home when he called his friend George just after 9 30. Detective Nalvin 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 out in a lie? Yeah, absolutely. His 911 phone call in the morning, it hits off the same tower that he was hitting off when he called George at 936 the night before, which is directly north of Karen Pinnell's house. Malvin and Holbrook could think of only one reason for Tim 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 again with him, and he held true to what he told us. And at that point, we started attacking this story. Tim had a simple explanation for the timeline problems. He was confused. This is what cooperation got me. Confused.

Confused. We know it gets you confused, Tim, when you lie. 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 for maybe another 10, maybe 15 minutes. Why do you tell cops 730? 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. Tim, why do you lie? It's about the times. You were there at least from 8.30 to 9.30. I don't see how. That's impossible. No. Pete's a man who keeps a receipt. It's a neat track, okay? Tim had been tripped up by his own statements.

And Detective Holbrook says his suspect knew the charade was over. He put his face in his hands, and he literally covered his face for two or three minutes. Tim ultimately looked up at us, and the car salesman, the guy that we knew as Tim Permenter, had completely left the room. What did you see in his eyes? What did you see in his face? The first thing I thought was that Satan just walked into the room. Coming up... I knew I was innocent. Was he? 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. The trial and the verdict when Written in Blood continues.

Detectives were now convinced that Tim Permetter, the boyfriend who pledged to help solve Karen Pinnell's murder, was really the killer. But Tim says police had nothing on him and were only targeting him because of his criminal record. I didn't do it. But I knew somehow, someway, I was going to get pinned on it. I knew it. I knew the minute I saw the body.

Detectives arrested Tim and sent him to the county jail. State Attorney Bill Lowry got the case. What about your accused, Timothy Permenter? Who's he? I think Timothy Permenter is a psychopath, just someone that who had, I think, gotten lucky to be with Karen. And 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 says Permenter thought he could outsmart the cops by acting the bereaved boyfriend, playing it to the hilt at the crime scene.

Oh, God. But the prosecutor says Permenter got thrown off his tear-stained script when he called Karen's best friend soon after making that 911 call. He says, Catherine, it's Tim. I'm at Karen's apartment. She's laying on the floor. There's blood everywhere and she's been stabbed. Stabbed?

Stabbed. Not she's dead. I don't know what's happened. Not she's dead. She's been stabbed. And he tells her on the phone, according to Catherine, that she's been stabbed. Okay, well, she has been stabbed. We didn't know that at that point in time.

So he knew something he shouldn't have known, something crucial. He knew something he shouldn't have known because he's the one who stabbed her. Prosecutor Lowry sized up his case. A rejected lover with a violent history. A man the evidence showed was at the scene of the crime and had lied about it. He charged Permenter 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 and how. He tells me this whole news story that Permenter had admitted that he had killed Karen that night. Blurted out a confession when he got up there. So that's a holy 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 Permenter to the stabbing. Defense attorney Dudley Clapp. 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, 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 Permenter 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 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 Permenter 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. 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 Pinnell 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 and 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 Permenter 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 to Permenter at Florida's Liberty Correctional Institution. The convicted murderer says he's the victim of a justice system that was 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 fest 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 him if only he hadn't tried so hard to fake his alibi, starting with those three letters written in blood. So this Hollywood touches, I think of it. Oh, Rock did it, the dying declaration. It bit him.

Bit him hard, very hard. He outsmarted himself, and that's why he's in prison. Rock Herpich is free to ride his Harley these days, but it still eats him up that a man he never met tried to frame him for murder. If you could sit down and 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?

Yeah, well, I would not be a good communicator in that conversation mode with him sitting there. I couldn't do it. Mike Pinnell couldn't do it either. He'd rather not think about Tim Permenter 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. 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 now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.