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00:12On a hot summer evening in 1992,
00:16neighbors heard the familiar sound of an argument
00:19coming from the Campano residence.
00:29According to Christopher Campano,
00:31his wife left the house shortly after their argument
00:34to calm down.
00:40Karen Campano was never seen again.
01:16Karen Campano was just two weeks shy of her 43rd birthday
01:20when she disappeared.
01:22She had just come back to Oklahoma City
01:25after visiting her three children who were living in New York.
01:29Back to the home she shared with her third husband, Chris.
01:33She come back from New York and she went to talking about
01:37moving back because of her family and she's upset.
01:44Chris and Karen Campano were married in December of 1987.
01:48Friends described them as an odd couple.
01:51She was 15 years older than Chris and it was her third marriage,
01:56his first.
01:57They were introduced to one another by Karen's best friend,
02:01who also happened to be Chris's mother.
02:05Chris was a drifter, worked construction jobs,
02:08and spent some time in jail for petty theft.
02:12Karen was the main wage earner, working as a bill collector
02:15for this credit adjustment company in town.
02:19On the evening of July 1st, 1992, Chris and Karen had one
02:24of their frequent arguments, this time over his use of drugs.
02:28And I was into drugs and she was, you know, nagging at me
02:35and trying to get me in drug programs and, you know, just trying to help.
02:40It was loud enough for the neighbors to hear.
02:42I could hear Karen screaming and no, please, please, and don't do that.
02:48And couldn't make out a lot of what was being said, just a lot of screaming.
02:51According to Chris, after the argument, Karen left the house for a walk,
02:56headed to the buy for less convenience store for some personal items a few blocks away.
03:03Chris left, too, driving to a local bar for a few drinks,
03:06staying until about midnight.
03:09The next morning, Chris called Karen's office to see if she had reported to work.
03:14Her supervisor said she hadn't shown up or even called in.
03:18Chris then phoned the police to report her missing.
03:22When the police arrived to take Chris's statement,
03:24they looked around briefly and reported seeing no evidence of foul play
03:30or anything out of place or unusual.
03:32If a person is going to run away or leave her husband,
03:37she's not just going to walk away and leave everything behind.
03:39She's going to take the things that mean the most to her,
03:41especially when you're dealing with a woman, things of, you know, toiletries,
03:45makeup, and that kind of thing.
03:47And, of course, we found all those things intact in the bedroom and in the bathroom.
03:52And it was as if she just disappeared off the face of the earth without taking anything with her.
03:57While the police were there, Chris mentioned that the house had been burglarized
04:01the night before while he was out drinking and that some items were missing.
04:06Police asked Chris to sign a waiver to allow a search of the house.
04:11And he agreed to do so and thought that would be good and even commented that he hoped that we
04:16found something in the house that would help us with the investigation.
04:20The first thing I recall seeing is the bed was against the south wall.
04:25And right next to the bed was a large white trash bag.
04:28And underneath that trash bag, I could see a very large brownish colored stain.
04:33Of course, the next thing we did was went and got some hema sticks, which we carried in our vehicle.
04:38A hema stick is a chemical strip that can immediately tell whether or not blood is present.
04:44Take the dry hema stick and, with your finger, just lightly smear it on the suspect stain,
04:51to where some of it is transferred onto the hema stick.
04:53Take a drop of distilled water, put it on the hema stick, flick off the excess water,
05:01and you have a dark green, which is a positive, presumptive test for the presence of blood.
05:07The stain on the carpet was indeed blood.
05:09But was it human? And if so, whose was it?
05:13The first day we were in the house, I put on a pair of gloves and that spot on that
05:18carpet was still moist.
05:20This piece of carpet and the padding was completely soaked with blood.
05:24It was such a massive amount of blood that there was still actual moisture involved there.
05:28It was not completely dry.
05:30The carpet was removed and delivered to the Oklahoma City Police Department's forensic chemistry lab.
05:35I went on to do an Octoloni test. It's a species determination test to determine as to whether or not
05:43that blood came from a human or an animal source.
05:47It was human blood.
05:49That was enough to convince me that we weren't dealing with a routine missing persons case.
05:53The police needed more to go on and felt the answers lay inside the Campano's house.
06:01When police discovered human blood inside the Campano's bedroom, they suspected the blood stain might belong to Karen Campano.
06:10They also suspected that Chris knew more about her disappearance than he was admitting.
06:15She left at 7.30. What did you do then?
06:20Under police questioning, Chris maintained that he knew nothing about his wife's whereabouts, but his alibi was weak.
06:27The bartender didn't recall seeing Chris Campano on the night of July 1st.
06:32And police discovered that Chris had pawned some of Karen's jewelry the morning after her disappearance.
06:39Without a body, the only thing left for the police to do was run more tests inside the house.
06:46There weren't any visible signs of violence besides the blood stain they found in the bedroom.
06:51We saw a typical little frame house for central Oklahoma City that, as you went inside, looked quite clean, quite
06:58neat.
06:58Things had been cleaned out of it.
07:00The walls looked clean. Ceiling looked clean. The floor looked clean.
07:03So there wasn't much to see at all.
07:05So they decided to look for blood which may have been cleaned up or wasn't visible to the naked eye.
07:11To do so, investigators used a special chemical solution called luminol,
07:16an extremely sensitive test which can detect blood which has been removed by water or even detergents and bleach.
07:23Luminol is a fluorescence-type chemical.
07:25Spray it on a substance that may contain blood, it reacts with the heme group in the blood itself.
07:30The iron portions will luminesce or fluoresce.
07:34To do the luminol test, investigators needed complete darkness.
07:39So they waited until nightfall.
07:42They began their chemical dragnet in the bedroom,
07:46where they discovered the stain on the carpet a few days earlier.
07:51First, they took photographs of the room, the way it looked to the naked eye.
07:56Then, they sprayed the luminol.
07:59The results were astonishing.
08:03There were some instances in that house where it glowed so brightly
08:06that you could actually see the person standing next to you.
08:09There was so much blood in there.
08:10The luminol told a horrific tale.
08:14Blood had been everywhere.
08:16On the walls.
08:18The ceiling.
08:20On the doors.
08:21It looked like a bloodbath had occurred there.
08:24Something from a horror movie.
08:26Even more telling was the blood spatter, which is the placement of the stains.
08:32Where they were located, the size of the drops and the trails of blood, all told a story.
08:40Someone had been beaten in the bedroom with a blunt object.
08:46They were in two trails, what we refer to as cast-off trails.
08:50So if you had an object, for example, in your hand,
08:54and that object was blood covered, and if you were swinging that object overhead,
08:59the centrifugal force of pulling the blood down to the end of the object
09:02will cast the blood in the direction the object is being swung.
09:06And in this case, it's going to the ceiling.
09:11There are two distinct trails, and you can tell that there's at least two swings with the blood covered object.
09:18Luminol was then applied to the rest of the house and even to the outside steps and walkways.
09:24At one point, there's a swipe of blood that was on the kitchen door leading into the utility room
09:32that would have been about head level if you were carrying a body and had to turn the body sideways
09:39to get it through a normal door.
09:41And then at that point, it appeared the body was laid down on the ground
09:45and then drug from the utility room down the back steps.
09:49And you could see pooled luminescence on each step and then drag marks that were luminescent
09:55all the way down the walkway until you got to the point that you were at the driveway,
09:59and at that point they disappeared. Very, very dramatic presentation.
10:04The house was telling its story, one of an apparently gruesome attack.
10:10But there were still unanswered questions.
10:15Where was the body? And the weapon? And was the blood Karen Campanos?
10:22Police still couldn't prove a murder had been committed.
10:30Although the police knew someone was violently attacked inside the Campano residence,
10:35they couldn't be sure a homicide had been committed.
10:39Was there enough blood in the Campano house to prove that someone was dead?
10:45And was that someone Karen Campano?
10:48The investigators at a later time decided that we'd go back and try to do a measurement test
10:54to see how much blood had to have been let out on that carpet to make that size of a
10:59stain.
10:59Police made sure their test was as accurate as possible.
11:03They used a piece of the original carpet as well as a weight to simulate a human head.
11:09Next, they poured human blood around the weight until they created a stain measuring 887 square
11:17inches, the same size stain they originally discovered.
11:22Statistically, one could say that between 1300 and 1400 cc's of blood would create that stain.
11:30That's more than 40% of the blood volume of a woman Karen Campano's size.
11:36No one could survive with that amount of blood loss.
11:39So at that point, it became pretty apparent to me that if this lady was missing and if this lady
11:45was dead,
11:47that this lady probably was killed right there.
11:50The authorities now knew a homicide had been committed in the house,
11:54and that someone had died in the bedroom in a pool of blood.
11:59But was the victim Karen Campano?
12:03Police didn't have a sample of Karen Campano's blood to compare to the blood stain.
12:08If Karen's mother and father were still living, it would have been a simple matter to examine their DNA,
12:14since Karen would have received half of her DNA from her mother and half from her father.
12:19But Karen's father was deceased.
12:23The Oklahoma City Police Department asked the FBI to get involved to see if there was any way
12:29they could figure out whether the blood found in the house belonged to Karen Campano.
12:34The police obtained blood samples from Karen's mother, her two sisters, her three children,
12:40and one of her ex-husbands.
12:42And so in this particular case, the object of the examination was to see if this DNA
12:47from the blood stain of unknown origin was matching, at least half of the DNA was matching to
12:54the relatives from Karen Campano.
12:56Hal Dedman of the FBI's DNA analysis unit conducted what is called RFLP analysis,
13:03analyzing pieces of DNA from four different chromosomes.
13:08This is the DNA profile of Karen Campano's mother.
13:12And next to it, on either side, are two of her daughters, Karen Campano's sisters.
13:18Both daughters share half of their DNA with their mother.
13:21This lane shows a DNA sample from one of Karen Campano's ex-husbands.
13:26The next lane shows a sample from his son, whose mother was Karen Campano.
13:32The father and son both share the upper band.
13:36The son would have received the lower band from his mother,
13:39which matches the band from his grandmother, Karen's mother.
13:43The next auto-rad compares the family member's DNA to the unknown blood stain found in the Campano
13:49home. The top marker matches the genetic profile from the first of Karen Campano's children.
13:56And the markers from the blood stain also match the bands from Karen Campano's two other children
14:02from another marriage.
14:04The results were fairly straightforward.
14:07They were totally consistent with the blood coming from Karen Campano.
14:11Eight months after the disappearance of Karen Campano, police concluded that Christopher Campano
14:18murdered his wife and was arrested. All of the evidence pointed towards Chris Campano.
14:25The forensic evidence, the argument neighbors heard on the night of Karen's disappearance,
14:30Chris's lack of an alibi for the entire evening, and the fact that he pawned some of her things.
14:36The prosecution believed that Karen Campano never left her house for a walk,
14:43as her husband had suggested.
14:47Neighbors heard Karen and Chris arguing that night,
14:50and the forensic evidence suggests that the argument moved to their bedroom,
14:53where it escalated and turned violent.
15:12As Chris stood near the window, he struck Karen in the head with a blunt object,
15:17at least three times, possibly more, producing the cast-off blood trails on the ceiling and walls.
15:26Karen fell to the floor, her head striking the bedpost where her blood was also found.
15:32As Karen lay bleeding from her massive head injuries, Chris left and went to a local bar.
15:38He needed to wait until the neighbors were asleep before removing Karen's body.
15:44When he returned home, he wrapped Karen's body in a sheet with a telephone wire and carried her
15:50through the house. Luminol tests showed that Karen's head brushed against the door,
15:56leaving a blood smear later cleaned with detergent.
16:03Chris then dropped the body onto the floor and dragged it through the side door and out towards the car.
16:17He probably disposed of her body late that night in a deserted location.
16:27After returning home, Chris removed all visible traces of blood both inside and out.
16:35The DNA analysis showed the blood found on the carpet belonged to Karen Campano.
16:41And the medical examiner would testify that Karen Campano suffered horrendous head injuries
16:47during the attack, which no one could survive.
16:52Prosecutors were confident of a conviction, even though they didn't have a body or a murder weapon.
16:58Well, I thought it was very likely we might never find the body of the victim.
17:01But just as the preliminary hearing was set to get underway, everything changed.
17:08The police found Karen Campano.
17:19This part right here wasn't quite so grown up with all this ivy.
17:22And she was laying right down there by that large cottonwood tree, north to south.
17:28And there were some blankets around her.
17:30There was no greenery at that time.
17:32If there had been greenery at that time, you'd never know she was there.
17:34The body lay in a remote area off a major interstate highway until some youngsters on dirt bikes stumbled across
17:43it.
17:44All we knew was that we had a female's body out there.
17:48We had no idea who it was.
17:51Of course, we were hoping it was Karen, but we didn't know.
17:55There was another important find.
17:57Police discovered a piece of a check underneath the body.
18:02Although they couldn't determine to whom the check was issued,
18:05it was from the Shell Oil Company and mailed to someone in New York.
18:09The check was for $83.34.
18:14Karen Campano was from New York.
18:16And her family had a part interest in a gas station there.
18:20This was the first definitive piece that we had that we knew at that point.
18:28There was a great possibility that it was Karen.
18:30And of course, we wouldn't know for sure until they made identification through dental records and DNA.
18:35Dr. Tom Glass heads the forensic odontology department at the University of Oklahoma.
18:41With the help of Karen Campano's dental records
18:44and an almost complete set of teeth found in the skull of the body,
18:48Dr. Glass's task was fairly easy.
18:51What I do in making the comparison then is simply go frame by frame by frame
18:58of the patient's anti-mortem dental x-rays, the x-rays made by the dentist,
19:03with the frames of the same areas made on the skeletonized remains.
19:09She had a very thorough dentist who documented what he had done.
19:14And that documentation allowed the identification in Karen Campano's case to be very profound.
19:21And the DNA analysis of the bone marrow confirmed it.
19:25The last doubts had been removed.
19:28Personally, I'm glad she was eventually found because of the family back in New York.
19:34I talked to them at length over the phone.
19:37Later on during the investigation, I met them.
19:40They're really great people.
19:41And I really had strong feelings for them, hoping one day she would be found so they could put
19:47their own fears to rest and give her a decent burial.
19:50And Christopher Campano confessed.
19:54The remarkable thing about it, the autopsy confirmed the prosecution's theory of how Karen died.
20:03And that theory, remember, was based only on the luminol, the blood spatter analysis, and the blood volume tests.
20:11The maxilla were fractured, the mandibles were fractured, the nose was fractured,
20:15the sinuses were fractured, the skull was extensively fractured, yet the cervical spine was intact,
20:20and there were only three fractures in the ribs.
20:21So this is not the hallmark of somebody that's been run over by a car, or somebody who's at a
20:26train wreck, or something like that.
20:28This is the hallmark of someone who has sustained a severe beating about the head and face.
20:33So it was obvious that this was an assault.
20:36Police and forensic science had solved a difficult puzzle.
20:41It all told a story.
20:42It was just more of the pieces of the puzzle coming together, even all the way to the end, when
20:47the body was actually found.
20:49It's like, you know, we've got most of the puzzle there, you know what it is.
20:54Even with some missing pieces, you know what it is.
20:56But then with that body found, it was like that was the very last piece that just fit in there.
21:02In January of 1994, a year and a half after Karen was killed, Christopher Campano went on trial for his
21:11life.
21:12His defense attorney couldn't refute the forensic findings. They were just too strong.
21:18Once I had decided to make that leap and embrace the evidence, then my task became easier.
21:24It was a matter then of looking at the psychological aspects of the case, rather than the hard forensics of
21:30the case.
21:31I suggested to the judge and jury, if it was going to be deliberately planned out and methodical,
21:37that kind of blood wouldn't be there. There would be none in the house, probably.
21:42The homicide would have occurred elsewhere if it had been a cold-blooded killing.
21:46The jury bought at least part of the argument.
21:49It found Campano guilty of manslaughter, not the first-degree murder charge the state was seeking.
21:56I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for what I did to her. I can't bring her back.
22:02You know, I just got to pay for what I've done.
22:05Christopher Campano was sentenced to 1,000 years in prison.
22:40Closed Captioning provided by Des fin Verkehrs.
22:40The
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