Killing Time | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

in a small town outside new york city a woman vanishes but will she ever return remains a mystery to both her family and the detectives struggling to find her [Music] dawn breaks at a new england hotel to reveal a body a senseless murder brutally committed any evidence left behind is scarce and investigators must uncover clues most cannot see a killer may strike in the middle of the night and hide clues well but the police are always there ready and working and they will never give up when they're on the trail of criminals who decide it's killing time [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in this episode some of the names have been changed in the foothills of the catskill mountains lies the village of wurtzboro new york with a population of under 1300 it is a quiet haven only two hours but a world away from new york city on august 27 1999 at the new york state police station in wurzboro a call came in from out of state [Music] the caller was tony valentine in lutz florida she said she was concerned about her sister tammy karen normally calls me as i said once a week valentine had not been able to contact her sister in two months which was very unusual she was sure something was wrong hey gail how are you good i just want to learn something by you i just got off the phone state police investigator john jones learned that tony valentine last spoke with her sister on june 27th she's worried because she hasn't heard from her sister and she files a missing persons report at that time and asked us to check on the welfare of her sister [Music] investigators opened a missing person's case and traveled to the carron home to see if they could find tammy or her husband it was possible tammy simply wasn't returning her sister's calls at the house they were met by tammy's husband i'd like to talk to you they told hal karen about the call from florida and he agreed to talk to them he said tammy had left him how karen told me that he and his wife have been having some marital problems he said that tammy liked to party a lot he was giving her money on a regular basis so that she could go out and there came a point where she no longer wanted to be with hal [Music] al told us that he had cut her money off she became upset he said that on june 27th they argued about her drinking and doing drugs and he left the house to cool down [Music] he was gone for several hours when he returned tammy was waiting for him in the kitchen with her bags packed can tim at that point she just left the house in a small car which you couldn't describe any further than being a small red vehicle and that he hadn't any contact with her since then he did not see who was driving the car he said she had done this before but this time he believed she would not return frankly i don't respect you sir for hal the marriage was over [Music] [Applause] as an adult tammy had every right to disappear however she still had to be found because we had a missing persons case even though i didn't have any authority as a police officer to force her to go home or to make contact with anybody it was my responsibility to find her and report that i had found her to her parents so or her family so that they could have some closure the police ran a background check on tammy karen senior investigator tom scalepi reviewed the findings the wreckage check revealed that on several occasions there were reports of domestic violence in the karen household and it was determined that tammy was the aggressor in each and every one of those incidents very unusual it's not your typical domestic violence scenario investigators discovered hal had an order of protection against his wife tammy he was in the army in our special forces no violence on his part anywhere through there the investigators contacted tony valentine to fill her in hello it appeared that her sister had left on her own talk to you maybe about that see if we can tammy had called tony and had told her that she was tired of married life and that she was leaving howe maybe get some money detectives wanted to leave nothing unanswered so the investigation would continue all right thank you there was a lot of footwork to be done a lot of background to be doing on tammy troopers spoke to everyone who knew tammy and followed up on even the smallest leads she used to work here through the course of interviewing um tammy's co-workers at the diner it was learned that tammy was very friendly with one of the cooks everyone knew the two were close and several months before tami disappeared the cook moved back to canada [Music] she had made comments to several people that the cook liked her and that he had asked her to leave with him to go to canada and that she was considering this as a possibility it was a good lead but no one knew where the cook had gone with a subpoena the new york state police secured copies of the karen's phone records they discovered a call to a canadian number in april of that year investigators needed to track down that cook we were able to make contact with him in canada and we were able to put to rest that lead he stated that he had asked her to come to canada and that she said she may but that she had not returned to canada with him the state police distributed a missing persons flyer in the worstboro area and also in tampa the most likely place tammy would have headed we had newspaper articles we had tv coverage all of which generated leads all of them unfortunately did not pan out investigators kept in contact with tammy's worried sister as the lead started running out it was explained to her that you know with tammy's lifestyle there's a good possibility she might have just up and relocated putting her past behind her tony insisted her sister would have called by now i don't believe that but as time progressed and it got longer and longer over the holiday seasons and uh birthdays and special occasions uh it became more evident both to tony and to myself that something that happened to terry investigators felt one of two things had happened to the missing woman either she had drifted back into a life of drug abuse or even worse she was no longer with anything give us a alive then on march 25th 2002 a man driving an atv in a heavily wooded area near wordsboro spotted a garbage can it was sealed with plastic but something was spilling out they were bones he went for police [Music] new york state troopers responded and sealed off the scene they called in the state police forensics identification unit leading that team was forensic investigator miles anthony our agency responded to the crime scene at the base of this large incline cliff area off the side of the west side of the highway there was a garbage can lying on its side which apparently had been lying there for quite a while there was a black garbage bag cinched over the top of it with a green cord it was tied with a knot that looked pretty specific the knot had an elaborate locking loop on the one end and then a cinching system on the back side of it it wasn't your standard knot it appeared animals had broken through the bag and scattered the contents at the scene we observed the remnants of some clothing that had been on the body there was also an engagement ring there was a 20-inch gold necklace from there which had a pendant on it of some sort [Music] and a watch all appeared to be female there was some animal activity and they had removed some of the content and there was a trail of skeletal remains leading away from the can all of the items were marked and collected they hoped something there would help them identify the body but investigators were beginning to believe that after almost three years of looking for tammy karen they could now stop [Music] and start looking for her killer [Music] in the summer of 1999 new york state police began looking for tammy caron reported missing by her sister two and a half years later in the spring of 2002 they found a body in the woods of wartsborough were discovered in a garbage can that had been secured with an unusual knot investigators working the tammy carran case believed their search was finally over [Music] the remains were found less than two miles from her home where she was last seen it's like a military type new york state police senior investigator most look like they're in there we surmised it was tammy due to the proximity of the karen residence the physical features or of what we could determine hair et cetera it fit the description of our victim but we weren't 100 sure that was our main focus is getting the remains identified the garbage can and its contents in addition to the rope and not were removed in their entirety and sent to the forensic investigation center in albany [Music] there examiners tried to find material in the bones from which to extract viable dna to compare with dna taken from tammy karen's family members assistant director of biological science julie pisa when you have skeletal remains the dna will be degraded so with a bone and a tooth we would actually take a drill and drill into them to get at the marrow which is where the dna is we would drill into the bone or drill into the tooth and remove a portion of the marrow and transfer it into a tube and then apply the chemicals that we use to separate out the dna after several tries they got enough marrow to create a dna profile in this case what we're doing is relational type statistics where we're comparing the relatedness of the known sample from the family member to the profile we obtained from the remains running the complex statistics they got a hit and we found that they were related and it was actually twenty five thousand five hundred twenty times more likely that they were related than not to investigators there was no doubt that the remains of tammy karen had been dumped at the bottom of a cliff now the question was who put her there forensic investigator miles anthony turned to the olive green cord that had secured the plastic covering the can the cord appeared to be military perhaps parachute cord the knot in the cord piqued the examiner's interest it appeared to be unique and i decided to maintain the knot in its original condition new york state police investigator jackie tambarello sent photos of the rope and not to the us army to be inspected there was an officer at west point who immediately recognized it was not captain mark sheehan from the united states army examined the rope we looked at it and the first thing obviously being that it was what we label as 550 cord obviously would initially indicate that there's probably a military link then secondary we started looking at other things in the way it was fashioned and that's when we picked up on the knot it appeared that there was a bowline type knot that indicated the killer was professionally trained we have a seared end and we have a configuration of multiple knots that basically turned into some type of tightening system and in my mind at that point this was not something that your average soldier went out and made obviously the person that rigged this had an extensive military background and i thought that they were either currently serving in the special operations community or probably had served in them prior to when were out police knew the victim's husband hal karen had been in the army's special forces investigators traced the cord through its manufacturer and learned it was only shipped to a limited number of army bases at specific times investigator tom scalepi had his team compare those times to hal karen's military assignment records coincidentally hal karen was assigned to these particular army bases during that time and had access to this court by this time hal karen had moved out of the house he once shared with tammy with the permission of the current resident the forensics unit searched the place nothing of evidentiary value was inside but outside in the bushes they found something hey miles you want to come over here for a minute i think we might have something here we located a piece of the parachute cord behind the corner of the house where the garbage cans were stored the court appeared to be consistent with the cord that was on the can they brought the cord from the residence and the one found with the body to the army research and development center in natick massachusetts [Music] the senior textile technologist examined both he said they had consistent fading they both had four strands two light yellow one green and one white that completed one piece of the filament the technologist also pointed out that the ends of both pieces of cord had been heated over a flame they had consistent twisting qualities and consistent charring and it was possible that they could have been one piece at one time although he couldn't say for sure now investigators hoped clues on the garbage can would identify her killer [Music] forensic investigator miles anthony could not find usable prints on the outside of the can but anthony noticed something the killer might not have on the side of the trash can was a colored adhesive that bared the name of the sanitation company that would pick up that garbage on the back side of that sticker is an adhesive someone who had placed that sticker on the side of the can may have left a latent fingerprint on the adhesive side as they were applying the sticker on the adhesive was a single latent print [Music] police secured copies of hal karen's inked fingerprints from the army and now they needed to find out if tammy's husband's print matched the one found on the garbage can that contained her bones if they did investigators believed they were finally closing in on her killer in 2002 in wurtzboro new york state police investigators found a garbage can containing the remains of tammy karen who had been missing for three years one latent print was recovered from the label on the side of the can investigators believed if they could identify the print they would identify the killer forensic investigator miles anthony compared the print to that of hal karen tammy's husband i was able to compare the two of them and match the latent fingerprint that i had gotten from the back of the adhesive to the known inked prince it was a positive match it was an absolute match to hal karen finally district attorney stephen lundgen had enough for an arrest warrant this case came together ultimately as a result of forensic evidence and its examination fingerprint evidence fiber evidence dna evidence they decided to arrest the suspect away from his house in case he had weapons inside [Music] they knew that the former army ranger was trained to kill and they wanted to avoid a volatile situation [Music] on august 6 2002 new york state troopers took al karan into custody without incident i do know something at troop f headquarters investigators jon jones and jackie tambarello interviewed karen i still don't think you're telling us the complete truth first he denied any knowledge of his wife's death when confronted with the evidence linking him to the body he changed his story in fact i think i probably in his latest story he describes returning home finding tammy karen in the bathroom of their house sitting on a toilet with her head in the sink and appeared to have died of an overdose he said there were crack vials all around her and he worried if he called police he would be arrested for drugs so he disposed of her body the investigators needed to check the possibility of a drug overdose [Music] we were very lucky in this case we managed to find what turned out to be her liver the liver is able to give us a lot of information about her blood chemistry and we were able to utilize that to determine her toxicological state toxicologists at the forensic investigation center reported slight traces of echoline a chemical byproduct of cocaine but the amounts indicated infrequent use weeks or months before death it was no overdose believe that on june 27 1999 the couple had argued as hal karen originally stated but during that argument he attacked her probably strangled her he knew he had to get rid of the body it would fit in the municipal garbage can he could seal it off with parachute cord and plastic garbage bags he took her to the cliff a mile and a half away and dumped her hal karen was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in new york investigators had to navigate through lies and dead ends revealing a brutal crime that at first seemed like no crime at all but in vermont things were not so subtle the town of rutland is a small working-class city nestled in a quiet valley in the heart of the state it is the sort of place where everyone knows everyone else and violent crime is rare [Music] on april 19 1998 ethel de moray entered the rutland motel where her daughter jane worked and found her lying motionless on the floor don't touch her oh no it looked like someone had tried to burn jane she wasn't breathing [Music] the motel owner called for help vermont 9-1-1 [Music] the emergency operator immediately dispatched patrol officers and detectives five five four eight respond to the iran on the main street [Music] although she couldn't believe it mrs demare knew her daughter was dead detective chris kiefer chuffee responded to the probable homicide rare but not unheard of in the area it happens we're not immune from all the other types of crimes that happen everywhere else it just doesn't happen as often which is what we're real thankful for by the time kiefer chaffey arrived at the motel other investigators had secured the scene but this case would be like no other the detective had encountered the victim was her friend and i was advised that the night clerk had been murdered her name is jane demeray and i know jane i've known jane for years what did you see investigators took preliminary statements about the discovery of the body mrs de moray explained she began worrying earlier that morning when she could not get in touch with james on her face she called the motel manager then went to check on jane on her chest that's when they discovered her daughter's body the counter you said my mother yes the motel owner confirmed the story and said jane was alone on duty the night before investigators moved inside to begin processing the crime scene it was immediately clear to sergeant rod pulcifer that someone tried to burn the body we came into the main lobby she was lying on her back on the floor there were several canes scattered around her which appeared to be chemicals which had been thrown on her and appeared to have been ignited there was an awful odor in the ear from the chemicals and the flesh that had been burned despite the gruesome nature of the scene and the victim they all knew they had to focus you have to stay on cue you know that you're going to find the answer you just have to listen to what your evidence is telling you [Music] so you want to finish photographing the overall general scene yes okay i started processing by photographing you always photograph this thing first after recording the placement of evidence they began systematically collecting it we had recovered some pieces of paper advertisements in which there was a bloody palm print and what's called the interdigital portion of the palm that was a significant piece of evidence next to the body was a small blood stain probably from the victim i noticed that jane had a cut on her nose the killer might have gotten her blood on his hand then touched the paper what we'll do okay divide that into one hoping the killer left more traces behind they dusted nearby surfaces for latent fingerprints collected the empty accelerant cans near the body all items normally found in the janitorial closet a can of linseed oil wood cleaner drain cleaner and paint remover they were flammable but not combustible so the fire was short-lived at the front desk the detectives found signs of robbery it looks like these cash drawers had been opened some cabinet drawers in the back office area had been all opened also from receipts they determined roughly 500 was missing [Music] it looked like the fire was not the cause of death [Music] on the victim up around the neckline there were markings that would lead us to believe that she had been strained an autopsy would tell more [Music] trace evidence might have transferred onto their gloves so investigators also placed them in the body bag for the medical examiners to check [Music] police also needed more details from the victim's mother despite the unimaginable horror she experienced that morning mrs de moray tried her best to answer all of the detective's questions [Music] jane's mother explained to us that she dropped her daughter off there that night about 11 o'clock the mother came inside with jane as she normally did the other clerk was ready to go off ship and cashed out he reported one noise complaint nothing unusual it was like any other night very routine [Applause] as was their custom mother and daughter talked for a while before mrs de moray left around 11 30. so what happened she said there was nothing that would explain such a horrible crime jane's a very docile person hard worker led a very simple lifestyle to have something like this happen to somebody there was just no reason there was just no visible reason other than the money that was appeared to have been taken and her may be trying to stop them but to go to the extent of the burning certainly baffled us the autopsy was performed at the chief medical examiner's office in burlington it confirmed the victim had been doused with chemicals and lit on fire minor hemorrhages on the neck and in the whites of the eyes revealed the cause of death according to dr paul morrow the cause of death was asphyxia due to some form of strangulation the examination didn't reveal a um a specific means it wasn't clear from whether the assailant had used his hands or a ligature of some sort in any case it was a gruesome crime for this quiet new england town at the rutland police department investigators met to review the case and plan most crimes in the area are solved quickly we're a small community and you know you're you're good guys and know your bad guys so automatically when something happens you just start running a list through your head of the people in town that have the potential for doing something like this however in the circumstances in this case with the strangulation and then the burning um there was nobody that came to my mind there were no suspects in sight and the first crucial hours of the investigation were slipping away that's when everything is fresh everything is hot and that's when you get your your best leads and gather your best evidence rutland police methodically interviewed everyone at the motel i'm not sure if you saw our cruisers out in the front finally they found two guests who had a promising lead there was a couple that came in about 11 30 that evening to just check and spend the night when they arrived they told us that they saw a white male that was there in the lobby who had gone over and sat down in a bench uh across from the check-in counter they said he wore blue jeans a jean coat and a white cap they described him as average height medium build with brown hair but their encounter was brief and they could not describe specific facial features rutland police immediately put out a press release with the description asking anyone with information to call it in they had the bloody palm print and now a general description but they always believed they would find the killer with the team that we had working this i i knew we were going to solve it it was just going to take some time the cops of this small vermont town would not give up for them it was personal they would not stop until they found jane's brutal killer in 1998 night clerk jane demare was found murdered in a rutland vermont motel she had been strangled then doused with chemicals and investigators believed her killer had attempted to burn her investigators had a vague description of a man seen in the motel lobby with jane a description was released to the public but their best piece of evidence was a bloody palm impression recovered on a piece of paper in the lobby rutland detective chris kiefer chaffey brought the impression to forensic laboratory specialist john creighton [Music] the impression on the paper was the inner digital portion of the of the palm and the interdigital portion is located below the fingers of the palm and what she had hoped that we would be able to do with this is to bring out the existing ridge detail that is there and possibly develop more of the fingers of that impression to develop unseen fingerprints creighton sprayed the flyer with an inhydran aerosol and anhydron is used on porous items and it reacts to secretions from the skin amino acids that are soaked into the fibers of the porous material and anhydrous reacts to those amino acids and develops a visible print on that porous item introducing heat and steam from a household iron causes the reaction the fingers of the palm above the inner area were developed visibly he could clearly make out the prince of four fingers of a right hand but there was more on the middle finger he noticed an irregularity that appeared to be caused by a wart i thought the aberration at the tip of the finger was a good additional item for identification purposes because of its uh uniqueness you could eliminate someone relatively quickly just by keying in on that area of the finger now with viable fingerprints detective kiefer chopin could eliminate suspects generated by the press we had an releases lot of tips come in and we were able to approach some of those people explain to them look we'd like to take your fingerprints we had some friends at the scene we'd like to eliminate you as a suspect and they voluntarily came in gave us the fingerprints but checking the prints of the people called in as well as those of all employees and guests was a tedious process back in 1998 we weren't computerized we did not have an afa system which is an automated fingerprint identification system so all of our comparisons were done by eye so literally taking hundreds of cards and doing a comparison to what was found from the scene despite dozens of man-hours spent checking the prince none of them matched it was a dead end they needed to broaden the search we had requested the computer database search in all of the states that were currently on an afis system we also went through canada had them do with database search we went through the fbi and had them do a database search so we have literally compared millions of fingerprints and we are not coming up with an answer we have not come up with an identification so that tells me this person has simply never been fingerprinted before five days passed with nothing solid then investigators learned the motel owner's son had a possible lead he came up with robert white who had worked there he only worked for about two possibly three weeks he'd been fired from the motel for sleeping in the lobby when he was working really not wearing appropriate work clothes dress kind of shabbily is how the owner's son put it you can just give us a call it wasn't much robert white was just a fired employee with no specific link to the crime he like everybody else was put into the pot and following our methodology of the investigation was put on the list to be contacted and interviewed white was not home when officers checked his apartment several times not unusual with people on investigators lists but he began to distinguish himself from others on the list by not returning investigators calls we had gone to other places people weren't home initially left messages and they contacted us right away and he was one that didn't and that raises an eyebrow rutland officers traveled to mendon vermont to the last motel where white was known to have worked one of the clerks there knew white but said he did not work there any longer she told police white had a temper and threatened her once she said it had happened the year before i know the clerk knew white was married one day she confronted him about the women he often brought to the motel she said white got angry and even threatened to kill her if she ever said anything about it again to anyone the clerk believed the threat was real investigators needed to learn more about robert white [Music] they received the results of a background check on white he had been arrested in texas for dui although for some reason he had never been fingerprinted [Music] because database checks had come up empty rutland police believed their killer had never been printed [Music] patrol officers again went to find white this time he was home you know sir are you robert white yes he fit the general description of the man seen in the lobby officers explained they wanted to speak with him about the murder of jane demare you know eyewitnesses we want to just interview robert white admitted that he had known jane samples liked her felt really bad for what happened and was willing to submit fingerprints he agreed to come with him to the station to give the prince and talk to detectives he was following what everybody else was doing being very cooperative and very willing to assist us in any way he could john detective kiefer chaffee had eliminated countless prints over the previous two weeks comparing them to the ridge pattern of the prints found at the crime scene because at this point mind you this pattern is is like i see it everywhere i mean these four fingers i could tell you the ridge count i could tell you the pattern i could tell you the classification i mean it was like you know second nature at this point because i have looked at so many freaking fingerprints and compared them all when she took white sprints her knowledge paid off i recognized the second finger that this pattern was exactly the pattern from my latency from the crime scene so of course i'm now rolling finger number three i find the wart on finger number three she believed he was the one i knew i knew there was a break in my voice i knew that my heartbeat at this point was you know climbing pretty quick because i'm recognizing the patterns but i had to conceal that i could not let him know that i was suspecting anything while other detectives took white aside for an interview kiefer chuffee did a quick visual comparison [Music] it looked good what i needed to do now was get these fingerprints up to john creighton at the lab because he's certified late print examiner and he needed to finish this so i called john to let him know i was on my way and he dared not leave until i got there after eliminating more than 100 suspects in the gruesome murder of jane demare police believe they finally found her killer now they hoped forensic experts could confirm their suspicions and provide the proof they needed to put him away forever two weeks after motel clerk jane de moray was strangled and burned during a robbery rutland vermont police took fingerprints off former motel employee robert white detective chris kiefer chaffey had personally eliminated more than 100 sets of prints in the case and believed she finally had the right set when i left the office i was 99 sure it was one of the same but i'm not qualified to do it 100 all right i think this is our guy she brought the fingerprints to forensic laboratory specialist john creighton at the vermont state crime lab who had developed the crime scene prince [Music] and he was able to make the identification so at that point i called back to the station said we've got a positive ident the detectives in rutland received the good news while the interview was still ongoing robert white was arrested and charged with the murder of jane damaray you say cannon will be used against you for a lot yeah that needs to write some money he declined further interview and requested an attorney he was held on 250 000 bond they would have to go to court relying primarily on a single piece of evidence according to sergeant rod pulcifer what i would refer to as probably the crown jewel of the in the entire investigation was the fingerprint in the blood not only did the ridge detail of the fingerprints match whites the wart on the middle finger was the same [Music] at trial prosecutors told the jury what they believed the crime scene evidence proved had happened on the night of april 18 1998. there was no sign of struggle jane demare must have known the killer when robert white showed up she would not have been concerned in fact she had once covered for white when his cash drawer came up short but if he took money from her drawer jane would have tried to stop him jane's body was found in the lobby she must have confronted him there though he perhaps didn't intend to kill jane i don't believe he expected jane to put up such a fuss that's jane's personality that's that's jane in and out she's a wonderful woman and she was very protective of the people that she worked for [Music] at some point he knocked her against a desk causing her nose to bleed then he strangled her it would have taken several horrifying moments for jane to die [Applause] her blood on his hand white leaned on the flyer leaving the print [Music] frantic he got the chemicals [Music] and dragged jane out of view of the front door [Music] trying to conceal the crime he then doused her upper body no doubt trying to destroy evidence [Music] he lit the fire and ran but the fire was short-lived burning the victim's face and hands and little else robert lloyd white was found guilty of second-degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole when killers strike they leave their mark but police are there to find it and make the criminals pay using hard-won experience fierce determination and forensic science investigators do everything they can to find justice for the victim and the loved ones they leave behind you

Channel: The New Detectives

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Keywords: The New Detectives, New Detectives, New Detectives Full Episode, Full Episodes, New Detectives Documentary, Crime, Crime Documentary, Crime Patrol, True Crime, True Crime Daily, Unsolved, FBI, FBI Files, Crime Stories, Crime Documentaries Full Episodes, Unsolved True Crime, Mystery, Solved, Investigation, Police, Criminal, Forensics, Forensic Science, Science, killing time new detectives

Id: i0p7sBVhF6M

Length: 48min 52sec (2932 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 11 2021