got panicky about it. 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. 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.
blood. roc. but it wasn t a big mystery for long. 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? roc was an ex-boyfriend. he had a little legal problems, a little substance abuse problem. roc had a personality as big and loud as the pipes on the harlies 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
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 detecting. detectives found how those letters were 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.
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 out in a lie? absolutely. his 911 phone call in the morning, it hits off the same tower he was hitting off when he called 9:46 the night before 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 once 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 time line problems, he
i m dara brown with the hours top stories. two people are being questioned in a shooting at a house party. and the white house is trying to dismiss a newly revealed e-mail that showed eofficials calling for a hold on aid to ukraine just 90 minutes after the phone call with ukraine s president that has led to donald trump s impeachment. a spokesman says the report is misleading and inaccurate. now back to dateline. welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. who killed karen pannell? florida investigators were looking at her ex-boyfriend roc, his name was scrawled in blood at the crime scene. roc admitted to having a stormy relationship with karen but insisted he didn t kill her.