01x03 - The House That Roared

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

MAN: I'm going, OK.

I'm going.

Get out of my face!

NARRATOR: On a hot summer evening in ,

neighbors heard the familiar sound of an argument coming

from the Campano the residence.

-No way! I quit!

I promise, I quit!

[screaming]

NARRATOR: According to Christopher Campano,

his wife left the house shortly after their argument

to calm down.

-Quick, get out here!

Go! I quit!

NARRATOR: Caren Campano was never seen again.

[theme music]

Caren Campano was just two weeks shy of her rd birthday

when she disappeared.

She had just come back to Oklahoma City

after visiting her three children

who were living in New York.

Back to the home she shared with her third husband, Chris.

-She had come back to New York and she

went to talking about moving back because of her family.

And-- And she was upset.

NARRATOR: Chris and Caren Campano

were married in December of .

Friends described them as an odd couple.

She was years older than Chris

and it was her third marriage, his first.

They were introduced to one another

by Caren's best friend, who also happened to be Chris's mother.

Chris was a drifter, worked construction jobs,

and spend some time in jail for petty theft.

Caren was the main wage earner working as a bill collector

for this credit adjustment company in town.

On the evening of July , , Chris and Caren

had one of their frequent arguments,

this time over his use of dr*gs.

CHRIS: And I was into dr*gs and she was, you know,

nagging at me and trying to get me into drug programs,

and you know, just trying to help.

NARRATOR: It was loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

-I could hear Caren screaming.

No, please, please.

And, don't do that.

Couldn't make out a lot of what's being said,

just a lot of screaming.

NARRATOR: According to Chris, after the argument Caren left

the house for a walked, headed to the Buy For Less

convenience store for some personal items,

a few blocks away.

Chris left, too, driving to a local bar for a few drinks,

staying until about midnight.

The next morning, Chris called Caren's office

to see if she had reported to work.

Her supervisor said, she hadn't shown up, or even called in.

Chris then phoned the police to report her missing.

When the police arrived to take Chris' statement,

they looked around briefly and reported

seeing no evidence of foul play, or anything

out of place or unusual.

KUHLMAN: If a person is going to run away or leave her husband,

she's not just going to walk away

and leave everything behind.

She's going to take the things that mean the most to her.

Especially when you're dealing with a woman, things

of, you know, toiletries, makeup, and that kind of thing.

And of course, we found all those things

intact in the bedroom, in the bathroom.

And it was if she just disappeared off

the face of the earth without taking anything with her.

NARRATOR: While the police were there,

Chris mentioned that the house had been burglarized the night

before while he was out drinking and that some items

were missing.

Police asked Chris to sign a waiver

to allow a search of the house.

DET NEILSON: And he agreed to do so.

And thought that would be good.

And even commented that he hoped that we found

something in the house that would

help us with the investigation.

KUHLMAN: The first thing I recall

seeing is, the bed was against the south wall.

And right next to the bed was a large white trash bag.

And underneath that trash bag I could

see a very large brownish-colored stain.

Of course, the next thing we did was went and got

some Hemosticks, which we carried in our vehicle.

NARRATOR: A Hemostick is a chemical strip that

can immediately tell whether or not blood is present.

KUHLMAN: You take the dry Hemostick,

and with your finger, just lightly smear it on the suspect

stain to where some of it is transferred on the Hemostick.

Take a drop of distilled water, put it on the Hemostick.

Flick off the excess water.

And you have a dark green, which is a positive presumptive

test for the presence of blood.

NARRATOR: The stain on the carpet was, indeed, blood.

But was it human?

And if so, whose was it?

-The first day we were in the house,

I put on a pair of gloves, and that spot on that carpet

was still moist.

This piece of carpet and the padding

was completely soaked with blood.

It was such a massive amount of blood,

that there were still actual moisture involved,

that it was not completely dry.

NARRATOR: The carpet was removed and delivered to the Oklahoma

City Police Departments Forensic Chemistry Lab.

-I went on to do a Octalony test.

It's a species determination test

to determine as to whether or not

that blood came from a human or an animal source.

NARRATOR: It was human blood.

-That was enough to convince me that we weren't dealing

with a routine missing persons case.

NARRATOR: The police needed more you go on, and felt

the answers lay inside the Campano's house.

When police discovered human blood inside the Campano's

bedroom, they suspected the blood

stain might belong to Caren Campano.

They also suspected that Chris knew more

about her disappearance than he was admitting.

-She left at :.

And what did you do then? -I went to--

NARRATOR: Under police questioning,

Chris maintained that he knew nothing about his wife's

whereabouts, but his alibi was weak.

The bartender didn't recall seeing

Chris Campano on the night of July .

And police discovered that Chris had pawned some of Caren's

jewelry the morning after her disappearance.

Without a body, the only thing left for the police to do

was run more tests inside the house.

There weren't any visible signs of v*olence,

besides the bloodstained they found in the bedroom.

DR. JORDAN: We saw a typical little frame house

for central Oklahoma City, that, as you went inside,

looked quite clean, quite neat.

Things had been cleaned out of it.

The walls looked clean, ceiling looked clean,

the floor looked clean.

So there wasn't much to see at all.

NARRATOR: So they decided to look for blood which may have

been cleaned up, or wasn't visible to the naked eye.

To do so, investigators used a special chemical solution

called luminol, an extremely sensitive test which can detect

blood which has been removed by water,

or even detergents and bleach.

-Luminol is a fluorescence-type chemical.

Spray it on a substance that may contain blood,

it reacts with the heme group in the blood itself.

The iron portions will luminous of fluoresce.

NARRATOR: To do the luminol test,

investigators needed complete darkness,

so they waited until nightfall.

They began their chemical dragnet in the bedroom,

where they discovered the stain on the carpet

a few days earlier.

First, they took photographs of the room the way

it looked to the naked eye.

Then they sprayed the luminol.

The results were astonishing.

-There were some instances in that house where it glowed so

brightly that you could actually see the person standing

next to, there was so much blood in there.

NARRATOR: The luminol told a horrific tale.

Blood had been everywhere-- on the walls, the ceiling,

on the doors.

DR. JORDAN: It looked like a bloodbath had occurred there,

something from a horror movie.

NARRATOR: Even more telling was the blood spatter,

which is the placement of the stains.

Where they were located, the size of the drops,

and the trails of blood all told a story.

Someone had been beaten in the bedroom with a blunt object.

-They we're in two trails, what we refer to as castoff trails.

So if you had an object, for example, in your hand

and that object was blood covered,

and if you were swinging that object overhead,

the centripetal force of pulling the blood down

to the end of the object will pass the blood in the direction

that the object is being swung.

And in this case, it's going to the ceiling.

There are two distinct trails.

And you can tell that there's at least two swings

with the blood covered object.

NARRATOR: Luminol was then applied

to the rest of the house.

And even to the outside steps and walkways.

CAPTAIN BEVEL: At one point, there's a swipe of blood

that was on the kitchen door leading into the utility

room that would have been about head level

if you were carrying a body, had to turn the body sideways

to get through a normal door.

And then, at that point, it appeared the body was laid down

on the ground, and then drug from the utility room

down the back steps.

DR. JORDAN: And you could see pooled luminescence

on each step.

And then drag marks that were luminescent and all the way

down the walkway until you get to the point

that you were at the driveway.

And at that point, they disappeared.

Very, very dramatic presentation.

NARRATOR: The house was telling it's story.

One of an apparently gruesome attack.

But there was still unanswered questions.

Where was the body?

And the w*apon?

And was the blood Caren Campano's?

Police still couldn't prove a m*rder had been committed.

Although the police knew someone was violently att*cked inside

to Campano residence, they couldn't

be sure a homicide had been committed.

Was there enough blood in the Campano house

to prove that someone was dead?

And was that someone Caren Campano?

-The investigators, at a later time,

decided that we would go back and try to do a measurement

test to see how much blood had to have been bled out

on that carpet to make that size of a stain.

NARRATOR: Police made sure their test

was as accurate as possible.

They used a piece of the original carpet,

as well as a weight to simulate a human head.

Next, they poured human blood around the weight

until they created a stain measuring square inches,

the same size stain they originality discovered.

-Statistically, one could say that between , and ,

cc's of blood would create that-- would create that stain.

NARRATOR: That's more than % of the blood volume

of a woman Caren Campano's size.

No one could survive with that amount of blood loss.

-So at that point, it became pretty apparent to me

that, if this lady was missing, and if this lady was dead,

that this lady probably was k*lled right there.

NARRATOR: The authorities now knew a homicide had been

committed in the house, and that someone

had died in the bedroom in a pool of blood.

But was the victim Caren Campano?

Police didn't have a sample of Caren Campano's blood

to compare to the blood stain.

If Caren's mother and father were still living,

it would've been a simple matter to examine their DNA,

since Caren would have received half

of her DNA from her mother, and half from her father.

But Caren's father was deceased.

The Oklahoma City Police Department

asked the FBI to get involved, to see if there was

any way they could figure out whether the blood found

in the house belonged to Caren Campano.

The police obtained blood samples

from Caren's mother, her two sisters, her three children,

and one of her ex-husbands.

-And so in this particular case, the object of the examination

was to see if this DNA from the blood stain of unknown origin

was matching-- at least half of the DNA

was matching-- to the relatives from Caren Campano.

NARRATOR: Hal Deadman of the FBI's DNA Analysis Unit

conducted what is called RFLP analysis, analyzing pieces

of DNA from four different chromosomes.

This is the DNA profile of Caren Campano's mother.

And next to it, on either side, are

two of her daughters, Caren Campano's sisters.

Both daughters share half of their DNA with their mother.

This lane shows a DNA sample from one

of Caren Campano's ex-husband's.

The next lane shows a sample from his son,

whose mother was Caren Campano.

The father and son both share the upper band.

The son would have received the lower band from his mother,

which matches the band from his grandmother, Caren's mother.

The next autorad compares the family members' DNA

to the unknown blood stain found in the Campano home.

The top marker matches the genetic profile

from the first of Caren Campano's children.

And the markers from the blood stain

also matched the bands from Caren Campano's two

other children from another marriage.

-The results were more fairly straightforward.

They were totally consistent with the blood

coming from Caren Campano.

NARRATOR: Eight months after the disappearance of Caren Campano,

police concluded that Christopher Campano

m*rder*d his wife, and was arrested.

All of the evidence pointed towards Chris Campano--

the forensic evidence, the argument neighbors heard

on the night of Caren's disappearance,

Chris' lack of an alibi for the entire evening,

and the fact that he pawned some of her things.

The prosecution believed that Caren Campano never

left her house for a walk, as her husband had suggested.

[yelling]

Neighbors heard Caren and Chris arguing that night.

And the forensic evidence suggests that the argument

moved to their bedroom, where it escalated to

and turned violent.

As Chris stood near the window, he struck Caren in the head

with a blunt object at least three times, possibly more,

producing the castoff blood trails

on the ceiling and walls.

Caren fell to the floor, her head striking the bedpost,

where her blood was also found.

As Caren lay bleeding from her massive head injuries,

Chris left and went to a local bar.

He needed to wait until the neighbors were

asleep before removing Caren's body.

When he returned home, he wrapped Caren's body

in a sheet with a telephone wire and carried her

through the house.

Luminol tests showed that Caren's head brushed

against the door leaving a blood smear,

later cleaned with detergent.

Chris then dropped the body onto the floor

and dragged it through the side door and out towards the car.

He probably disposed of her body late that night

in a deserted location.

After returning home, Chris removed all visible traces

of blood, both inside and out.

The DNA analysis showed the blood found on the carpet

belonged to Caren Campano.

And the medical examiner would testify that Caren Campano

suffered horrendous head injuries

during the attack, which no one could survive.

Prosecutors were confident of a conviction,

even though they didn't have a body, or a m*rder w*apon.

-I thought it was very likely we might

never find the body victim.

NARRATOR: But just preliminary hearing

was set to get under way, everything changed.

The police found Caren Campano.

-This part right here wasn't quite so grown up

with all this ivy, and she was laying right down there

by that large cottonwood tree, north to south.

And there were some blankets around her.

There was no greenery at that time.

If there had been greenery at that time,

you would never know she was there.

NARRATOR: The body lay in a remote area

off a major interstate highway, until some youngsters

on dirt bikes stumbled across it.

KUHLMAN: All we knew was that we had a female's body out there.

We had no idea who it was.

Of course we were hoping it was Caren, but we didn't know.

NARRATOR: There was another important find.

Police discovered a piece of the check underneath the body.

Although they couldn't determine to whom the check was issued,

it was from the Shell Oil Company,

and mailed to someone in New York.

The check was for $..

Caren Campano was from New York.

And her family had a part interest in a gas station

there.

KUHLMAN: This was the first definitive piece that we had,

that we knew, at that point, there

was a great possibility that it was Caren.

And of course, we wouldn't know for sure

until they made identification through dental records and DNA.

NARRATOR: Dr. Tom Glass heads the Forensic Odontology

Department at the University of Oklahoma.

With the help of Caren Campano's dental records,

and an almost complete set of teeth

found in this skull of the body, Dr.

Glass' task was fairly easy.

DR. GLASS: What I do, in making the comparison, then,

is simply go frame by frame by frame of the patient's

antimordem dental x-rays, the x-rays made by the dentist,

with the frames of the same areas

made from the skeletonized remains.

She had a very thorough dentist, who

documented what he had done.

And that documentation allowed to the identification,

in Caren Campano's case, to be very profound.

NARRATOR: And the DNA analysis of the bone marrow

confirmed it.

The last doubts had been removed.

KUHLMAN: Personally, I'm glad she was eventually found,

because of the family back in New York.

I talked to them at length over the phone.

Later on, during the investigation, I met them.

They're really great people.

And I really had strong feelings for them,

hoping one day she would be found so they could

put their own fears to rest, and give her a decent burial.

NARRATOR: And Christopher Campano confessed.

The remarkable thing about, the autopsy

confirmed the prosecution's theory of how Caren died.

And that theory, remember, was based only

on the luminol, the blood spatter

analysis, and the blood volume tests.

-The maxilla were fractured. The mandibles were fractured.

The nose was fractured.

The sinuses were fractured.

The skull was extensively fractured.

And yet, the cervical spine was intact,

and there are only three fractures in the ribs.

So this is not the hallmark of somebody that's been run over

by a car, or somebody who has had

a train wreck, or something like that.

This is the hallmark of someone who

has sustained a severe beating about the head and face.

So it was obvious that this was an as*ault.

NARRATOR: Police and forensic science

had solved a difficult puzzle.

DET NEILSON: It all told a story.

If it was just more the pieces of the puzzle coming together,

even all the way to the end, when the body was actually

found.

It's like, you know, we've got most of the puzzle there.

You know what it is.

Even with some missing pieces, you know what it is.

But then, with that body found, it

was like that was the very last piece that just fit in there.

NARRATOR: In January of , a year and a half

after Caren was k*lled, Christopher Campano

went on trial for his life.

His defense attorney couldn't refute the forensic findings.

They were just too strong.

-Once I had decided to make that leap and embrace the evidence,

then my task became easier.

It was a matter, then of looking at the psychological aspects

of the case, rather than the hard forensics of the case.

I suggested to the judge and jury,

if it was going to be deliberately planned out

and methodical, that kind of blood wouldn't be there.

There would have been none in the house, probably.

The homicide would have occurred elsewhere

if it had been a coldblooded k*lling.

NARRATOR: The jury bought at least part of the argument.

It found Campano guilty of manslaughter,

not the first-degree m*rder charge the State was seeking.

CHRIS: I feel sorry for her.

I feel sorry for what I did to her.

I can't bring her back, you know?

I just to pay for what I've done.

NARRATOR: Christopher Campano was

sentenced to , years in prison.