Written in Blood

Speaker 4 the Creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 3 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 5 Grand Canyon University is one of the largest universities in the country.

Speaker 5 Praised for its community and impact, GCU integrates a welcoming Christian worldview and open discourse into over 300 online programs.

Speaker 5 Redefine your online education through GCU's industry-driven, academically rigorous programs. In 2024, online students received over $161 million in institutional scholarships.
Find your purpose.

Speaker 5 Private, Christian, affordable. Discover available scholarships at gcu.edu/slash myoffer.

Speaker 6 What evidence doesn't lie? It actually tells a story.

Speaker 8 Tonight, you're there at the crime scene.

Speaker 6 You can almost recreate the crime.

Speaker 1 Right there on the wall, a mystery scrawled in blood.

Speaker 9 Three cryptic letters. What would you make of this?

Speaker 6 Is that a word? Is that a person? The clues pointed so many different directions that it was a total mystery.

Speaker 8 The case, the murder of a former model and flight attendant.

Speaker 10 When she got dolled up, oh my god, gorgeous.

Speaker 9 Did she write these letters?

Speaker 5 She really fought for her life.

Speaker 9 Was this a hint to who killed her?

Speaker 13 You've got this message saying, This is my killer, just like you would see in a movie.

Speaker 8 And the ending, that was just like a movie, too.

Speaker 6 I can't believe what people do to each other.

Speaker 16 I'm Lester Volt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 17 Here's Dennis Murphy with written in blood.

Speaker 18 If year-round sun and water is your thing, Florida's west coast should be high on your checkout list of places to live.

Speaker 19 It was for pretty Karen Pinnell.

Speaker 13 Once the one-time model and flight attendant got sand in her shoes, she never looked back.

Speaker 20 She loved the beach, diving, boating, wildlife.

Speaker 20 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

Speaker 24 good friend Catherine Malay 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.

Speaker 20 She was smart, smiled all the time, funny.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 1 Her boyfriend, Tim Permeter, had tried calling her at home.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 11 The boyfriend drove over to Karen's condo in the quiet town of Oldsmar.

Speaker 25 The front door was unlocked, a bad sign.

Speaker 19 He said he stepped inside and looked to the right to the kitchen.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 34 She is laying on the floor. There's blood everywhere.

Speaker 2 Karen Pinnell sprawled on her back, bloody, a murder victim in her own home.

Speaker 27 Pinellas County homicide detective Michael Holbrook would lead the investigation.

Speaker 12 When the first deputies arrive on scene, Tim Perman 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.

Speaker 19 Deputies gave Tim, the shaken boyfriend, a chance to collect himself in the back seat of an air-conditioned patrol car.

Speaker 22 That's where he placed a call to Karen's friend Catherine with the unimaginable news.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 39 It's a horrible way.

Speaker 7 It's really a horrible way to die.

Speaker 26 Karen, the baby of the family with five older brothers, suddenly gone.

Speaker 36 She'd been especially close to her oldest brother Mike.

Speaker 16 My brother called me. I was at the airport and

Speaker 21 said, you better sit down.

Speaker 21 And he said, Karen's been murdered.

Speaker 13 Any theories about what had happened?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 21 I was trying to figure out the why

Speaker 21 and relying on the police to do what they needed to do.

Speaker 15 And what they had to do was plenty.

Speaker 25 They processed the crime scene, filmed every inch of Karen's home, knocked on doors, tried to figure out just who their victim was.

Speaker 38 Detectives Holbrook and Larry Nalvin began with the man who'd made that 911 call.

Speaker 12 The first thing as a lead investigator will do is talk to the people closest to her. In this case, we had Timothy Permaner finding his girlfriend.
We took Mr.

Speaker 12 Permaner back to the office and talked to him extensively.

Speaker 28 Tim, a car salesman, gave the detectives a rundown of where he'd been in the hours leading up to the terrible discovery.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 28 Tim said he left around 7.30, and that was the last time he saw Karen alive.

Speaker 13 Wouldn't it have been your routine to spend the night?

Speaker 32 Not on a Friday night, no.

Speaker 32 Because she had to work the next day. She had to go in and work early.

Speaker 26 After saying goodbye to Karen, he said he ended up spending the night with friends about an hour to the north.

Speaker 13 Is he saying anything at this point, the technical, like you can't do it? I know boyfriends are often figuring suspicions. I want to talk to a lawyer.
Is any of that stuff coming out of him?

Speaker 14 No, he's being more than cooperative.

Speaker 1 While Tim says he was off with his friend, there appeared to have been a frenzied struggle at Karen's house.

Speaker 37 Forensic specialist Anna Cox assessed the bloody aftermath.

Speaker 6 She put up a heck of a struggle.

Speaker 13 And what are you looking at?

Speaker 6 She had defensive wounds, the way her body was contorted. And I just remember thinking, she put up a heck of a struggle.

Speaker 12 She really fought for her life.

Speaker 13 Do you suck in your breath and say, oh my goodness, or have you seen everything at this point?

Speaker 6 Oh, I can't believe what people do to each other. And it was terrible.
It's terrible.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 6 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 bird bath.

Speaker 6 So there was evidence outside that at first, you need to think to yourself,

Speaker 6 I I think that this might be a burglary.

Speaker 17 And Karen's overturned purse on the stovetop supported the break-in theory.

Speaker 26 Anna Cox took an inventory of everything at the crime scene.

Speaker 35 A pizza box, a garden glove, a grocery receipt.

Speaker 28 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.

Speaker 19 A three-letter message in blood, and you didn't have to squint to make it out either.

Speaker 25 R-O-C.

Speaker 19 On the victim, Karen's right-hand index finger was clearly stained with blood.

Speaker 29 R-O-C, what was the murdered woman trying to tell the cops?

Speaker 6 All these theories were running through my mind. What does that mean? Is that a word? Is that a person? Is that a thing?

Speaker 6 The clues pointed so many different directions that it really was, it was a total mystery.

Speaker 25 There's a concept in the law known as a dying declaration.

Speaker 37 Would those three letters scrawled in Karen's own blood lead to the apprehension of her killer?

Speaker 13 Coming up, you've got this scrawled-in blood message saying, This is my killer. Absolutely.

Speaker 8 Who or what was ROC

Speaker 14 when written in blood continues?

Speaker 1 The camera always liked Karen Pennell.

Speaker 9 She was both hard to miss and hard to forget.

Speaker 27 Just ask her boyfriend, Tim Permenter, who was smitten right away when he met her at the VW dealership where he worked.

Speaker 13 What did you think of her?

Speaker 32 Oh, she was gorgeous.

Speaker 13 She was beautiful. You were pinching yourself.
You thought you were the luckiest guy around.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 33 Settling down hadn't been part of Karen's growing up.

Speaker 9 She and her five brothers had been raised as military brats and moved bases a lot.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 21 All the boys kind of got involved in our own stuff. But then there was Karen.
She was really

Speaker 21 what connected all of us to the family unit.

Speaker 13 What does that tell us about her?

Speaker 21 She was a lot more important to us than we knew.

Speaker 21 I think she was always more interested in family as a whole than she was in herself.

Speaker 42 Brother Mike wasn't alone in thinking his kid sister could have been a sky's the limit person.

Speaker 21 She could have been anything she wanted, a scientist or a doctor or whatever. She was just really nimble-minded.

Speaker 13 Well, her friends loved her.

Speaker 21 Yeah, she was hard not to love.

Speaker 22 Even harder to forget what a cruel fate she'd suffered at the hands of a killer unknown.

Speaker 21 During the viewing, there were visible stab wounds on her hand.

Speaker 21 You know, so we kind of

Speaker 21 pull the flowers down a little farther.

Speaker 26 A few days after the murder, her many friends at the airport said their goodbyes.

Speaker 20 There's a chapel in the main terminal in Tampa at at the airport. There were so many people there from all different airlines, the security people,

Speaker 20 it was incredible.

Speaker 19 Meanwhile, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department investigation was moving quickly on several fronts.

Speaker 37 First, they validated boyfriend Tim's story.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 12 That 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.

Speaker 12 George gave us a timeline that was consistent with what Perminer gave us.

Speaker 17 Tim's story about the night of the murder checked out.

Speaker 19 He even voluntarily came clean on something right from the start.

Speaker 25 He had a record.

Speaker 44 He'd done time.

Speaker 13 Now early on in your life, Tim, you get involved in trouble.

Speaker 13 What's going on with you?

Speaker 32 I was running an escort service and

Speaker 32 got stupid, started it up small, basically running an ad out of a newspaper, getting a small office, and it just expanded from there.

Speaker 7 It ballooned.

Speaker 13 What kind of money were you pulling down per week?

Speaker 32 I was grossing about $6,000 to $7,000 a day.

Speaker 46 A day?

Speaker 11 Yes, sir. And you're how old?

Speaker 32 At that time, 20. And that's the trap.
Why am I even going to school when I'm making this kind of money?

Speaker 13 Why go straight, huh?

Speaker 32 Yes, sir.

Speaker 13 And it ended up in a gunfight?

Speaker 14 Yes, sir.

Speaker 24 Tim says he was worried he'd be painted as a bad guy right away because of his sordid past.

Speaker 1 So he promised to cooperate in every way possible.

Speaker 15 The cops took him up on it.

Speaker 32 I allowed them to photograph me, removed all my clothing. I allowed them to go to my home, take anything that they wanted.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 11 Tim Permeter's alibi had checked out and police also dismissed any clues pointing to a home invasion.

Speaker 36 After all, Karen had been stabbed 16 times, an attack so ferocious it could only be a crime of passion.

Speaker 19 Now the detectives were desperate to figure out what their biggest clue of all meant.

Speaker 11 Those three letters written in blood.

Speaker 37 R-O-C.

Speaker 13 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 That's what it's suggesting, isn't it?

Speaker 14 Absolutely, that's what it's suggesting. I mean, just like you would see in a movie.

Speaker 35 Detectives soon discovered how those letters on the wall, R-O-C, were in fact connected to the victim lying beneath them.

Speaker 25 Rock, it turned out, was a person, the name of a man who had spelled trouble for Karen in the past.

Speaker 12 Rock was an ex-boyfriend who Karen Purnell had had problems with previously.

Speaker 30 And whoever and wherever this rock was, he'd just become the prime target of the investigation into her murder.

Speaker 6 Okay, well, there it is.

Speaker 6 That's what she meant to write was Rock. And then they have to follow that lead and off they go.

Speaker 13 To find Rock.

Speaker 7 To find Rock.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 8 Mission accomplished.

Speaker 38 Find him, they do.

Speaker 13 What do you think she saw in you?

Speaker 10 The bad boy kind of thing.

Speaker 50 But what would they find next?

Speaker 10 I'm looking at murder. Somebody's talking to me about a murder when dateline continues.

Speaker 51 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 51 That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 51 Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline. That's mintmobile.com slash dateline.

Speaker 48 Limited time offer.

Speaker 51 Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required.
$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.
Initial plan term only.

Speaker 51 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary.

Speaker 48 See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 52 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 52 Zen is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 50 Plus, Zen offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 52 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 52 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 53 If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger.

Speaker 53 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 53 Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800-GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 1 A stomach-churning crime scene with an at first-glance cryptic message written in blood.

Speaker 35 ROC.

Speaker 36 But it wasn't a big mystery for long.

Speaker 39 R-O-C was the unusual but proper spelling of Karen Pennell's ex-boyfriend, Rock Herpik.

Speaker 13 So tell me about the former boyfriend known as Rock, R-O-C. Letters scrolled in blood.

Speaker 16 Who was he?

Speaker 12 Rock was an ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 12 He'd had a little bit of legal problems,

Speaker 12 a little bit of a substance abuse problem.

Speaker 19 Rock had a personality as big and as loud as the pipes on the Harleys he loved to cruise.

Speaker 44 He worked at an auto body shop handling insurance claims.

Speaker 28 When he met Karen, she was on a downward spiral.

Speaker 54 After being married for five years, she'd recently gotten a divorce and a doctor had just given her some awful news.

Speaker 37 She had multiple sclerosis, 38 years old.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 21 I think that

Speaker 21 really affected her self-esteem. Frankly, I think it may have had an impact on the kind of men that she was attracted to.

Speaker 49 Karen came to rely on Rock to take her to doctor's appointments and give her injections.

Speaker 36 But when she took the step of asking him to move in, her friends and family thought she was asking for trouble.

Speaker 13 You worry, is this the way ahead for my sister?

Speaker 1 I think that's the disguise bike.

Speaker 21 Yeah, 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?

Speaker 13 You can't dictate terms to your kid's sister, huh? No.

Speaker 30 You can only fix yourself.

Speaker 1 And as it turned out, Rock wasn't a fix for Karen either.

Speaker 19 Their relationship soon took an ugly turn.

Speaker 20 They seemed to get along for a while and she was happy.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 20 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,

Speaker 20 what are you doing? He did not deserve her.

Speaker 20 But she would listen.

Speaker 42 The fights got worse, and police were called three separate times to intervene.

Speaker 1 One time, Rock allegedly broke down the front door.

Speaker 36 It was the last straw.

Speaker 11 Karen filed a domestic battery complaint, and Rock moved out.

Speaker 29 Tim Permener says that even a year later, Rock was still harassing Karen about a roll-top desk he'd left behind.

Speaker 32 She was starting to get scared of him towards the end.

Speaker 13 This issue he had was, I got a valuable piece of furniture, I want it back.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 32 But Karen said that that was a ruse.

Speaker 13 Trying to worm his way back in. Is that the way she saw it?

Speaker 32 That's the way she portrayed it to me.

Speaker 22 Detectives Holbrook and Nalvin knew they had to confront this Rock, so they tracked him down and paid a surprise visit.

Speaker 19 He wasn't happy to see them.

Speaker 10 I'm in the garage at my home in Northport, Florida.

Speaker 10 Black and Mark shows up, and I'm like,

Speaker 10 well, everybody knows what that is.

Speaker 21 I'm thinking, now what the heck's that?

Speaker 33 Detective Holbrook identified himself and said they needed to talk to Rock about his friend, Karen.

Speaker 10 We sat down on the porch and he goes, well, she's dead. Of course, this just doesn't even register it.
So I just said, you just need to tell me what's going on.

Speaker 11 But the detective wanted Rock to do the talking.

Speaker 28 He asked about his troubled relationship with Karen.

Speaker 12 Rock indicated that he was using drugs and that Karen liked to drink and that they fought often.

Speaker 28 But Rock said he savored the good times with Karen, too.

Speaker 10 When she got dolled up, oh my God.

Speaker 34 Gorgeous.

Speaker 10 I mean, picture perfect.

Speaker 15 Wasn't anything out of place.

Speaker 13 Were there some sparks there, Rock?

Speaker 16 Could you feel something going on?

Speaker 34 Yeah, there was.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 13 What do you think she saw in you? What was working from her side?

Speaker 10 Probably the bad boy kind of thing. I wasn't your conventional straight-lace kind of guy.

Speaker 29 Rock was open with the detectives, even came across as a good guy.

Speaker 44 Buck conceded there had been screaming matches with Karen and a few rip-roaring fights, but said she was the instigator.

Speaker 10 She'd get violent, she'd get physically violent, just

Speaker 10 stuff.

Speaker 10 Things would happen. But nobody ever got arrested, but they'd come out and they would address the issue.

Speaker 13 As Rock tells it, she gave as good as she got.

Speaker 21 She was ready to stand up for herself at the drop of a hat.

Speaker 21 She was a tough girl.

Speaker 37 Rock remembers Karen playing hardball about that roll-top desk of his, too, not liking her attitude.

Speaker 10 I did call her on several occasions about my roll-top desk.

Speaker 10 The desk. That stupid desk, and it was bugging me.

Speaker 10 I mean, it was a nice piece of furniture, and I really wanted to get it back. And then she pretty much said,

Speaker 10 you left. You're not getting it.

Speaker 38 He never did get it.

Speaker 45 That roll top was still in Karen's condo in Oldsmar on the night she was stabbed to death.

Speaker 28 Now Detective Holbrook pointedly wanted to know if Rock had been there too.

Speaker 10 He says, where were you on such and such a day? And I'm like,

Speaker 10 well,

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 So we go from there. to discussing

Speaker 10 where I was, who I've been with,

Speaker 10 where I live.

Speaker 13 So you're getting a serious grilling. Right.

Speaker 10 He ends up telling me that we found your name in blood on the wall.

Speaker 13 R-O-C.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 So obviously I'm a suspect and I acknowledge that. I mean, I'm looking at murder.

Speaker 10 I'm getting somebody's talking to me about a murder.

Speaker 47 Rock waived his right to a lawyer and agreed to give fingerprints and swabbing.

Speaker 19 It looked as though police had strangely found yet another cooperative boyfriend of their victim.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 13 Did you lose your patience with him? That's it for today.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 29 Rock's cooperation had an edge to it.

Speaker 30 Was he really trying to cover his tracks?

Speaker 36 Detectives were determined to find out.

Speaker 13 Coming up, the CSI

Speaker 13 of ROC.

Speaker 6 I remember thinking, wow, I wonder if that's what wrote these letters.

Speaker 9 Were those three little letters really what they seem?

Speaker 8 When written in blood, continues.

Speaker 1 The handwriting was on the wall.

Speaker 19 And forensic specialist Anna Cox was intent on breaking down the key piece of evidence implicating Karen Pinnell's ex-boyfriend, Rock Herbig.

Speaker 42 Those three letters in blood, R-O-C.

Speaker 13 You would spend hours looking at these letters.

Speaker 6 I did. We ended up.

Speaker 13 You actually cut the sheetrock out of the place and took it into your lab.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 6 I have to look at those letters, at everything about them.

Speaker 18 Using a high-powered microscope, Anna did an analysis of the specks of blood that stained the wall as Karen was stabbed 16 times.

Speaker 29 That flung spatter served as a gruesome canvas for the letters ROC then written over it.

Speaker 6 When the letters ROC were written on top of it, it just skimmed right over it and didn't disrupt it at all.

Speaker 19 Here was her central observation.

Speaker 28 Since the specks of blood weren't smeared, that meant rock must have been written after they dried.

Speaker 48 But how long after?

Speaker 6 I have a special machine that I use to make some spatter.

Speaker 47 In her lab, she used animal blood to test how long it took for spatter to dry on a similar surface.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I must have written this word a million times over different areas of spatter.

Speaker 27 In the lab, it took at least 20 minutes of drying time before the forensic specialist could write without smearing the spatter.

Speaker 30 She concluded there must have been about that much time between the attack on Karen and the word rock being written on the wall.

Speaker 54 Next, she looked for fingerprints in the letters themselves.

Speaker 16 Sounds impossible, right?

Speaker 6 If she's writing and applying pressure to the wall, you would think that there would be some type of transfer of ridge detail.

Speaker 16 Ridge detail, we all have it.

Speaker 26 Unique telltale patterns on every human finger and hand.

Speaker 25 But Anna wasn't finding that here.

Speaker 29 Rather, she detected an unusual hint of a pattern, something almost like polka polka dots.

Speaker 6 And I thought back to myself,

Speaker 6 the garden glove on the counter that was missing its match, missing its pair.

Speaker 35 A garden glove was found in Karen's kitchen, just one glove.

Speaker 38 The mate was never located.

Speaker 18 It had a distinctive dot pattern.

Speaker 6 On the interior side where the palm and the fingers were, it's like that rubber. And it's got those little

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 11 Cox bought similar gloves at a hardware store and after several more days of testing was satisfied that her hunch was correct.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 She reported her results to the the detectives, who by then had learned another pertinent fact about their victim.

Speaker 12 Karen was exclusively left-handed, and Karen's left hand did not have blood smeared on it.

Speaker 42 Not only that, when the autopsy report came in, it suggested Karen couldn't have written anything with either hand.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 46 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 14 Over 90% of her spinal cord had been damaged by the knife wounds.

Speaker 13 She was incapacitated.

Speaker 14 Incapacitated?

Speaker 51 It wasn't her.

Speaker 14 She didn't write that.

Speaker 15 The evidence was overwhelming.

Speaker 25 Karen Pennell did not write the letters R-O-C in blood.

Speaker 19 It was a huge turning point in the case and the best news possible for the ex-boyfriend, Rock Herpic.

Speaker 10 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 wasn't me.

Speaker 10 I mean, why would you write your own name on the wall?

Speaker 37 Police agreed.

Speaker 42 Implicating yourself in a murder just made no sense.

Speaker 28 Rock got more good news after police checked out his alibi that he was home on the night of the murder.

Speaker 14 We've 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 Northport, Florida.

Speaker 14 And that's a good, you know, hour, hour and a half away.

Speaker 13 And you went over all these alleged beefs that he might have had with her.

Speaker 13 with her boyfriend, girlfriend.

Speaker 14 Yep, and he had moved on.

Speaker 24 Detectives Nalvin and Holbrook were ready to move on, too.

Speaker 37 They officially cleared Rock.

Speaker 28 It was a major development.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 13 Whoever killed her did know that somebody named Rock

Speaker 13 is part of the story here. That's right.

Speaker 10 But if you think about this, this is.

Speaker 10 It's not even a smart thing to do.

Speaker 35 Rock was right.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 1 Detectives Holbrook and Melvin were about to take a hard look at all of them.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 28 A surprise in the crime lab.

Speaker 8 A new clue emerges from something so ordinary, it was almost overlooked.

Speaker 6 You could walk right by and think it has no importance at all. It ended up being crucial in this case.

Speaker 8 Could a box of pizza help solve this puzzle?

Speaker 15 When Dateline continues,

Speaker 40 some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 40 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 40 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 40 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 52 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen Nicotine Pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 52 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 50 Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 52 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 52 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 56 New Dove holiday treats are now available at Target.

Speaker 56 This limited edition collection of body wash, deodorants, scrubs, bar soaps, and body mist are made with Dove 24-hour renewing micro-moisture and come in delicious scents like frosted plumberry, gingerbread delight, hot cocoa swirl, and sugar cookie sprinkle.

Speaker 56 Buy four items and get a $5 Target gift card when you shop November 16th through 22nd. Shop Dove Holiday Treats at Target, in-store or online.
Treat yourself before it's gone.

Speaker 29 Police had reached a startling conclusion.

Speaker 28 Karen Pennell did not write the name rock on the wall.

Speaker 1 Her killer had.

Speaker 27 But those three letters were still a gift to police because investigators figured he had to know both Karen and Rock.

Speaker 44 Detectives started questioning the other men in Karen's life.

Speaker 12 Karen had nicknames for her boyfriends. Car Guy, that was Tim Permiter.
Another one that she referred to as Dr. Pilot.

Speaker 29 Dr.

Speaker 36 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.

Speaker 37 So he was ruled out, as were most of Karen's known male friends.

Speaker 9 All could prove they were nowhere near her house in Oldsmar that night.

Speaker 30 Every boyfriend except Cargon, Tim Permenter, the one who reported finding Karen's body.

Speaker 34 Is she conscious? No. Is she breathing? I don't know.

Speaker 37 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.

Speaker 42 But the people who knew Karen best started telling police a very different story.

Speaker 20 I'm not sure why she stayed in that relationship or she even

Speaker 20 began a relationship like that.

Speaker 18 The relationship began with Tim trying to sell Karen a new car.

Speaker 39 But police learned he also sold her a bill of goods about himself.

Speaker 19 saying he'd been a Navy SEAL involved in top-secret missions, never mentioning the sordid truth about his criminal past.

Speaker 21 Karen told me that he explained his scars as he got injured on a mission.

Speaker 13 Super Commando stuff.

Speaker 21 Well, I think that would have been his impression of himself.

Speaker 13 So why are you lying to her? You're giving her a croc.

Speaker 32 There's really no excuse for it.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 19 It was several months into the relationship before Tim finally revealed his ugly secret.

Speaker 28 He was a felon who'd spent more than a a decade behind bars.

Speaker 26 Not a Navy SEAL, but a violent one-time pimp, the self-described escort king.

Speaker 32 I said, been waiting for the right time to tell you this, and she was flabbergasted.

Speaker 32 I think that she

Speaker 32 became frightened to me.

Speaker 13 So why didn't you just shake hands and call her quits?

Speaker 32 Because I loved her.

Speaker 30 Karen's friends and brothers say she told them she was afraid.

Speaker 9 And when she tried tried to pull away from Tim, brother Mike says those fears were quickly borne out.

Speaker 13 Did you ever hear evidence that she was not being treated well?

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 21 she called me and

Speaker 21 said that

Speaker 21 Tim had choked her. And I felt like, after that conversation, that I had convinced her to file a police report.

Speaker 25 But no report was filed.

Speaker 49 Still, Karen's co-workers could tell something was terribly wrong.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 You know, in the summer months here in Florida, you don't wear a turtleneck then.

Speaker 17 While detectives Holbrook and Nalvin chased down every lead, the crime lab made another big discovery.

Speaker 18 Unlike the melodramatic and bogus message in blood, this evidence was something forensic tech Anna Cox almost passed right over.

Speaker 18 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 an initial interview i was out of there at 730.

Speaker 48 well

Speaker 6 His fingerprints were on that box.

Speaker 13 And you had a receipt saying it was delivered at 8.48. Yes.

Speaker 6 So he has now

Speaker 6 put himself

Speaker 6 right there at the scene and right there in the last crucial hours of her life.

Speaker 56 It's a poor set of facts.

Speaker 7 For him.

Speaker 15 And then Tim's timeline, his alibi, took another hit.

Speaker 24 He'd first said he was home when he called his friend George just after 9.30.

Speaker 11 Detective Nalvin found evidence proving otherwise.

Speaker 14 Once we get the phone records back and the cell tower site locations back, we are putting him at her house.

Speaker 13 So the tower is catching him out in a lie?

Speaker 14 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 14 His 911 phone call in the morning, it hits off the same tower that he was hitting off when he called George at 9.36 the night before, which is directly north of Karen Pinnell's house.

Speaker 26 Malvin and Holbrook could think of only one reason for Tim to lie about those times.

Speaker 36 It was that Karen's car guy was the killer.

Speaker 22 They brought him to headquarters again, this time for an official and much more aggressive interrogation.

Speaker 14 And 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,

Speaker 14 we started attacking his story.

Speaker 27 Tim had a simple explanation for the timeline problems.

Speaker 37 He was confused.

Speaker 56 This is what cooperation got me.

Speaker 34 Confused. Confused.

Speaker 34 We know what continues.

Speaker 34 Tim,

Speaker 34 when you lie.

Speaker 32 When the pizza arrived, I was still there.

Speaker 13 8.48 delivered.

Speaker 32 And it was right after the pizza. I would say I was there for maybe another 10, maybe 15 minutes.

Speaker 13 Why do you tell cops 7.30?

Speaker 32 I'm horrible at times and days.

Speaker 32 And the problem was, is that making a mistake became a, I'm hiding something.

Speaker 13 Cops call your mistake a lie.

Speaker 14 Of course.

Speaker 56 And why do you lie to stop the times?

Speaker 56 You were there at least from 8.30 to 9.30.

Speaker 34 I was like, oh,

Speaker 34 that's impossible. No.

Speaker 34 Pete's man keeps a receipt to keep track, okay?

Speaker 28 Tim had been tripped up by his own statements.

Speaker 39 And Detective Holbrook says his suspect knew the charade was over.

Speaker 12 He put his face in his hands, and he literally covered his face for

Speaker 12 two or three minutes.

Speaker 14 Tim ultimately looked up at us.

Speaker 12 And the car salesman, guy that we knew was Tim Permaner, had completely left the room.

Speaker 13 What did you see in his eyes? What did you see in his face?

Speaker 12 First thing I thought was that Satan just walked into the room.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 32 I knew I was innocent.

Speaker 2 Was he?

Speaker 13 Juries really like to see forensics, right? The DNA, the blood samples.

Speaker 16 And they didn't have it.

Speaker 21 That was the biggest concern for me.

Speaker 25 The trial and the verdict,

Speaker 8 when written in blood, continues.

Speaker 27 Detectives were now convinced that Tim Permeter, the boyfriend who pledged to help solve Karen Pennell's murder, was really the killer.

Speaker 27 But Tim says police had nothing on him and were only targeting him because of his criminal record. I knew it, but I knew somehow, someway, I was going to get pinned on it.

Speaker 34 I knew it. I knew the man I saw a lie.

Speaker 19 Detectives arrested Tim and sent him to the county county jail.

Speaker 17 State attorney Bill Lowry got the case.

Speaker 13 What about your accused, Timothy Permenter?

Speaker 11 Who is he?

Speaker 57 I think Timothy Perminer is a psychopath, just someone that who had, I think, gotten lucky to be with Karen.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 29 Prosecutor Lowry says Permiter thought he could outsmart the cops by acting the bereaved boyfriend, playing it to the hilt at the crime scene.

Speaker 34 Oh, God.

Speaker 36 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.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 13 Not she's dead, I don't know.

Speaker 20 Not she's dead. She's been stabbed.

Speaker 41 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 permender with first-degree murder and decided to seek the death penalty.

Speaker 19 Then, just weeks before the trial was scheduled to start, Tim's friend George Solomon, his sleepover alibi witness, recanted his story and how.

Speaker 25 He tells me this whole news story that Permana had admitted that he had killed Karen that night.

Speaker 13 Blurted out a confession. When he got up there.
So that's a holy cow moment for you.

Speaker 16 It is.

Speaker 27 Death penalty cases can sometimes take a torturous path in reaching a courtroom.

Speaker 25 This one had taken four long years.

Speaker 31 And despite building a strong circumstantial case, prosecutors did not have a murder weapon or other physical evidence linking Tim Permenter to the stabbing.

Speaker 30 Defense Attorney Dudley Clapper.

Speaker 55 You have a complete lack of physical evidence. No bloody fingerprints, no bloody footprints out the door.

Speaker 39 But prosecutor Lowry was confident about the evidence he did have.

Speaker 57 Frankly, I think circumstantial cases are sometimes the best. Okay, because they don't lie.
The circumstances don't lie. People lie.

Speaker 19 And that's the case Lowry made to the jury.

Speaker 36 The circumstances showed Tim Permenter was the only one with the motive and the opportunity to kill Karen.

Speaker 1 And everything he did afterwards was fabricated to cover up his horrendous crime.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 57 And, you know, there's no reason for a person to lie about the death of their loved one, if that's really true.

Speaker 18 Defense Attorney Clapp countered with common sense, arguing that Karen's killer must have been just drenched in blood after such a frenzied attack.

Speaker 19 And there was no forensic evidence to show that his client was that person.

Speaker 55 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.

Speaker 20 How did I do it?

Speaker 32 How on earth did not one single drop of blood get on my clothing, anything like that?

Speaker 13 Or in your car, which was ripped apart.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 32 That's why I agreed to let them look.

Speaker 32 Get what you want, because I knew I was innocent.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 32 Hey, I killed somebody

Speaker 32 just now or whatever.

Speaker 7 Oh, really? Oh, okay.

Speaker 32 Well, come on, let's go see my wife and kids. No way.

Speaker 19 A confident Tim Permeter decided to speak directly to the jury. He took the stand in his own defense.

Speaker 32 The attitude was, look, you've got to get up here and talk to these people.

Speaker 13 How do you remember him on the stand?

Speaker 55 I think he was calm. I think he answered the questions as best he could.
Very simply, I think very completely.

Speaker 3 We felt that we had

Speaker 55 made a showing that the state had not met their burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 47 Mike Pennell had waited four long years to get justice for his sister, but now he wasn't sure what the jury would do.

Speaker 21 There were times that I felt the evidence was

Speaker 21 very circumstantial.

Speaker 13 In this day and age, we know that juries really like to see forensics. Right.
The DNA, the blood samples.

Speaker 16 And they didn't have it.

Speaker 21 That was the biggest concern for me.

Speaker 22 But it took the jury just four hours to find Tim Permenter guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 11 He was spared the death penalty by the judge, who ordered him to serve a life sentence with no chance for parole.

Speaker 13 How are you doing today? I'm fine.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 13 Did you murder Karen? No.

Speaker 13 Because this would be a great time to relieve her family of a lot of remorse and just fess to it.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 21 I'll pay for it.

Speaker 32 And I am paying for it, but I didn't do it.

Speaker 19 The detectives who cracked the case say 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.

Speaker 13 So this Hollywood touch, as I think of it. Oh, Rock did it, the tying declaration.

Speaker 46 It bit him.

Speaker 14 Bit him hard.

Speaker 7 Very hard.

Speaker 14 He outsmarted himself, and that's why he's in prison.

Speaker 19 Rock Herpik 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.

Speaker 13 If you could sit down and talk to him, just the way we're sitting here,

Speaker 13 what would you say to him?

Speaker 10 I am restrained, correct? I couldn't get to him, right?

Speaker 13 Did he tie you to the chair in this scenario?

Speaker 10 I would not be a good communicator in that conversation mode with him sitting there. I couldn't do it.

Speaker 26 Mike Pinnell couldn't do it either.

Speaker 19 He'd rather not think about Tim Permenter and the last moments of his precious baby sister's life.

Speaker 21 I'm not interested in remembering Karen

Speaker 21 associated with that crime.

Speaker 7 It's been a long ordeal for you.

Speaker 8 I want to remember Karen

Speaker 21 as a brilliant, beautiful young woman she was.

Speaker 1 Maybe this smiling person, someone who loved her friends, loved the beach, and died too young.

Speaker 16 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 13 Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 51 This time of year, many are checking off their holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them.
Protect your identity with LifeLock.

Speaker 51 LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back.

Speaker 51 Save up to 40% your first first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.