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A chilling crime, and a killer running out of time. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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I just walked in like I normally would. I noticed him lying at the base of the bed, face down.
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I don't know what's happening. We said Andy was back. Something very violent had occurred here.
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You can see the bullet holes in the wall. Detectives have to look at every single person.
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Including me. I said, what about a girlfriend? and he readily said there's a lot going on here.
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You've got drugs. You've got sex. Have you ever had sex with her? Be honest with me.
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Nah, I was putting you at the scene. I can do that. The scene's going to tell the story.
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He tells me that he murdered somebody. We asked Derek, can you turn on the TV? Up comes the menu for a porn video.
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I start shaking my finger at it. That's not mine. That's who's in my house. That's your murderer.
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Here's Andrea Canning with In Cold Blood It was coming, hot air rising, cool air falling, swirling, spinning into a witch's brew of pure misery
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She wasn't afraid of a hurricane, was she? No, ma'am. Was she an expert on what the damage of a hurricane can do?
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Absolutely. Her expertise is what needed to be done in order to prevent that damage.
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As luck would have it, there was a monster storm brewing off the Florida coast, not far from her home that last week of October 2012.
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In the end, it largely spared her state. But she, locked inside that house, that gated community, was still doomed.
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The kitchen was just torn apart, and then her bedroom torn apart, and then upstairs.
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We didn't know, you know, really where the struggles were happening in this house.
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It had come. Another storm, different in nature, but not in fury. It had blown down her door and through her world, without warning or a shred of mercy.
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Fun-loving, independent, lovely, Kim Dorsey. Yes, I am. No wonder Derek Dorsey fell for her.
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And boy, did he fall. Well, the first time I laid eyes on Kim just thought she was beautiful.
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Did you express how you felt even in that first moment? Did it get there that night?
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No, I waited until the second date before I told her I love her. Second date? Yeah.
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That's quick. Well, when I told her I loved her, her response was, I like you a lot, too.
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Kim wanted to take things slow, he said, for good reason. She was putting herself through school to become a civil engineer.
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Seven years of dating passed before he ever popped the question. Well, that's the kicker.
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She got angry. She got up and walked away. Why? Without even saying yes. And I'm just like, oh, dear God, I've made a gigantic mistake.
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Oh, no. I've moved too fast. And she gets over there, and she goes to her purse,
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and she brings out this box, and it's, you know, a long box. And she hands it to me.
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She goes, I thought you'd try this one of these days. I'm like, oh, dear God, you know, what is it?
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Is it a big no on a piece of paper or whatever? On the contrary, inside was a bracelet etched with the letters Y-E-S.
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Yes, they were married almost a year later. After their wedding, they honeymooned in Ireland.
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How do you like the beer here? There was Kim, ever fearless, trying her hand at the ancient sport of falconry.
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Beautiful, perfect, that's it, that's the one. At times, this independent spirit seemed surprised to find herself no longer single.
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Yep, you tell me when you're ready. Do it. Not that married life changed her, or either of them very much.
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He was a Jacksonville firefighter and owner of a small general contracting business.
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Kim got her degree and began training building inspectors in hurricane-prone Florida.
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Was she good at it? Absolutely. Within two weeks, I asked her to head up the department.
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And she would have a class of up to 100 rough-and-tumble men looking at this little girl in high heels, telling them how to build.
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But she held her own, which you have to, and they respected her for that. They both were laser-focused on their careers.
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You decided not to have any children? At the time, we were both very busy, and we felt if we were going to do it,
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we wanted to have time to carve it out to dedicate to them, so we never did. But you did have your babies?
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Yes, we did. And how many of them? Three miniature schnauzers. Dexter, Duncan, and Gracie.
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They were her children, no doubt about it. I took them to the dog park religiously every weekend, walks every day.
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That was her little escape during the day when she got bogged down. and she'd harness the herd and take them for a walk.
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Kim's workload seemed to grow heavier by the day. It started to get to her. It became increasingly difficult for her to be able to turn work off.
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It just seemed like everything revolved around work. She went to see a doctor for depression.
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And she decided to take some medication to help her get a little bit brighter outlook on things.
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Did it work? Absolutely. It was like turning a light switch on. I even told the doctor, who's a good personal friend of mine,
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he said, thank you for giving me all my wife back. His relief didn last long The cure became worse than the ailment Was it causing her to gain weight Was that one of the side effects It does That one of the large warning signs on it
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Weight gain, restless sleep, things like that. Kim feared that stopping the medication too suddenly could make her more depressed.
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He said she was making plans that last week of October 2012 to see her doctor. In the meantime, it so happened that a storm, a brutal one called Hurricane Sandy,
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had been heading north off the Atlantic coast. How well did she know the anatomy of a hurricane, what it was capable of?
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Very well. Being a civil engineer, she knows what structures can do and what they can't do.
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With her teaching and so forth and training the inspectors, she knew what had to be done to a house in order to protect the inhabitants.
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She makes everyone safe. Absolutely. Eventually, the superstorm tracked east, giving most of Florida a pass,
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before barreling north and into the history books. Kim didn't seem to have either the weather or personal troubles on her mind as the weekend rolled around.
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There she was, Friday the 26th, captured on supermarket security video, casually shopping.
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That night, Derek said the two watched a movie on their entertainment system that had just been repaired.
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Kim used to call it NASA because I would always have to change the input for her, change the channel, or get it to the place that she wanted to watch.
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So many people can relate to that. Too many remotes. And you had just had a sound person come in and help you out?
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I was trying to have him simplify it, take those five remotes on the table and turn it into one.
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The next day, Saturday the 27th, Derek left his wife sleeping and headed to his fire station to begin a 24-hour shift.
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It coincided with a big college football game, Florida versus Georgia. It's a large influx of people into the city.
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And of course, with a football game comes drinking and foolishness. What kind of calls do you get during a weekend like that?
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Usually car accidents, stuff like that. There are more people on the road. A lot of them are alcohol involved.
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As busy as he was, he called Kim later that day. Several times, in fact. Could you get a hold of her?
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No, I couldn't. Was that strange or not? Not unusual. A lot of times, usually in the morning, if she didn't want to be bothered, she'd put her phone in the kitchen.
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On Sunday, his shift over, he headed home. It was after 8 in the morning. As he walked into the bedroom, darkened by blackout shades,
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he said he expected to crawl into bed next to Kim, but she wasn't there. She was on the floor.
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I noticed Kim lying at the base of the bed, face down. What did you think when you saw her laying there?
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I didn't know what to think. I originally went up to her, thought maybe she'd fallen her head,
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or maybe she had a few too many beers that night. But the closer I looked at her, I realized she was bleeding.
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He said the firefighter in him went into action. He did CPR and called 911. Kim!
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Kim! Oh, you got him now. Please send Andy with that. Soon, the emergency call would go out to Derek's fellow firefighters.
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Men in trucks, sirens blaring, would be racing to the Dorsey's safe, gated community
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and into his home that looked like it had just been hit by a hurricane. What had happened to Kim?
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Had Derek arrived home in time to save his wife? when we return. Are you with her right now?
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Yes, I am. Is she awake? No, she's not. Did you think there was a chance that she might still be alive?
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At that point, I didn't know I was going to give her every opportunity I could. When Derek Dorsey called
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the 911 dispatcher that Sunday morning, Send Rescue 50, I'm off duty fireman. Come on.
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He said he couldn't grasp what he was seeing. His 38-year-old wife, Kim, lying naked and bloodied on the floor.
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I rolled her over and I saw she wasn't breathing and I tried to keep her sleep hard.
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Did you think there was a chance that she might still be alive? At that point, I didn't know I was going to give her every opportunity I could.
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Are you with her right now? Yes, I am. Is she awake? No, she's not. On the 911 call, it's almost like you're wearing two hats.
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You're the distraught husband, and then you're the firefighter. Did you feel yourself going back and forth?
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Well, I wanted them to know that I was an off-duty fireman for the simple fact I wanted them to understand
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it wasn't a layperson that didn't know what they were talking about. I knew there was something wrong.
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Even as he begged for help, he said he kept trying to revive Kim. And he wanted all this other information.
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All I could focus on was giving her CPR. And then after a couple minutes of giving her CPR,
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I realized that she was already stiff. And that she was gone. and I told communications
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I told him she was signal 7 What does that mean I basically pronounced her dead So you think she beyond any resuscitation
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Yes, rescue anyway. Yes, rescue's on the way, okay? You're the first responder. You see this happen to other people.
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I didn't want anybody rushing to the scene to get hurt. For somebody that was ordered dead.
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You're a firefighter. You're used to saving people. Yeah. And it's your own wife, and you can't save her.
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Yeah. How hard was that? After 15 years of going to gunshots, cardiac arrest, and everything else,
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and helping everybody else on God's green earth, I can't help my own wife. It's like all that training had just been put to waste.
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His once vibrant, beautiful wife lay dead on their bedroom floor, and he believed he knew why.
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We are sending rescue. You have to tell me exactly what she did, what happened. I don't know. She either cut herself or something. I can't see. I'm trying to figure the f*** out.
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I thought maybe she'd try to hurt herself. Derek Dorsey was telling County Dispatch his wife had committed suicide.
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He immediately thought about Kim's struggle with her medication and the warning that came with it.
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Don't bring yourself off the medication. Seek a doctor's advice on coming off of it.
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Now, as he stood over the body of his wife, he said he felt Kim had ignored that warning.
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I had originally thought, damn it, she tried to take herself off her own medication.
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she had typical Kim wanted to do it herself she just quit cold turkey which she was told not to do
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within minutes of calling 911 Derek's colleagues came to his aid your fellow firefighters
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and paramedics what do you say to them when they arrive she's dead You had a reaction to seeing them.
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Your wife is laying there. What did you do when they got there? I covered her up with a comforter.
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Was that more the husband instinct? Yeah. It's a husband and fireman. It's decorum.
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My wife's naked there on the ground. and I've got half a dozen people in the house.
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You just cover her up. At some point, a call went out to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.
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When something like this happens, they'll call me first. Chief T.K. Waters was the on-duty officer that weekend.
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I'll make the decision on whether we're going to go out to that call or we're going to respond to that call or not.
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And that happened to be one that I knew we had to respond to. The officer on the other end was telling the detective about a woman's apparent suicide.
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So naturally, because it's a suicide, we have to go, we have to make sure that everything lines up and it looks as if someone committed suicide.
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The homicide detective figured the call would be a relatively quick one. He figured wrong.
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Coming up, people who commit suicide don't usually miss. You can see the bullet holes in the wall.
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No way could somebody have done this to themselves. When Dateline continues. Chief T.K. Waters was responding to a call about a possible suicide.
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As he arrived, he was struck by the neighborhood. It's a gated community in East Jacksonville toward the beach, not very far from the beach at all.
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Beautiful homes, very nice neighborhood, and not very easy to access. You have to have a way in.
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Soon, he was joined by his then-partner, Detective Larry Kuzkowski, who was also taken with the affluent community and the Dorsey's house itself.
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You raced to this scene and came up to the house. Did you see anything before you even got into the house?
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Yes, as I was walking up the sidewalk to the front door here, I saw a statue of a dog that was laid over in the bushes here.
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Anything that was odd about it? Just the fact that it looked out of place, that it was tipped over.
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But I just took note of that and moved on from there. This is something, though, that would become very important later in this case.
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Yes, absolutely. You just didn't realize it at that moment. That's correct. He made a mental note and met Waters in the darkened bedroom.
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It was chaos, and you can tell that something really horrible happened here. You walk in initially, you see our victim lying at the foot of the bed.
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You can see, even as dark as it was in the room, the lighting wasn't very good. It was just a scene that read that something horrible had happened here.
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Not far from where Kim lay, they found a knife. They saw patches of blood soaked into the carpet and specks of red on one wall.
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and on another, something that jumped right out at them. There had been some gunshots in a wall, and you could see the bullet holes in the wall.
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Officers later found those bullets and the gun that fired them, a pink-handled revolver that had been tossed on the bedroom floor.
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There was something else they noticed. There was a pool cue, a broken pool cue in the bedroom,
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and it was what I called the fat end of the pool cue. As they looked closer, they could see Kim was covered in bruises.
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It was clear she had not killed herself. The room was there was blood all over the place I mean the condition of her body No way could somebody have done this to themselves This was obviously a murder scene Probably one of the most horrific ones that I had ever seen
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Just because of the amount of blood and... The sheer violence that was evident in this room.
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They continued looking around the rest of the house. They noticed the kitchen sink filled, bizarrely they thought,
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with TV remote controls and a cell phone. Cabinet drawers opened, a floor used as an ashtray.
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All that and the toppled statue at the front door suggested a break-in, especially when investigators learned more about the gated community.
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Unfortunately, at the time that Kim Dorsey was murdered, I believe that the community was leaving the gate open.
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London Kite, then an assistant state attorney, was called to the murder scene that day.
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So it wasn't as secure as, you know, someone like showing a card and, yeah, come on in.
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And it was one of those things where at that point it could be anybody because they could have walked through, they could have driven through.
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But the closer they looked at the house, the more they felt this attack had not been a random break in.
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There was no sign of a forced entry. So somebody either had let themselves into the house or Kim had answered the door.
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And if someone had come to rob the Dorseys before killing Kim, they'd done a poor job of it.
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Kim's yellow Hummer sat in the driveway. The big screen TV was still on the wall.
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There were some expensive items that were in plain sight that were still there, correct?
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Yes. Yes. Big house, I mean, a lot of nice things. There were computers on the table.
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Rolex watches. Yes, there was a watch case next to the bed. Nothing of value seemed to be missing, you know, that we could see right there.
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But it was Kim's body that spoke the loudest to them. It was clear she'd been beaten savagely, bound at some point with zip ties, and likely raped.
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This was such a violent attack on Kim Dorsey. Did that tell you anything, just the level of violence?
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Yes, it told us that there was possibly some sort of connection between the person that committed the act and Kim.
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That they perhaps knew each other? That's correct. And this was some kind of rage, kind of passion?
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Right, yes. The bloody scene made them skeptical about the story Kim's husband had told the 911 operator.
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You ask yourself, how could he believe she committed suicide? How could he actually believe that when you look at that crime scene?
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That was only one of so many questions they had for Derek Dorsey, a man, it seemed, with plenty of stories to tell.
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Coming up. He was living two different lives. A husband with a secret. I said, what about a girlfriend?
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You got a girlfriend? And he readily said, there's a lot going on here. Derek Dorsey sat in the back of a squad car,
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staring at the crime scene tape surrounding his home. It was like rubbernecking at someone else's tragedy, waiting for the nightmare to slip by.
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I still can't wrap my head around it. He said he kept trying to piece together what had happened.
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Later, he went with officers to the station for questioning. It's difficult right now.
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Detective Larry Kiskowski interviewed Derek, still in his firefighter uniform. He said the husband seemed willing to answer all his questions,
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starting with how he'd left Kim that Saturday morning. Okay, so you left the house yesterday morning, probably?
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So, about 7.10. So your shift started at 8 a.m. Saturday. Did you go back home for any reason?
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Nothing like that. His alibi at that point is that he's at work, and he does work for the fire department.
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They work 24-hour shifts. They start 8 o'clock in the morning. They work until the following morning at 8 o'clock.
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A story that would be easy enough to check out. Next, the detective asked Derek how he'd found Kim when he got home from work.
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I go in, just go straight to the bedroom. I open it up and there she is. See what I'm laying down. She's on the damn floor.
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Did you touch her anything? No, no. Okay. So I passed her. I come to the road. I think she was on the right side.
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He was upset. You know, did he break down? Not as much as I think some people would.
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telling the story about what they just came home to. I started looking around the house.
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The first thing that's popping into my head is she's taking her life. He said he believed Kim had committed suicide.
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He had already told County Dispatch he thought Kim had cut herself. Now he was telling the detectives something different.
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So she has a gun of her own? Yes. What kind of gun? Pink Taurus. Something on that?
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Not at all. We won't. Where's it normally kept? In her corridor. I left it there.
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Did you open that drawer? I don't know. Did you look in the drawer? Absolutely. I thought she shot herself.
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He explained Kim had been battling depression, then battling side effects from the medicine.
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He said their marriage had suffered. When is the last time that you and Kim had said,
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a while back? A while back? When you say a while back, like weeks. Derek Dorsey had something else to reveal.
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Or either one of you is stepping out, you know, girlfriend on your behalf or boyfriend on her.
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I said, what about a girlfriend? You got a girlfriend? And he readily said, there's a lot going on here.
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Derek had just admitted that he'd been unfaithful to Kim. Obviously big, big red flags.
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London Kite was listening in on the interview from another room and hearing a possible motive for murder.
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He was living two different lives. We really had to figure out what was His, you know, true passion, did he want to live there with Kim or did he want the more seedy or dark side of his life?
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There was another fact she couldn't overlook, that Derek, a seasoned firefighter, had done the unthinkable at a crime scene.
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Now, was she covered up with you? No. She was covered up with you. I put the... After the rescue came, her house for dead.
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I was like, Jesus, God, I'm sorry. Okay. I think that's right. The thing that he did that was kind of uncharacteristic of someone who is a first responder that goes to scenes like this is that he covered her body with the bedding.
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You know, you wouldn't want that to happen in a crime scene. To the investigators, it was possible Derek Dorsey had tried literally to cover up evidence.
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Everything they were hearing led them to wonder. Had he killed his wife? By then, the line of questioning seemed to weigh on Derek.
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I'm not stupid. You're asking a certain question. You're a certain way. Right. And that means you're thinking certain things.
00:25:09
It's a similar harm. That looks so bad. Looks like that. Did you worry that they might think it was you?
00:25:16
I don't doubt they did think it was me. But I knew that if they originally thought it would come to light,
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that there's just obviously no way I could have done it. Even as he sat in that interview room, detectives outside it were, in fact, checking out his fire station alibi.
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Did Derek Dorsey's alibi check out? Was he really at work? Yes, he was. He had spent the whole day at work.
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There were some phone calls he had made to Kim that went unanswered, but that wasn't unusual.
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Surveillance footage supported Derek's account. It showed his truck leaving the gated community in the early hours of Saturday morning.
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Even though his alibi checked out, Derek wasn't off the hook. Investigators thought he still could have had something to do with Kim's murder.
00:26:02
And that's why we wanted to make sure that we looked at his phone records to see who he was contacting.
00:26:08
As investigators tried to size up the man before them, officers back at the crime scene canvassed nearby homeowners.
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A neighbor had seen something. He remembered a car, a small SUV pulling up in front of the Dorsey's house.
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It wasn't really anything unusual to him. So here's what detectives had so far. A mysterious car, a husband who might or might not be involved,
00:26:31
a victim who likely knew her killer, and a house that was ready to tell investigators a whole lot more.
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Coming up, a rare look at a crime scene, inch by inch, minute by minute, through the eyes of an expert.
00:26:48
She's zip-tied to this dresser. She opens this drawer somehow. She got the gun out and she fired all five shots.
00:26:54
But she missed. She missed. When Dateline continues. As detectives interviewed Derek Dorsey downtown.
00:27:12
Did you text her yesterday? Their colleagues were searching for clues across town.
00:27:16
A man's castle was now a crime scene, and a confusing one at that. Former assistant state attorney London Kite.
00:27:24
This was a real puzzle. It was. The kitchen was just torn apart. The drawers were pulled out, and then these electronics were in the sink,
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and then her bedroom torn apart. We didn't know really where the struggles were happening in this house.
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Soon they would. They believed Kim died sometime Saturday morning, not long after Derek left for work.
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Her cell phone, damaged from being thrown in the kitchen sink, had stopped receiving signals around then.
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So you know she was alive to a certain point at least. Her autopsy filled in more details.
00:28:01
Kim had died of blunt trauma to the head and a single stab wound to the neck. But it was officers like Detective Karen Smith who helped the team understand how this crime unfolded.
00:28:12
What's the first thing you saw when you came into the room? The first thing I saw was what's called an impact pattern right here on this wall
00:28:18
that we've sort of recreated with stickers today. This is blood spatter? Correct.
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Smith, a bloodstain pattern analyst and crime scene expert, followed the trail of Kim's blood in the bedroom, speck by speck,
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using string and 3D diagrams. She believed Kim had just gotten out of bed when her attacker barged in.
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And when the autopsy was completed, we found that her nose had been damaged. So to me, that meant that it was a sucker punch.
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So where would she have been standing exactly to create this spatter? Right about here.
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And then something would have, you believe, hit her in the face? Right, probably in the nose.
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Since it bleeds very heavily, quickly, your eyes water, you can't see. It's very painful.
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and normally when somebody's punched in the nose that hard, they're going to go down.
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This first blow, she said, would have brought Kim down by the side of her bed. She's actually down here on the floor and there was the large saturation stain here on the carpet.
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She was down here for quite some time. Blood found on the nearby wall and marks on Kim's body suggested she was struck repeatedly
00:29:27
and so forcibly that she probably blacked out. Smith believed Kim was then bound at the wrists.
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She zip-tied to the stressor. Giving Kim's attacker time to step out of that first-floor bedroom and into the kitchen just beyond.
00:29:42
Drawers randomly opened indicated someone had been rifling through the room. But that pause also gave Kim time to regain consciousness, free herself, and do something incredible.
00:29:54
She opens this drawer somehow She got the gun out And she aimed Now she probably can see really well She been punched in the face So she fired the gun five times It went through the door jam and up into the ceiling in the kitchen So her attacker was you believe obviously was either she saw him or heard him and she fired all five shots and the gun was empty But she missed She missed
00:30:19
Even then, she said, Kim did not give up. So she's able to move, and she leaves this area.
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She still has the gun in her hand. And as she moves around the bed, the gun is tossed,
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and it's found right underneath the bed here. It's useless to her. It's empty. Blood, lit by luminol, traced Kim's desperate path to a window on the other side of the bedroom.
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We know that she is opening these curtains. There are transfer stains and saturation stains on the curtain.
00:30:47
The pull cord for the blinds has blood on it. So she's opened the blinds, and there's blood on the window.
00:30:52
So now we know she's clamoring to get out of this window. This could have been her escape.
00:30:57
This could have been her escape route. But he came back. Unfortunately, he came back.
00:31:00
Smith said the man probably grabbed Kim as she tried to escape and beat her to the floor again,
00:31:06
likely with that pool cue, before stabbing her once in the neck. There was a very, very large saturation stain here on the floor,
00:31:13
and the knife was found next to it. So this is basically where she was killed. This is where ultimately she lost her fight.
00:31:22
The scenario told investigators about Kim's brave but doomed struggle. But it also told them about her killer.
00:31:30
The zip ties on Kim's wrists and the pool cue on the floor appear to have come from the home.
00:31:36
The knife matched a set from the kitchen. So he would know the house? Yes, he would know upstairs and downstairs too.
00:31:43
Someone who might possibly know where those zip ties are? Yes, and also know the habits of Kim Dorsey, that she's a late sleeper.
00:31:52
She sleeps pretty hard, was my understanding, too. Obviously, one man, Derek, knew all of that.
00:31:59
But evidently, there were others who did as well. One guy that used to live with us, everything, and used to work with me.
00:32:07
Derek told them about a friend who had worked construction jobs for him and had even lived with them for a time.
00:32:12
His name was Lance Kirkpatrick, but Derek set detectives straight. I honestly really think you've got that wrong.
00:32:19
I made the comment Lance would have taken a bullet for Kim. So you guys are wasting your time.
00:32:25
Talk to him. You'll understand. You'll know where I'm coming from after you meet him.
00:32:30
Lance, he added, not only wouldn't kill Kim, he couldn't. Derek said his friend had taken a new job just before her death.
00:32:38
He's up in Georgia shrimping. Out on a boat? Yes. At sea? Yes. miles away. But Derek did give detectives another name. And this young man had definitely been in
00:32:48
the area that week, in Jacksonville, and in trouble. Coming up, a suspect who seemed infatuated with
00:32:57
Kim. Have you ever had sex with her? Be honest with me. And had a history with police. Did it
00:33:04
make you question him? This guy on your radar was just in jail. Yes. Does he need money? Does he
00:33:09
need something. Investigators were untangling the mystery surrounding Kim Dorsey's murder.
00:33:26
They knew her killer was familiar with her home. Her husband, Derek, certainly fit that bill,
00:33:31
but he had a strong alibi and a willingness to share everything, it seemed, even his infidelity.
00:33:37
Typically in cases like that, you know, husbands that are suspects, they try to hide all of those things.
00:33:43
They say, oh no, our relationship was perfect. But Derek, on the other hand, started exposing kind of the darkness that was inside that beautiful house.
00:33:52
Was Kim aware that this was going on? I don't believe so. She was. She never let me know.
00:33:59
Did you worry how that might look to the detectives? I didn't even care. They asked me if I had any relationships on the side, and I fessed up to her right now and there.
00:34:10
That was the least of my worries, knowing that I'd done that. I wanted it before I could kill her.
00:34:17
Still, investigators couldn't overlook the possibility that Derek had hired someone to kill Kim.
00:34:24
Did you worry that they might think that you could have enlisted some help? No. Hired someone?
00:34:30
I knew that I could account for my whereabouts. I didn't know how they could even think I was.
00:34:36
An accomplice to something like that, no. He said he was an open book with investigators.
00:34:41
In fact, when they asked if anyone else knew the layout of his home, besides his pal Lance, Derek gave them another name, Joshua Veal.
00:34:49
Joshua was a young man, just somebody that needed a job. Didn't have a whole bunch of construction experience and everything,
00:34:59
but I always needed someone to help clean up and straighten up the job sites and such.
00:35:04
So he gave Joshua work in the general contracting business he ran on the side, and later, a place to stay.
00:35:11
We saw a young man that needed some direction, and we tried to help him out the best we could.
00:35:16
For a few months, Joshua lived with the Dorseys. But Derek said the arrangement soured when Joshua took a wrong turn.
00:35:23
Josh decided that recreational pharmaceuticals were more fun than working in the hot sun every day.
00:35:29
That must have been heartbreaking for you because you really wanted to see this young man succeed.
00:35:34
It was. You wanted to shake sense into him, but people have to make their own mistakes in order to learn.
00:35:39
He told Joshua to leave, but said they remained friends. He called and said, hey, Mr. D, I need to do some work.
00:35:46
And I was more than glad to help him. He did a good job when he showed up. Yet Joshua couldn't let go of his vice.
00:35:52
He was picked up for drug possession and released one day before Kim was murdered That really got the detective attention Did it make you question him This guy on your radar was just in jail Yes Does he need money Does he need something
00:36:06
And Joshua had also been kicked out of the Dorsey house. Yes. He could be angry about that.
00:36:11
Of course. Not the best house guest. Not the best house guest. There was more, and to detectives, it was explosive.
00:36:19
Derek said that on that Sunday morning, just before finding Kim's body, He stopped at a gas station to pick up Joshua for a job.
00:36:27
Only Joshua never showed. At that point, we set out trying to put our hands on Joshua.
00:36:32
And he's just out there. No one seems to know where he is. That's correct. Is that a sign that there might be something up there that this guy didn't show and now no one can find him?
00:36:41
Yes, absolutely. And right around the time that Kim Dorsey was murdered. Right. The morning that she's found, he can't be found.
00:36:48
But he didn't stay hidden for long. Later that same day, Derek told investigators that Joshua had just called.
00:36:55
The two men arranged to meet at a local restaurant, but Detective Larry Kiskowski decided to surprise the young man instead.
00:37:02
We were sitting there waiting on him, and as soon as he got out of the car, I introduced myself to him and said we needed to have a talk.
00:37:09
This is Joshua Veal, and he remembers that moment very differently. Were you scared?
00:37:15
Yes, ma'am. six, seven undercover cars come pull up and ask about you. I tend to get a little nervous.
00:37:23
The talk the detective wanted with Joshua took place downtown at the sheriff's office.
00:37:28
The officer didn't mention Kim's murder at first. I see you on Friday night, 10, 11 o'clock for the jail.
00:37:34
Did it feel, though, like it wasn't a friendly conversation? Yes, ma'am. Like you were being treated kind of as a suspect type?
00:37:41
I was already under the impression I was treated as suspect for something, but I had no clue what for.
00:37:45
You spent Friday night at the house? Yeah. Okay. You didn't go anywhere Friday night?
00:37:51
Joshua said he'd spent the weekend hanging out with friends. Did you go to Winging on Saturday to watch a football game or what?
00:37:57
Yeah, I think I did. Anybody else up there that could vouch that you were up there Saturday?
00:38:02
Probably so. Were you supposed to go to work for anybody on Sunday? They asked why he hadn't shown up at the gas station to meet Derek for work that Sunday morning.
00:38:11
Surveillance showed Derek at the station, but not Joshua. Where was he? Finally, the investigators asked about Kim Dorsey.
00:38:30
They wanted the 21-year-old to explain his relationship with the 38-year-old woman.
00:38:44
You? No. Come on now. A little bit maybe? No, I wish. Have you ever had sex with her? Be honest
00:38:52
with me. No, I wish. What he revealed about Kim was really interesting is that he almost had
00:38:57
an infatuation with her. Not that she was just my boss's wife, but someone that he
00:39:03
almost had a romantic pull towards. How are investigators feeling now about Joshua Veal?
00:39:08
Is he starting to go to the top of the list? Yeah, he's definitely going up. Now, the detective was ready to drop a bombshell.
00:39:43
Oh, don't tell me that, man. Oh, that was killed. Did his emotional reaction to her death,
00:39:59
was that enough for your gut to say, not sure he's our killer? It was for me at that point.
00:40:07
I mean, just, you know, don't eliminate him completely, but set him off to the side for now.
00:40:12
And we knew where he was. He wasn't going anywhere. I'm trying to find out. And need to know if you know anything or somebody that might be trying to hurt her.
00:40:23
Hurt Derek. Bro, I promise you. You wouldn't catch me right here if I knew somebody was trying to hurt them.
00:40:33
I promise you that. Okay. All right. That was a good woman. You don't know. You don't know what you want.
00:40:40
I'm sure she wants. There's just about anybody out there who could be our suspect.
00:40:52
Days passed without an arrest. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office asked the public for help.
00:40:58
Like I said, because of the lack of witnesses, the physical evidence, nothing has led us a whole lot farther today in identifying or leading us to a suspect
00:41:09
than we were at that Sunday morning. But there was another piece of evidence. It had been right inside the house all along, hiding in the dark,
00:41:19
just waiting for someone to come along and push the right button. Coming up, an X-rated clue.
00:41:29
I look at the DVD player and I'm going, that's your murderer. That's going to be who was in my house.
00:41:35
When Dateline continues. Days after finding Kim's body, detectives crossed one name off their suspect list.
00:41:54
They looked into Joshua Veal alibi and it checked out Joshua just up on the north side of Jacksonville Nowhere near the Dorsey home as far as they could tell Kim husband Derek likewise had a solid alibi
00:42:08
But detectives still weren't sure what to make of him. They knew he was an unfaithful husband, which gave him a possible motive.
00:42:16
At this point, were you able to rule out Derek Dorsey? Absolutely not. But, I mean, you know, he could have definitely had something setting this up.
00:42:25
Then again, if he had hired someone to kill Kim, why was he acting so darn helpful?
00:42:31
Derek's calling me daily. Obviously, there are times I had to call him, you know, to get some information about things at the house, you know.
00:42:39
So, yeah, he's cooperating. He's doing everything, you know, that I'm asking of him.
00:42:44
Finally, officers and technicians were done processing the crime scene, and Derek could return to the house.
00:42:51
So the night we go to turn the house back over, I think it was Halloween the 31st.
00:42:56
They hoped the walls might talk to Derek, might reveal something officers had missed.
00:43:02
Part of the turnover back to him was to bring him out to the house, to have him look around, walk us through the whole house,
00:43:08
show us anything that maybe was out of place that we missed as investigators and the evidence technicians.
00:43:14
to say, hey, that's not right. As it turned out, the house wasn't just speaking to Derek.
00:43:19
It was practically shouting. The blood's still on the floor. The plates shattered on the ground are still there.
00:43:26
At that point, they wanted me to try to help piece together things. And I'm noticing everything, everything.
00:43:34
You know, this is wrong. This is here. I don't understand why the damn remotes are in the sink.
00:43:40
Detectives Larry Kiskowski and T.K. Waters showed us what happened when they ushered Derek into his TV room.
00:43:46
So we were standing here, and we asked Derek, can you turn on the TV? So Derek, you know, he comes in here.
00:43:53
Why? Why did you ask him to turn on the TV? Well, we had never, the TV wasn't on when we got here,
00:43:58
and we had found all the remotes in the sink. So we just wanted to see how it worked.
00:44:05
The moment I turned it on and changed the input to the DVD player, up comes the menu
00:44:14
for a porn video. At that point, I start shaking my finger at it and going, that's not mine.
00:44:26
There's no way that's mine and there's no way Kim would be looking at that. And then I look at the DVD player
00:44:31
and I'm going, that's your murderer. That's going to be who's in my house. That's a creepy clue.
00:44:38
As soon as I knew that, I didn't think they were going to be able to get him. They were going to be able to find out who did this to my wife.
00:44:44
It was one of those moments where the hair would stand up on the back of your neck.
00:44:48
Because to have that video in there and having Derek here saying, that's not mine.
00:44:53
So it automatically raises an antenna and gets you curious. But it was what Derek said next that really got their attention.
00:45:02
He told them the man who installed that complicated entertainment system, The one Kim nicknamed Nasa had been there to make repairs the day before her murder.
00:45:13
So he would have known where the kitchen was and everything else. There's an open four-wheel pan in the center.
00:45:19
But he would have had a familiarity with the house. Derek told the detectives that the installer, a man named J.R., could be the person they were looking for.
00:45:29
In my mind, that was a very strong possibility it was him. I'd known him before.
00:45:36
He'd worked on another house I'd done. I'd had no reason to think that. But that was the only possible logical person that I could think had done it.
00:45:45
So what would his motivation be? Stealing the system that he just tweaked. I have no earthly idea.
00:45:52
Was there anyone else who knew how to work the entertainment system? No. I mean, who else would be handling the remotes when he's tuning the surround sound system
00:46:02
and then throw them in a sink to get the evidence off of it. So yeah, all those things come into play.
00:46:08
So detectives paid a surprise visit to this J.R. to the shop where he worked. I came back and there's a couple of detectives here at the shop wanting to ask some questions.
00:46:18
At that point, J.R. said, he hadn't heard about Kim's death, and detectives were vague about why they needed to talk to him.
00:46:26
Initially, he thought they simply wanted information about his client, Derek Dorsey.
00:46:30
And they said, do you know Derek Dorsey? I said, yeah, he's one of our customers.
00:46:37
And he's like, when's the last time you were at the house? And I told him, you know, I was there Friday or whatever it was.
00:46:45
They also asked if he knew anything about Kim. Even then, he said he had no idea why police were so interested in the Dorseys.
00:46:53
She was very sweet, very nice. You know, she'd always, you know, I've only saw her a couple times.
00:47:00
One of them was that Friday. He had been called to the Dorsey home to fine-tune the entertainment system.
00:47:06
While he was there, he noticed a chill between the husband and wife. I remember just, she walked by and said,
00:47:13
Hey, all right, guys, I'm headed to the gym. And I said, Okay, we'll see you. And Derek didn't say anything to her.
00:47:20
So I thought that was weird. You know, I was like, You don't say bye to your wife.
00:47:24
But I guess he was more interested in getting his electronics fixed, I guess. Yeah, because something must have jumped out at you, because first of all, you don't even know this couple very well.
00:47:34
Right. Kind of weird. You know, they didn't have a very, to me, I never saw an affectionate kind of relationship, you know, between the two at all.
00:47:42
As the detectives listened to J.R., they took in what he did for a living. They noticed the wires and cables he worked with, the tools he used.
00:47:51
More importantly, they noticed his hands. Coming up. He's got cuts on his hands.
00:47:58
and something interesting in his toolkit. He worked with zip ties? Yes, yes. We're thinking he's a possibility.
00:48:18
The man who had been inside the Dorsey's home the day before the murder said at first he had no idea
00:48:24
why detectives were asking him about Kim, Derek, and the layout of their house. I was like, yeah, I know Kim just by being at the house doing their installs.
00:48:33
The entertainment system installer, J.R., said he thought Derek gave his wife the cold shoulder,
00:48:39
especially that Friday as she headed off to the gym. He just sensed there wasn't a strong, you know, loving relationship.
00:48:46
Other than that, he said he didn't make much of the investigators' questions, but they found a lot in his answers.
00:48:53
They thought it possible J.R. had sensed an opportunity with Kim. Did he have the hots for her?
00:48:58
You know, did he come show back up on Saturday morning? He'd been there Friday night, you know, felt maybe he'd go over Saturday morning.
00:49:04
You know, remember, he doesn't think they're in a loving relationship. Does he go back thinking, hey, you know what, I have some opportunity here with her?
00:49:12
They wondered, had J.R. come calling on Kim only to get a chilly reception? Had Kim's rejection set him off?
00:49:20
Detectives got to the point. They asked J.R. if he'd heard about Kim's murder. His reaction seemed calm, too calm for the prosecutor.
00:49:29
What did that tell you, that he wasn't overly emotional about the news? That could be a sign that he's more involved.
00:49:36
A person that committed this type of crime, obviously, they're cold-blooded. But it was his hands, more than his demeanor, that really heightened their interest.
00:49:47
He's got cuts on his hands. And I'm thinking, well, could these be defensive wounds, you know, from when she was hitting him if he was the killer?
00:49:55
They asked about those scratches. J.R. said he got them on the job handling wires and plastics.
00:50:02
He also worked with zip ties? Yes. Yes. What are you thinking then about the sound man?
00:50:08
Can you cross him off your list? We think it's a possibility. More than a possibility, thought the prosecutor.
00:50:13
He had scratches. He had injuries to his hand, which, you know, from Kim's body, we knew that she fought for her life.
00:50:24
She was engaged in a tremendous struggle. So he said that was just something he got, you know, during the course of his job.
00:50:30
But obviously, as an investigator, you want you're seeing the other side of that.
00:50:35
Is he just making an excuse? So there are some things they're seeing that could potentially be tying him to this crime.
00:50:41
Absolutely. They just need to find out more. Yes. The detectives asked JR where he'd been the previous weekend when Kim was killed.
00:50:49
He explained he'd been around town, even been at a local ball field. Did you feel like their questions were getting a little intense?
00:50:56
Did you feel like you were under the spotlight? I guess at the moment I didn't because I didn't think that much about it.
00:51:01
I was more like thinking of the situation that they just told me happened. It wasn't until the detectives left that he had that light bulb moment.
00:51:09
They weren't looking to him for information. they were looking at him. Did they, were they thinking that might have been scratches on my arms
00:51:18
or something like that? But that crossed my mind. That probably bothered me more than anything in the whole interview,
00:51:24
you know, whole questioning. Because Kim really fought for her life. She fought hard.
00:51:29
And whoever she was fighting with would have had scratches on them. Wow. Yeah. No doubt.
00:51:36
Right. He also thought back to how he'd answered their questions about the murder
00:51:40
and about Kim. Did you have that little moment where your heart's beating like, I was just there. I hope they don't think I had anything to do with this.
00:51:49
I said she was murdered Saturday or something like that. And I was like, are you kidding me? I was just there Friday night. They even asked me,
00:51:58
do you have any relationships with her? I was like, no. They asked me, did I kiss her?
00:52:02
Did I do anything? I was like, no, nothing like that. Did you know that Derek had been pointing the finger at you?
00:52:10
Had no clue. He was telling the police that he thought you could be a suspect. That's interesting.
00:52:18
Had no clue. If anything, he saw Derek as the most likely suspect. He seemed like a very short-tempered kind of guy.
00:52:27
You know, we've been in his house and just how he gets amped on certain situations, you know, he gets excited.
00:52:32
You could tell how he just kind of like short-fused kind of thing. And it crossed my mind, yeah, because usually they do think it's someone very close to them that does this stuff first.
00:52:42
Still, J.R. said he did his best to cooperate fully with the police. Did they take your DNA sample?
00:52:48
They did. Right here at the office, they did. And I volunteered. I was like, yeah, absolutely, no problem.
00:52:53
That has to be unnerving, too, though. Yeah. Fingerprints and did a mouth swab and all that.
00:52:59
I've never had that in my life. I've never been arrested in my life. There's a lot of things that might make the police look at you.
00:53:05
I could see that, yeah. That's not a great place to be in. But he wouldn't be there long.
00:53:12
By then, a police report was making its way downtown through the sheriff's office.
00:53:17
It was about to change everything. Coming up, could a stolen car help solve a murder?
00:53:26
Did you find it on the video? Yes. In the gated community the day that Kim Dorsey was murdered?
00:53:30
Yes. It's huge. What that tells us is that he's in town. When Dateline continues.
00:53:47
When the detectives got back to the station, they reviewed what they had on JR, the entertainment system installer.
00:53:54
His alibi his DNA his scratched hands But soon they had something else Doubts He installs sound systems and so he always working in tight spaces and that how he cut his hands up
00:54:06
Did you believe him? It's believable. Yeah, it's very understandable. I mean, with the kind of work that he does, you can see his hands getting cut up.
00:54:16
And they learned that JR's alibi for the weekend Kim died checked out. Two men, Joshua Veal and J.R. the Installer, were now off the suspect list.
00:54:27
You're going from person to person to person, but no arrest. No, not yet. Are you getting a little frustrated or are you just following the trail?
00:54:37
Just following the trail because the trail, it tends to start narrowing after a period of time.
00:54:44
We felt like that it wasn't going to be a situation where this was going to go unsolved.
00:54:48
There's just too much, too much information for us to follow up for that to happen.
00:54:55
Optimism alone doesn't solve crimes. Hard work, of course, does. But so, too, can luck.
00:55:02
A stolen car doesn't usually fall into that last category, but it did for investigators in this case.
00:55:09
There's a lady here in Jacksonville. She reports her car stolen. The report is written by a patrol officer with a sheriff's office.
00:55:18
Eventually that report goes through the channels. Where it might have gone largely unnoticed if not for an eagle-eyed crime analyst
00:55:26
who saw the name of the suspected car thief listed on the report. Lance Kirkpatrick was listed in that report as possibly stealing this car.
00:55:35
An SUV? SUV, yes. Lance Kirkpatrick, as in Derek's good friend, employee, and house guest,
00:55:43
the man Derek said would take a bullet for Kim. And Lance Kirkpatrick is the one person you haven't been able to talk to.
00:55:50
That's correct. Derek had also insisted that Lance had been on a shrimp boat all week.
00:55:55
Now, a police report was challenging that story. What does this mean to you? It's huge.
00:56:03
What that tells us is that he's in town. He's not on a shrimp boat. So now we're starting to pick up steam again.
00:56:09
That helped us go in a direction that we needed to go to begin to put the puzzle together,
00:56:14
the pieces of this case together. The woman who filed the report said Lance had taken her car during a house party
00:56:20
in the early morning hours of Saturday, October 27th. Only he never came back. Where is Lance Kirkpatrick?
00:56:28
Does anyone know? Not at that point. Any friends or family who had any idea where he was?
00:56:34
No, we talked with his father and grandmother. They hadn't heard from him. Him and his father wasn't the best of relationships,
00:56:44
so it wasn't unusual that they wouldn't hear from him for a period of time. Suddenly, they remembered the neighbor who saw a small SUV the day Kim died.
00:56:55
His description matched that of the stolen vehicle. Detectives wondered if cameras outside the Dorsey's gated community caught the car coming or going.
00:57:05
Did you find it on the video? Yes. In the gated community, the day that Kim Dorsey was murdered?
00:57:12
Yes. This is your huge moment in this case? Yes. But the video didn't reveal who was driving the SUV.
00:57:19
And they also weren't sure if the woman who reported it stolen, a known drug user, was telling the truth.
00:57:25
Things like that, unfortunately, aren't uncommon for people that are addicted to drugs to kind of trade their car for drugs.
00:57:33
So we weren't really sure about that whole situation. Even so, they needed to find Lance.
00:57:42
So I called the Coast Guard to see if there was anything that when the shrimp boats go out,
00:57:47
if they file a manifest of any kind of who's on board, and they don't. So it's not something you can just radio each boat and say, hey, is Lance Kirkpatrick on your boat?
00:57:55
Correct, yes. The search for Lance, though, did lead detectives to another man, an acquaintance named Brian.
00:58:03
He'd been at the same house party when the SUV disappeared. There was someone else who also had access to that SUV, potentially.
00:58:11
Brian Kiefer? Yes. Brian Kiefer, a.k.a. Money. Brian's nickname is Money? Yes. Do you know why?
00:58:21
He said that's what, you know, the drug dealers called him. And I believe it's probably because he is a boss.
00:58:31
He owns his own company, and he runs in those same circles of people. Brian ran a building renovation business, but he also had a criminal past.
00:58:42
Troubling to you? Yes. It's always troubling when you know they have records and they're doing things that are outside the law.
00:58:48
So that's always a concern. Did you think for a moment that possibly he might have done this?
00:58:55
Yes. Everybody, once again, everybody's still on the table. You know, we don't know who did it.
00:59:00
And unlike Lance, who either was or wasn't on a shrimp boat, detectives learned that Brian had been spotted in Jacksonville recently.
00:59:09
Now they wanted to talk to him. Coming up. Brian tells us some things that only the person that was there would know.
00:59:18
And he also reveals something else. What a friend told him. He said the lady was saying stop.
00:59:27
You're killing her. Detective Larry Kiskowski needed to find Lance Kirkpatrick and a man named Brian Kiefer.
00:59:48
The first one they found was Brian at a McDonald's. So he gets completely ambushed at the McDonald Yes Soon Brian was in custody at the sheriff office sitting down with the detective and prosecutor London Kite Can I see a note You can I don
01:00:05
If it makes you feel better. Well, Brian comes in and basically he's really animated, full of energy that night.
01:00:11
They asked Brian where he'd been the last weekend of October. I want to direct your attention to Florida Georgia weekend.
01:00:18
Do you remember that weekend? Yes. Brian told them he was at his place. And yes, he had company.
01:00:25
It's Lance Kirkpatrick, but there is a middle name. And he goes by the nickname of LJ?
01:00:31
LJ. And he told them Lance had been at his apartment that Friday night, partying.
01:00:37
He said Lance had borrowed someone's small SUV to buy drugs and never came back.
01:00:42
I spent $480 for about four hours of riding around in a cab looking for LJ. Everywhere he's been to, went, everything.
01:00:53
And were you able to find him? Didn't find a trace of him. It wasn't until a day later, Sunday, that Lance called him, begging to meet at a gas station.
01:01:04
Brian said he immediately noticed Lance's hands. You notice, I guess, his hand was hurt at that point in time.
01:01:11
Do you recall what hand? If you don't, it's okay. I thought it was the left, but I know he hits with his right, so I just...
01:01:18
If you can't recall, it's fine. I can't recall. That would be a better statement.
01:01:23
But you did remember that he had an injury in one of his hands? Yes. Brian said he was unprepared for what Lance was about to tell him.
01:01:31
He tells me that he murdered somebody and is pretty much just going to prison. And there's nothing that can be done about it.
01:01:41
And I'm saying, I said, what do you mean you murder somebody and your life is over and you're going to prison?
01:01:50
And he's like, I'm going to prison. He thought Lance was making up stories. But a few days later, Lance revealed details of his crime.
01:02:00
He said he had let himself into his boss's home, only to be confronted by the man's wife.
01:02:05
When she picked up her phone to call for help, he panicked. He said, I took her cell phone, and I told her to get out of my way, that I just wanted my stuff.
01:02:16
From there, Brian said the argument quickly turned violent. Pretty much it just goes into, I don't know whether he hit her with that pool stick,
01:02:27
but he kind of emphasized swinging the pool stick. Okay. And then he emphasized being shot at five times.
01:02:36
The story was so awful, so incredible. Brian said he didn't think it was true, yet investigators did.
01:02:44
They believe Brian had just described the murder of Kim Dorsey. And I told my brother, you know, like, and he's like, do you really believe that?
01:02:57
And, you know, I'm just like, really? You know, but I didn't, you know, I didn't know.
01:03:02
Brian's not sure if he should believe Lance. Are you believing Brian? Brian tells us some things that only the person that was there would know.
01:03:10
But couldn't that make him a suspect? Yes. Could. Were you looking at him as a possible suspect?
01:03:16
At that point, yes. Yes. What were the details he knew about? He knew about the electronics in the sink.
01:03:23
That's not anything that we ever released. That's not something we would ever tell anyone.
01:03:28
He also knew about the pool cue, and he knew that it was a very expensive pool cue that was over $1,000, which that was accurate.
01:03:37
And he gave detectives a chilling detail, Kim's last words. What does he say? Does he say that she was dead, or does he say anything about that?
01:03:48
He said the lady was saying, stop. You're killing me. Investigators were now determined to find Lance.
01:03:57
Brian knew exactly where he was. Our friends from the marshal's office went and paid that apartment a visit,
01:04:04
and Lance was found hiding in the apartment. The long-missing Lance Kirkpatrick, once thought to be at sea,
01:04:10
had now washed up in a police interview room. Lance, have a seat over there, okay?
01:04:14
The beginning of the interview was, I mean, it was just a conversation. He was fairly forthcoming with his answers.
01:04:20
Well, I'd like to talk to you, okay? All right, about some stuff, all right? The detective asked Lance about the Dorseys.
01:04:26
He was careful not to mention Kim's murder. You and Derek get along pretty well.
01:04:31
Oh, we get along great. How about you and Kim? We get along great. You ever had any problems with her?
01:04:35
No, nothing like that. Okay. All right. No, I'm pretty much getting along with everybody.
01:04:42
Lance said he'd been to see his pal Derek at his fire station. Went out to the station 45 and got 100 bucks for him to go down south.
01:04:49
He said he was only gone for a day or so. He later tried to pay Derek another visit at his home.
01:04:55
I went over there a week ago, maybe a week and a half ago, looking for him. Do you remember what day it was that you went over there and did that?
01:05:06
Yeah, it was Georgia, Florida. Georgia, Florida. So it was Georgia, Florida. It was right before the game.
01:05:11
The very day Kim died. Lance was now putting himself at the crime scene. He told the detective he knocked on the Dorsey door, but that no one answered.
01:05:21
Did you go inside, don't let yourself in? No, no, no, no. The key wasn't even there.
01:05:25
Where's the key supposed to be? It's supposed to be up under the dog right there.
01:05:29
Where's the dog where? There's a little dog, like a fake dog by the door. Spare key? Little dog?
01:05:37
Lance had just admitted he knew how to let himself into the Dorsey home. suddenly the upended statue the detective noticed the morning they found
01:05:45
Kim's body made sense what I told you I didn't believe all your story what part of the story don you believe well Larry Kiskowski was convinced Lance had in fact found that key and sneaked into Kim house the detective was certainly not about to let this sleeping dog lie Coming up Betrayed by a Friend
01:06:08
The only thing I could do was howl. When Dateline continues. Lance Kirkpatrick told detectives he had driven over to the Dorsey's home that Saturday morning, but had not gone inside.
01:06:31
Detective Kiskowski wasn't buying it. I know you went inside the house last Saturday.
01:06:36
Or two Saturdays in Florida, Georgia. I haven't even given you a tip of the ice cream, bro.
01:06:41
All right. Do you play cards? Okay, if I show you my hand, do you think I'm going to win?
01:06:48
You got a good enough hand. The detective thought he did. Putting you at the scene?
01:06:53
I ain't going to break a sweat to put you at the scene. I can do that. The scene's going to tell the story.
01:06:58
That's when Lance put down his cards. I'm not saying anything else. Even so, the detectives felt they had enough.
01:07:06
Okay, man, time to go to jail. Lance Kirkpatrick was under arrest for Kim's murder.
01:07:11
But had he acted alone? Investigators cleared Brian of any involvement, though they still weren't sure about Derek.
01:07:18
They examined his electronic and financial records and eventually came up with nothing that tied him to his wife's murder.
01:07:25
We were looking to see if Derek had a life insurance policy on Kim that he was trying to connect or gain some type of financial benefit from her death.
01:07:35
Did he? To my knowledge, he didn't. It actually put him in a worse position. to have Kim out of the picture. Derek Dorsey was no longer a suspect in his wife's murder.
01:07:46
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office called to give him the news about Lance. Chief of detectives said, Mr. Dorsey, he goes, we made an arrest last night. And I said, who was it?
01:07:55
And they told me Lance Kirkpatrick. And I said, what are you arresting for? It didn't dawn on him that Lance had, in fact, been arrested for Kim's murder.
01:08:06
He had an outstanding warrant for some traffic violations and so forth. I figured,
01:08:10
And finally, they're questioning him. They're going to clear him. And okay, so this is no big deal.
01:08:15
But it wasn't to me. No. He told me they'd arrest him for the murder of my wife.
01:08:21
The only thing I could do was howl. Like some damn wounded animal trap. It was the betrayal.
01:08:28
This is the man that you said you believed would take a bullet. He would take a bullet for your wife, you said.
01:08:34
How can somebody do that to begin with? But then how can someone do that? to someone who didn't have a mean bone in her body?
01:08:42
How could someone do that to someone who had went out of their way to try to help them?
01:08:48
Lance Kirkpatrick pleaded not guilty to the charges of burglary, sexual battery, and murder.
01:08:55
It would take more than two years for Lance Kirkpatrick to stand trial. The prosecutor knew the challenges that lay ahead.
01:09:02
Was there a weak area of your case? Yeah, there's no witnesses. Not one single person could say, yes, that's what happened to Kim Dorsey.
01:09:12
Still, she believed the evidence would show Lance Kirkpatrick's guilt. The state opened its case, explaining how Lance had been determined to get inside the Dorsey home any way he could that Saturday, October 27, 2012.
01:09:27
We know how his day started. The prosecutor showed the video of Lance pulling into the Dorsey's community in that SUV.
01:09:35
I went over there a week ago, maybe a week and a half ago, looking for him. She replayed Lance's police interview, where he put himself on the couple's doorstep that morning.
01:09:50
Did you go inside then and let yourself in? No, no, no. The key wasn't even there.
01:09:55
She said the evidence would show that Lance had lied to police then and was still lying about what really happened that day.
01:10:02
Lance had broken into the Dorsey home, intending to rob the couple. It was our theory that Kim was asleep and was awakened by noise,
01:10:12
and that she wasn't expecting anyone, and that she wasn't inviting anyone in. So when she awoke that Saturday morning to find Lance Kirkpatrick standing in her home,
01:10:22
Kim likely went ballistic. The prosecutor called a reluctant Brian Kiefer to the stand.
01:10:28
To get up on the stand and to tell the truth, everybody's sitting there going, you snitch, you this, you that, you that.
01:10:38
You know, but they don't know the whole story. He explained how Lance had confessed everything to him.
01:10:44
How Lance admitted entering the house and confronting Kim violently when she picked up her phone to call for help.
01:10:50
And he said that he grabbed a pool stick and hit her a bunch of times and smashed the pool stick.
01:11:01
Leaving her unconscious on the bedroom floor. He said Lance described stepping out of the room, but then Kim woke up.
01:11:08
And she got a gun and started shooting at him. And he said, and I knew it was a revolver.
01:11:17
He didn't say he was in fear of his life or nothing like that, but you could tell he was angry.
01:11:24
And then he said, as she said, stop, you're killing me. And he said, and that's when I just stabbed that bitch in the neck.
01:11:34
And if you didn't believe Brian Kiefer, said the state, believe this science. An analyst testified that Lance's DNA had been found on Kim's body,
01:11:42
on the pool cue used to beat her and on the trash he left behind. Did you find any DNA on those cigarette butts?
01:11:50
Yes. And it belonged to? Lance Kirkpatrick. More evidence against him? Yes. That he was there?
01:11:56
Yes. Derek Dorsey also took the stand... that Lance and Kim had once been friends.
01:12:02
But in the months before her death, she had grown tired of their house guest. Kim had a house rule?
01:12:08
No smoking in the house. Was Lance able to follow that rule? Not 100%, no. That must have driven Kim nuts.
01:12:16
It would aggravate living daylights out of her. Did it get to the point where he had to leave because of it?
01:12:21
Yes. So it was really over the smoking? Yeah. Derek said after they kicked Lance out,
01:12:27
Kim wanted nothing more to do with him. In closing, the prosecutor said the defendant broke into the house because he knew Kim would never
01:12:35
willingly let him in. When she confronted him, he killed her. As he listened, Kim's husband realized how badly he had misjudged his former friend.
01:12:45
You know the old saying, the devil's in the details. During the whole trial, during the investigation, I wanted to know every detail I possibly could.
01:12:55
I want to know when, where, why, how, and in what chronological order. I'm here to tell you that's not something you want to know.
01:13:06
I'm here to tell you that's not something you want to know. Now, those details were out, made public in a court of law,
01:13:12
and Lance Kirkpatrick was about to use them, awful as they were, to defend himself.
01:13:19
Coming up, Lance talks to the jury and to us. I've never so much as raised my hand to a woman.
01:13:42
By the time his case went to trial, Lance Kirkpatrick had changed his story. He now admitted he was indeed responsible for Kim Dorsey's death,
01:13:52
but he didn't mean to kill her. The whole thing was just a terrible tragedy. I mean, I'm sure he wishes he could just rewind that whole part of his life.
01:14:02
Attorney Teresa Sopp said Lance Kirkpatrick's defense was that he tried to protect himself from a raging, violent Kim that morning,
01:14:10
and he went too far. He was being fired at. He was shot at five times by a pink-handled revolver held in the hand of a woman who was irate,
01:14:21
who was taking medication which says on the label that it can cause suicidal or homicidal actions.
01:14:27
It was a very intense social setting that resulted in just a very tragic end. She said the state could not prove otherwise.
01:14:37
When you just put the physical evidence out there and Lance is the only one to explain what happened that a reasonable hypothesis of innocence Lance Kirkpatrick took the stand I never so much as raised my hand
01:14:54
to a woman. Lance told the court then, and maintains now, there was no bad blood between
01:15:01
him and Kim, that she never kicked him out as Derek claimed. He later told us his version of
01:15:06
events. He said he went to the Dorsey's that morning to get some things he'd left behind.
01:15:11
Kim was home alone. Before he knew it, they were having sex in her bedroom. At some point, he said, they argued. When he stepped away to get something in the kitchen,
01:15:20
she snapped. She was standing in the bathroom door area in her bedroom. And you can see at the
01:15:28
kitchen right there. Well, the next thing you know, pow, pow, two shots. I hit the floor.
01:15:34
I don't know where she's at. When she took it to that, you know, extreme, what was I supposed to do?
01:15:41
Leave. Listen, where I was at in the kitchen, there's only two ways out. There's a back door and a front door.
01:15:49
I got to try and go either way. I have to stop at the door, unlock the door. I unlock the door. She's got a clear shot at me.
01:15:55
Based on the trajectory of the bullets, she was on the floor next to the nightstand beside the bed shooting up at you.
01:16:01
Yes. So again, why don't you just run out of the house? Because I don't know where her gun was unloaded. Why don't you run out?
01:16:09
I don't know where I didn't know where she was at. He said his gut reaction was to pick up a nearby pool cue and charge toward her.
01:16:16
I don't know how many times I swung. I don't know how hard I was swinging. My adrenaline was pumping so hard. I probably could have bench pressed a car.
01:16:26
My aim was not to hurt Kim. It was a reaction. Even when she was down and out, he said, he still felt the need to act.
01:16:33
Why did you zip tie her after she was unconscious? My first thought was to restrain her until the police got there.
01:16:43
And then once I started putting them on, I was like, oh, this is stupid. And then I went to the kitchen to get scissors, couldn't find scissors, got the knife, come back in to cut them off.
01:16:54
There was no way to get them off without cutting her. So I did away with that whole idea.
01:16:59
He said he dropped the knife, stepped away, and came back to the bedroom. Kim had somehow freed herself.
01:17:06
She was now standing, holding the knife. In that situation, it's hard to say what you would do or what the right thing is to do.
01:17:15
You're not thinking, you're just reacting. Well, this went very wrong. Yes, I agree.
01:17:20
Again, he said, they fought. Before he knew it, the knife was on the floor, and so was Kim.
01:17:26
Dad I remember getting up I remember looking at the knife and seeing the blood and knowing that I had to have stabbed her or something and I went to check to see where she was stabbed
01:17:38
At first, he said he waited for police, but when they didn't show, he left. When the police brought you in, why didn't you tell them the story that you told in trial?
01:17:47
I was scared to death. I was scared to death. I didn't say it out loud, even to myself, for six months after this happened.
01:17:56
Did you rape Kim Dorsey? No, I did not. Did you murder Kim Dorsey? No, I did not.
01:18:02
No, I did not. When I took her life, it was totally unintentional. Not True countered the state on cross.
01:18:09
It said Lance Kirkpatrick intentionally killed Kim when she dared to confront him.
01:18:13
You were pounding on that woman, aren't you? I wasn't aware of how hard or how light I was punching.
01:18:20
I was just swinging. You did kill Kim Dorsey, right? Yes, I did. When you stabbed Ken Dorsey in the neck that she would never want this earth again, right?
01:18:30
No, I did not know that. I didn't know she was dead until after I checked. There are people, law enforcement, prosecutor, people who've heard this story who think that what you say happened that day are just totally far-fetched.
01:18:43
They're far-fetched. They took this bloody, horrible scene and just thought of the worst possible thing that could have happened and went with it.
01:18:56
Some people think that you turned into an animal when you went in that room. And if you show blood splatter and everything else and just throw it out everywhere, yes, that can be said.
01:19:08
But that wasn't what happened. That wasn't what happened at all. He insisted he had killed Kim to protect himself.
01:19:15
There was no premeditated murder, he said, no burglary, and certainly no rape. The defense noted the medical examiner could only determine Kim and Lance had sex,
01:19:26
not that Kim had been raped. The only testimony was that the sex was consensual.
01:19:31
Everything else is physical evidence and speculation. So unless there's somebody else testifying, yes, I was physically assaulted, no, I did not consent,
01:19:43
you don't have that and all you have is the physical evidence, it's difficult to speculate that it was sexual battery.
01:19:51
The defense closed by saying the state had failed to prove its case. It argued Lance Kirkpatrick should only be convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
01:20:00
Those who worked to build the murder case against him shook their heads in disbelief.
01:20:05
If you're defending yourself, do you need to tie her up with zip ties? Do you need to rape her? Do you need to be with a pool stick?
01:20:12
Do you need to do the things that you done to her in defense of your life Complete complete made story As the case went to the jury Derek Dorsey sat in the courtroom and seethed
01:20:24
He killed her, raped her, sodomized her. This wasn't just some loss of control. To do something like this, you've got a hole in you.
01:20:33
There's something deep down evil inside of you to do something like this. The jurors agreed.
01:20:39
They found Lance Kirkpatrick guilty of murder in the first degree. Now they faced another agonizing decision,
01:20:46
whether to sentence him to death. I never thought I was ever in any danger of the death penalty
01:20:51
because I didn't feel I'd done something to deserve that. In the end, the jury sentenced him to life.
01:21:00
He is appealing his conviction. Derek Dorsey thinks his old friend got off way too easy.
01:21:06
If you could say anything to Lance Kirkpatrick, what would you say? At what point did you make the decision?
01:21:13
that Kim's life had less value than you getting into trouble. At what point did you decide to kill her?
01:21:24
Derek said it's taken time to move on with his life. He's retired from the fire department.
01:21:29
We have Derek Dorsey's last day pulling the engine out for the last time. And helps out at a friend's mental health counseling business.
01:21:37
You're a little family services. This is Derek. How about help you? He has lots of time now to reflect on Kim, their life together, and the mistakes made.
01:21:46
It led to infidelity on my part. And it was probably the most disrespectful, rude thing I could do to her.
01:21:54
And I'm going to live with that for the rest of my life. She didn't deserve it. And didn't deserve either the man Derek knows he brought into their world.
01:22:03
Still, he clings to the good things they shared. What memories does she leave behind for you?
01:22:09
Every time I look at the dogs, I think of her. They were her children. She was quiet, a little bit of an introvert,
01:22:15
and just a caring individual. I've seen it many, many times. Someone needs a hand or someone just needs,
01:22:24
you know, just someone to talk to. She was there. In some ways, she still is. But he knows that for every welcome memory,
01:22:31
there's a brutal one of her and what happened, churning somewhere like a storm, surprising and devastating when it hits.
01:22:42
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central.
01:22:48
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt.
01:22:53
For all of us at NBC News, good night.