00:00:00
[Music]
00:00:04
up next
00:00:05
an exotic dancer vanishes it was driving
00:00:09
me crazy that she didn't come home
00:00:11
was a jealous boyfriend involved he was
00:00:13
kind of vague
00:00:14
or was she simply a runaway she could
00:00:17
have met someone who had money
00:00:18
someone who improved her life but a
00:00:20
police cadaver dog and the burned key
00:00:23
point to a violent confrontation
00:00:26
i watched forensic files csi i just feel
00:00:29
like
00:00:30
there's no hope there's no hope
00:00:36
[Music]
00:00:42
attention all strippers here's a song
00:00:45
you can work it out too
00:00:46
as soon as this beat come in you let the
00:00:48
freak come out
00:00:49
let it take total control
00:00:52
[Music]
00:00:56
instead of finishing high school shamaya
00:00:58
smith dropped out and worked as a dancer
00:01:00
at the cahoots gentlemen's club in east
00:01:02
hartford connecticut
00:01:05
i didn't approve of it i've always
00:01:07
talked to her about
00:01:08
getting a a job it's a lot safer
00:01:13
one night shamaya didn't return home
00:01:15
after work
00:01:17
concerned her family called police she's
00:01:21
a very respected young lady
00:01:22
and all we want is her to come home safe
00:01:24
and sound
00:01:26
in a search for answers police
00:01:28
questioned
00:01:29
shamaya's boyfriend the boyfriend
00:01:32
reportedly had some
00:01:34
drug involvement he was living with
00:01:36
shamaya smith at her parents home when
00:01:38
she went missing
00:01:39
and he had seen her the day she went
00:01:40
missing he told police
00:01:42
she left for work around 3 p.m but said
00:01:46
he didn't know who had given her a ride
00:01:49
the boyfriend's story that your
00:01:50
girlfriend is leaving and meeting a
00:01:52
stranger
00:01:53
this would lead most people to conclude
00:01:56
that maybe the story wasn't true
00:01:59
shimaya's family gave police a potential
00:02:02
clue
00:02:03
someone had left a message on shamaya's
00:02:06
cell phone
00:02:07
at 11 55 a.m before shamaya left for
00:02:20
work
00:02:22
bye the significance of this message
00:02:26
was enormous it gave the police and
00:02:29
investigators
00:02:30
another avenue to go down no one knew
00:02:33
who this person was
00:02:34
i didn't know i just knew something
00:02:37
something wasn't right the number was
00:02:39
traced to a wealthy local businessman
00:02:42
56 year old kenneth otto
00:02:46
we found out that mr otto was a standing
00:02:49
person
00:02:50
he had a family a wife and kids he was a
00:02:53
somewhat successful industrial
00:02:55
business owner had no prior criminal
00:02:57
record and
00:02:58
liked to hang around strip clubs
00:03:01
[Music]
00:03:02
ken otto was a regular at the cahoots
00:03:04
club where shamaya worked
00:03:07
and he admitted he had given shimaya a
00:03:09
ride to work
00:03:10
that afternoon he said that he called
00:03:14
shamaya
00:03:14
and when he called her she requested
00:03:17
that he bring her to work
00:03:19
because she didn't have any
00:03:20
transportation so he agreed to bring her
00:03:22
to work
00:03:23
he said that he last saw her going
00:03:25
through the front doors of the cahoots
00:03:26
and that he drove off
00:03:29
but police found another customer who
00:03:31
insisted
00:03:32
he had given shamaya a ride to cahoots
00:03:35
that afternoon
00:03:40
his name was harold brown another
00:03:43
regular customer
00:03:45
he claimed he not only dropped shamaya
00:03:47
off at the club
00:03:48
he stayed and went inside for a few
00:03:51
hours
00:03:53
he also claimed he drove shamaya home
00:03:56
later that night but according to her
00:03:59
family
00:04:00
she never made it inside
00:04:03
so police now had two men both
00:04:06
insisting they were the last ones to see
00:04:09
shamaya
00:04:10
alive and shamaya's boyfriend was still
00:04:14
a suspect but where
00:04:17
was shamaya
00:04:23
two customers of the cahoots gentlemen's
00:04:25
club both claimed
00:04:27
they drove shamaya smith to work on the
00:04:29
day she disappeared
00:04:31
[Music]
00:04:33
one of those men ken otto took a
00:04:35
particular
00:04:36
interest in shamaya
00:04:40
other dancers at the cahoot said that
00:04:42
kenneth otto would spend
00:04:44
more time with shamaya he would give her
00:04:46
extra attention
00:04:47
sit next to her buy her drinks
00:04:50
talk with her kenato also admitted he'd
00:04:54
given shamaya 500
00:04:56
to continue her education and i told her
00:04:59
nobody's going to give you 500 dollars
00:05:01
just for nothing
00:05:03
you had to do something and i was like
00:05:05
just promise me you won't
00:05:07
never go along with anybody again like
00:05:09
that because people you just don't
00:05:11
you can't trust everybody in ken
00:05:14
otto's version he claimed shamaya walked
00:05:17
into the club on the day he gave her a
00:05:19
ride
00:05:21
but the club's security tapes disputed
00:05:24
that
00:05:26
we viewed the videos surveillance tapes
00:05:28
from cahoots
00:05:30
and found that she never entered the
00:05:32
establishment on the day
00:05:33
that she went missing in harold brown's
00:05:36
version
00:05:37
he not only claimed that shamaya went
00:05:39
into the club after he dropped her off
00:05:41
he also said he went in too
00:05:44
and stayed for several hours again
00:05:48
the security tapes didn't show shamaya
00:05:51
or
00:05:52
harold brown in the club that day
00:05:55
but the security tapes from the day
00:05:57
before
00:05:58
explained brown's confusion it was
00:06:01
determined
00:06:02
that he brought her home the day prior
00:06:05
to her going
00:06:06
missing brown had simply
00:06:09
gotten his dates confused
00:06:12
it was apparent that he was being
00:06:13
truthful there was no motive that we
00:06:15
could establish why he would commit a
00:06:17
crime
00:06:18
so police focused their attention on ken
00:06:21
otto
00:06:22
since he'd left a message on shamaya's
00:06:24
phone several hours before he admitted
00:06:27
picking her up on a hunch
00:06:30
shimaya's sister decided to try
00:06:33
subterfuge
00:06:34
she called ken otto and left the message
00:06:38
on his voicemail i caused him to
00:06:41
pretend to be shamaya if i was like hey
00:06:44
kenny it's maya just wanted to know if
00:06:45
you want to hook up
00:06:46
just call me when you get this message
00:06:49
and she never received a phone call back
00:06:52
and that was very telling because now
00:06:55
you ask yourself
00:06:56
why wouldn't he call her back then and
00:06:58
ask how she's doing
00:07:00
when police asked ken otto directly
00:07:04
if he'd ever had a sexual relationship
00:07:06
with shamaya
00:07:08
he said that wasn't possible
00:07:11
he told us that he was unable to perform
00:07:14
sexually
00:07:15
due to some surgery
00:07:18
a condition that he had he has erectile
00:07:21
dysfunction
00:07:22
it was not very i tried to think of a
00:07:25
word
00:07:28
successful investigators checked
00:07:31
shamaya's cell phone records and
00:07:33
discovered
00:07:34
that five days before her disappearance
00:07:37
she made two cell phone calls that
00:07:39
bounced off a tower
00:07:41
directly across the street from a
00:07:43
75-acre piece of land
00:07:46
owned by ken otto
00:07:49
we thought maybe there's a possibility
00:07:51
she might be there being held against
00:07:52
her will
00:07:53
we had officers on the ground and i
00:07:55
directed that they go into the property
00:07:57
and
00:07:58
confirm that there was no one there in
00:08:00
need of assistance
00:08:04
police asked canado if they could search
00:08:07
the property
00:08:08
he agreed to consent search of his
00:08:10
property on easter sunday
00:08:12
when police arrived they noticed
00:08:14
construction equipment
00:08:16
a trailer some vehicles and a fire pit
00:08:20
there was some heavy burning in the fire
00:08:22
pit there was a smell of fuel
00:08:24
but something else bothered
00:08:26
investigators
00:08:28
apparently otto didn't mind the police
00:08:30
looking around
00:08:31
but the cadaver dogs were another story
00:08:36
he became very upset when the dogs
00:08:38
arrived it appeared to me that he was
00:08:40
worried we were going to find something
00:08:42
there was a wood chipper on the property
00:08:45
there's history of cases in the past
00:08:47
where
00:08:47
people have used wood chippers to
00:08:49
dispose of human bodies
00:08:52
at this point convinced he'd cooperated
00:08:55
as much as he needed to
00:08:56
otto asked the police to leave you know
00:08:59
what i needed to wrap this up
00:09:01
i uh i didn't know you were coming out
00:09:02
here with all these guys and walls and
00:09:04
stuff so
00:09:05
yeah wrap this up all right now all
00:09:08
right
00:09:09
when someone grants a consent to search
00:09:12
their property they're entitled to
00:09:14
revoke that
00:09:15
but by this time the cadaver dogs had
00:09:18
already picked up a scent
00:09:20
in the fire pit one of the dogs found
00:09:24
a chunk of flesh that we it appeared to
00:09:27
be animal flesh
00:09:29
once again ken otto had an explanation
00:09:34
you might find a beaver there excuse me
00:09:38
a beaver i i shot one a while back and
00:09:41
burned it in the pit okay
00:09:44
there was no obvious evidence of of uh
00:09:47
of a beaver being in the fire pit ken
00:09:50
otto explained that he liked to
00:09:52
kill animals and chop them up and spread
00:09:54
them in the sand
00:09:55
it was disappointing that mr otto
00:09:58
revoked his consent but we knew we
00:10:00
would be back
00:10:06
two weeks after shamaya smith's
00:10:08
disappearance
00:10:09
investigators no longer considered her
00:10:12
boyfriend a suspect
00:10:14
the boyfriend saw shamaya leave the
00:10:16
house
00:10:17
and walk out and that was the last time
00:10:19
that he saw it
00:10:20
i believe that the boyfriend was telling
00:10:21
the truth
00:10:24
investigators were more interested in
00:10:27
shamaya's relationship with
00:10:28
ken otto a customer at the cahoots
00:10:31
gentlemen's club
00:10:32
and a piece of land he owned
00:10:35
in rural connecticut it's about 75 acres
00:10:40
large it's landlocked that means it's
00:10:42
surrounded by
00:10:43
other forests there's one road
00:10:46
which is the dirt road access to it
00:10:50
by his own admission otto was the last
00:10:53
known person to see shamaya alive when
00:10:55
he picked her up at her home
00:10:57
on the day she disappeared otto allowed
00:11:00
police to conduct an initial search of
00:11:03
his property but
00:11:04
asked them to leave when he realized
00:11:06
they brought
00:11:07
cadaver dogs in order to perform
00:11:11
a more detailed search detectives needed
00:11:14
both
00:11:15
a warrant and lots of heavy equipment
00:11:18
and manpower there were two
00:11:21
jurisdictions involved in this
00:11:23
there was a substantial rainstorm that
00:11:26
came
00:11:26
during that week that hampered the
00:11:28
efforts and they all came together
00:11:30
causing an eight-day delay
00:11:33
not only could the rainstorm have washed
00:11:35
away any evidence
00:11:37
but eight days gave otto
00:11:40
plenty of time to clean up a possible
00:11:43
crime
00:11:44
scene all of our fears are realized when
00:11:47
the police go on the property
00:11:48
ken otto is in a full-sized tractor
00:11:51
attempting to
00:11:52
bury the frame of his 30-foot trailer
00:11:56
that was demolished and burned mr otto's
00:11:59
property
00:12:00
looked like man-made hell a person that
00:12:03
was in the process of destroying
00:12:04
everything
00:12:05
trees digging holes destroying the dirt
00:12:08
road that goes into the property
00:12:11
but the one thing otto hadn't yet
00:12:13
destroyed
00:12:15
was the fire pit i was very happy to see
00:12:18
that the fire pit
00:12:19
hadn't been disrupted all that much
00:12:22
almost immediately
00:12:24
detectives got a break in the embers
00:12:28
they found a house key
00:12:31
i took the key cleaned it up placed it
00:12:33
in the door lock of shamaya smith's home
00:12:36
and it unlocked and opened the house so
00:12:39
it was
00:12:39
shamaya smith's house key but this
00:12:42
didn't prove
00:12:43
otto killed her in the fire pit
00:12:47
police also found a spent bullet and
00:12:50
three shell casings from a 40 caliber
00:12:53
handgun
00:12:55
on the ground near the burned out
00:12:57
trailer
00:12:58
investigators found a mop a vacuum
00:13:01
cleaner
00:13:02
and a large piece of carpet serologists
00:13:06
looked for blood
00:13:07
even though it had been sitting in the
00:13:09
rain and mud for days
00:13:11
it's definitely a forensic science
00:13:12
nightmare especially when you're dealing
00:13:13
with
00:13:14
uh mother nature tampering with the
00:13:16
evidence and really just presenting
00:13:18
extra challenges the carpet was marked
00:13:21
with a grid
00:13:22
of four inch squares which were then
00:13:25
swabbed with phenolphthalein and
00:13:28
hydrogen peroxide
00:13:30
a chemical combination which turns pink
00:13:34
when it comes in contact with blood
00:13:37
i started getting areas that were
00:13:38
positive with my screening test
00:13:40
and so that got me a little excited and
00:13:42
i was ready to forge ahead on this thing
00:13:45
each area that tested positive was
00:13:48
marked with a piece of tape
00:13:51
slowly an unmistakable pattern
00:13:54
began to emerge it ended up being an
00:13:57
area that was four
00:13:58
feet by one foot in size
00:14:02
to everyone who saw it it was a body
00:14:05
it appeared to be a human body
00:14:08
the outline was in human blood
00:14:11
but when it was tested for dna
00:14:14
investigators got a setback
00:14:17
no dna was present it was just too much
00:14:19
bacterial contamination
00:14:22
investigators were beginning to wonder
00:14:24
if they would ever
00:14:26
solve this case
00:14:32
i'm looking for the worst but hoping for
00:14:33
the best and
00:14:35
the worst is she's not coming home so i
00:14:38
tried to prepare myself for
00:14:40
whichever comes my way but when you
00:14:43
in a situation like this you really
00:14:45
can't prepare yourself
00:14:48
in the search for shamaya smith
00:14:50
investigators collected
00:14:52
dozens of what appeared to be bone chips
00:14:55
from the fire pit on ken
00:14:57
otto's property and sent them to the
00:15:00
forensics lab
00:15:02
this skeleton was burned so
00:15:03
significantly that it was
00:15:05
nearly destroyed as if it would have
00:15:07
been in a commercial cremation
00:15:10
the fragmentation was so severe that
00:15:13
you had pieces that were the size of a
00:15:15
fingernail
00:15:16
it really is like a needle in a haystack
00:15:18
it's an anthropologist nightmare
00:15:21
after close examination forensic
00:15:23
anthropologists concluded the majority
00:15:26
of the bones were human but that didn't
00:15:28
mean police were any closer to knowing
00:15:30
if
00:15:31
the bone ships were shamayas there was
00:15:34
a lot of thermal destruction this would
00:15:38
suggest of a tremendous fire
00:15:41
that lasted for as much as days
00:15:45
i had never worked with samples
00:15:49
that had been so charred and so burnt
00:15:52
before
00:15:53
so i was very hesitant as to whether i
00:15:55
would be able to generate
00:15:57
a dna profile from these remains
00:16:00
but in a case with so few lucky breaks
00:16:03
the forensic anthropologist finally got
00:16:06
one
00:16:07
they found a piece of a foot with soft
00:16:09
tissue
00:16:10
there was still organic material there
00:16:12
was still definitely the potential of
00:16:14
getting dna out of that foot
00:16:15
well the other big challenge was that we
00:16:17
didn't have a known
00:16:18
sample from shamaya smith so what we had
00:16:21
to do in that case was
00:16:23
take those dna profiles regenerated from
00:16:27
tissue and burnt skin and bone
00:16:30
and then make a comparison to shamaya
00:16:33
smith's biological mother and biological
00:16:35
father
00:16:36
dna tests revealed that the bone and
00:16:40
tissue found in ken otto's fire pit
00:16:44
was from shamaya smith we have enough
00:16:48
evidence to establish that the
00:16:50
reason he destroyed all that evidence is
00:16:52
because he violently
00:16:53
caused her death two months after
00:16:56
shamaya's murder
00:16:58
ken otto was arrested at a local airport
00:17:01
he was carrying a briefcase containing
00:17:04
ten thousand dollars
00:17:06
he had toiletries his passport and
00:17:08
various other items
00:17:10
and he also had a small bag with uh some
00:17:12
condoms in it
00:17:13
and some cialis which is basically
00:17:17
viagra generic viagra i have no doubt
00:17:19
that he would have bought a ticket and
00:17:21
flown to
00:17:21
parts unknown taking mr otto into
00:17:24
custody was a pretty proud moment in my
00:17:25
life
00:17:28
by his own admission ken otto
00:17:31
pick shamaya up for work but
00:17:35
the evidence shows that instead of
00:17:37
taking her to the cahoots gentlemen's
00:17:39
club
00:17:40
he drove 30 miles to his property
00:17:44
on the outskirts of town
00:17:47
no one knows what happened after that
00:17:51
just sit down for a second
00:17:55
but prosecutors believe that at some
00:17:58
point
00:17:59
otto shot and killed shamaya
00:18:03
inside the trailer with a 40 caliber
00:18:05
handgun
00:18:07
then he rolled her body in a piece of
00:18:10
carpet
00:18:11
creating the blood stains later found
00:18:15
by forensic analysis
00:18:18
then he burned shamaya's body
00:18:24
for days in the fire pit
00:18:30
when cadaver dogs picked up the scent in
00:18:32
the fire pit
00:18:33
otto asked police to leave
00:18:37
and he had eight days to carry out the
00:18:39
most
00:18:40
extensive cover-up investigators had
00:18:43
ever seen but he couldn't destroy
00:18:48
everything investigators found
00:18:51
shell casings a spent bullet shamaya's
00:18:55
house key
00:18:56
hundreds of bone fragments and even
00:18:59
part of her foot which all told the
00:19:03
gruesome
00:19:04
tale of a needless murder
00:19:07
i think she was very naive about
00:19:12
everyone she knew like she just put her
00:19:14
trust in everyone and you cannot do that
00:19:18
ken otto was tried and convicted of
00:19:21
shamaya's murder
00:19:22
and tampering with evidence at the end
00:19:25
of the day
00:19:26
uh he's a cold-blooded killer
00:19:31
for that reason mr otto you can stand up
00:19:35
on the count of murders into the custody
00:19:37
of the commissioner of corrections for a
00:19:38
period of 60 years
00:19:41
i was ecstatic when i heard the jury
00:19:43
decision that he was guilty for murder
00:19:45
it was a great feeling to uh you know
00:19:48
not only to bring the case
00:19:50
to an end but also uh again for the
00:19:53
family
00:19:55
you know to have to have a uh a good
00:19:57
outcome for the family was
00:19:58
very important to me the whole thing was
00:20:00
really frustrating i'm thinking okay
00:20:02
well maybe this man
00:20:04
may get away with it but
00:20:07
i was determined i was going to fight to
00:20:09
the end we were all going to fight to
00:20:10
the end so
00:20:11
my sister cares in peace and she can get
00:20:13
the justice she deserves
00:20:16
for virtually everyone involved the most
00:20:18
difficult aspect of the crime
00:20:20
was determining ken otto's motive
00:20:24
mr otto exhibited sadistic behavior with
00:20:27
his treatment of animals and
00:20:29
he may have been deciding to carry that
00:20:31
kind of behavior
00:20:32
up to a higher level and harm a human
00:20:35
being i couldn't understand why he would
00:20:36
do what he did
00:20:38
we all have unanswered questions we
00:20:40
couldn't even have a proper funeral for
00:20:42
her because there was nothing to have
00:20:45
it may look like a pile of burned
00:20:48
fragments
00:20:48
that are completely unrecognizable but
00:20:51
in the hands of a trained forensic
00:20:53
anthropologist they will find something
00:20:55
uniquely human
00:20:57
and they will tie him to that victim mr
00:21:00
otto thought he was going to outsmart us
00:21:02
and um he was pretty sure of it and he
00:21:05
was going to do
00:21:06
anything he could to to try to outsmart
00:21:08
us but
00:21:09
it didn't work
