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[Music]
00:00:04
up next a nursing student disappears
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it's really a mystery as to where she's
00:00:09
vanished and her ex boyfriend is the
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prime suspect
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i'm telling the police i'd really like
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for you to take a look at him but
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without a body is there even a case
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you don't have a crime yet what's the
00:00:20
crime the only real clue is a set of
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keys
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the trick for investigators is finding
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out which door
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they might open the keys are a mystery
00:00:30
at this point
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[Music]
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ever since she was a little girl tamika
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houston
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wanted to be a professional singer and
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many thought she had the talent to make
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it
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[Music]
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she loved to sing she would practice her
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songs she tried out for american idol
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and sat
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outside i think for a day and she was
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devastated when she didn't make the
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first cut
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realizing how difficult it was to make
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it in the entertainment business
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at the age of 24 tamika decided to enter
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nursing school when classes ended
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and summertime came tamika finally had
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some free time
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she didn't have class to report to she
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didn't have a job
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to go to every morning she was very
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spontaneous
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she was the type of person to get in her
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car and kind of go
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and that's what everyone thought had
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happened when they couldn't get in touch
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with her
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but after two weeks passed her family
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became alarmed
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i called police and said that there's
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clearly
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something wrong i can't locate my knees
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she's not returning anyone's phone calls
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tamika was 24 years old and it's
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perfectly acceptable for someone who
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doesn't want to
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call someone to not call them police in
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spartanburg
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south carolina went to tamika's house
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her car was gone
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and the doors were locked but they
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gained access through
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an open window in the back room
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police found tamika's dog and
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a litter of puppies all on the verge of
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starvation
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i remember the detective coming and
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telling me that she loved animals and
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she would not have left her animals
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there were no signs of violence and no
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indication
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where she'd gone police issued a be on
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the lookout bulletin for tamika's car
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a 1991 black honda
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it could have been a traffic accident
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off the side of a road and
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which would still be a tragedy but it
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would be a criminal tragedy
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family and friends put up missing person
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flyers all over town
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as a mother is very difficult not
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knowing where my daughter is or hoping
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that
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and thinking that she's okay and safe
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police checked to make a cell phone and
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credit card records
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and there had been no activity during
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the time she'd been missing
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tamika's ex-boyfriend terence moss
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went to police and offered his
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assistance
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he had been living with tamika until
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three months earlier when they broke up
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there was an incident at her house where
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she accused him of hitting her and
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striking her
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however many flares can go off in a law
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enforcement officer's mind that's how
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many would have gone off with
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terence smalls moss said he knew nothing
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about tamika's disappearance
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although he admitted the assault
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claiming
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it was a one-time incident i punched her
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i actually punched her um and i
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fell down on my knees and i started
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praying and i was like there's just so
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many demons in here that
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you know we we're becoming physical with
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each other now that we just need to
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separate
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because of that incident tamika had
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filed an assault charge against
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moss and she disappeared just two weeks
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before she was to appear
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in court she was a victim of domestic
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violence
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she's supposed to go to court and
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testify against this guy
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as we kept pressuring and pushing and
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repeating questions to him
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he became agitated and finally just shut
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down from us
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and refused to talk to us completely
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terence moss is
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prime suspect number one
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one month had passed since tomeka
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houston disappeared
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and police were no closer to finding her
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she could still be alive we don't know
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there was still kind of like an
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undercurrent of a sense of hope
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then a tenant in a nearby apartment
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complex called police with a tip
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flyers were distributed all over
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spartanburg tamika houston's face became
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very familiar to people in this area a
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woman saw the flyer
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and saw the description picture of the
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car on there
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and said you know this looks like a car
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that's parked behind barksdale
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apartments
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and she was correct it was tamika's car
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parked just four miles from tamika's
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home
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cars are easy to track with respect to
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license tags and
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vin numbers and in many instances cars
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are more distinctive
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in some ways than people are no one
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living in the apartment saw anyone
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driving the car or parking it
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inside police found no forensic evidence
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no blood
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and no sign of a struggle the only clue
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was a partial fingerprint which didn't
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match tamika's ex-boyfriend
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terence moss or anyone in the national
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fingerprint database the car wasn't the
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treasure trove i'm sure police had hoped
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for
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but investigators did find a set of keys
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on the passenger side floor you could
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see that one looked like an automobile
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key and one looked like a house key
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none of the keys worked in tamika's car
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so we thought maybe those were the keys
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to tamika's house
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but they didn't work there either the
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keys don't belong to tamika houston
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so maybe they belong to the person
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responsible for her disappearance
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the keys were dusted for fingerprints
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but none were found
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then investigators noticed a code
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on one of the keys it had a special
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stamp on it
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it was stamped with aa14 nothing that
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indicates who cut the key
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who put the stamp on it it was just a
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key with a stamp
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investigators took the key to all the
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locksmiths in the area
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miraculously one of them was able to
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identify it
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he said i can tell you who i made it for
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so he pulls his records out and after
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looking through his records for a while
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he finds who that code was and that was
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for fremont school apartments
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that's a great break it's a great break
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it is amazing how much
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luck the hard workers have it's amazing
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fremont school apartments is once a
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local elementary school and
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the government converted it into some
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some public
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housing detectives tried the key in each
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of the 46
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apartments strangely it didn't open
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any of them but it did open
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a storage area door it fit a door in the
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basement
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and the the door that it fit in the
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basement when it opened up
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that was a an apartment that was closed
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it had been taken offline because of
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flood issues
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investigators asked forensic technicians
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to look for possible evidence
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inside that room we ended up seizing
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all the evidence out of that offline
00:07:52
apartment and it was a tremendous amount
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and we processed it for any kind of dna
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or anything for tamika
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and it ended up being a dead end also
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no one in the apartment complex had seen
00:08:04
a woman matching
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tamika's description there was a lot i
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think
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false hope during that time
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then the apartment manager offered a
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possible
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explanation when a tenant is evicted
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maintenance often removes the entire
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doorknob
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from the evicted tenant's apartment door
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and replaces it
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with the doorknob from another apartment
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so that the person who moved out can't
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come back later with a copied key
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and enter that apartment again
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unfortunately
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they didn't keep good records of which
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door knobs were swapped
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meaning the doorknob from the basement
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unit
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could have come from any apartment in
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the complex
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investigators were convinced that the
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apartment key
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found in tamika houston's car held the
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secret
00:09:01
to her disappearance but it didn't open
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any of the apartment doors in the
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fremont school apartments
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only a basement storage area
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so investigators asked for a list of
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tenants
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including those who'd been evicted
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and they showed that list to tamika's
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friends and relatives
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you get to a point where you've run out
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of more traditional leads
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so you're going to pursue it even if
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it's a somewhat unusual
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lead her best friend mention there's
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this guy named chris that she started
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seeing
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around the time of her disappearance
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there was only one person
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named chris on the tenant list
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christopher hampton he'd been evicted
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from the fremont apartments
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one month after tamika disappeared
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he also had a police record he served
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four years in prison for bank robbery
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investigators located chris hampton he
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was in prison
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serving a 30-day sentence for a parole
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violation
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but records showed he was free at the
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time of tamika's disappearance
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when questioned hampton said he knew
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tamika
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but he didn't know where she was she
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said i won't go to bike week
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she said who she was going with no she
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didn't say she said she's gone
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did you see her at any point after that
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hampton's prince did not match the
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partial print found in tamika's car
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but investigators got a huge break when
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hampton's former girlfriend
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the mother of his two young children
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called police
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she said hampton mailed her his wallet
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for safekeeping since he wasn't
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permitted to keep it in prison
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she says i've got his wallet if y'all
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want to come look at it she told police
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she called because she'd been following
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news stories about tamika houston's
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disappearance
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and was well aware that hampton had been
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living in the fremont apartments she
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also said
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there was a tiny speck of blood on the
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wallet
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it was very important if it wasn't for
00:11:16
that media coverage there
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um that that young lady may have never
00:11:20
came forward
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i examined the photograph found the spec
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of potential blood took it through the
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preliminary testing for
00:11:29
blood and it passed it was positive but
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whose blood
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was it to find out investigators needed
00:11:36
dna
00:11:37
from tamika's family in this case we had
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the mother and the father so you can
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quickly ascertain whether or not
00:11:43
this unknown sample could have
00:11:44
originated from an
00:11:46
offspring from those two parents the dna
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test left no doubt the blood
00:11:54
was tamika's when confronted with this
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evidence
00:11:58
hampton again denied any involvement
00:12:02
whatever happened to tamika happened
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right there in your apartment
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i don't believe that well you know it
00:12:08
could be in my blood
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no it can't be anybody's blood how long
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you think we've been doing this
00:12:14
you don't know that we can tell one
00:12:15
person's blood from another blood
00:12:19
you ever heard of dna no
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but prosecuting a case without a body is
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never
00:12:26
easy her body is not turned up
00:12:30
you've got pets abused no contact with
00:12:33
your family
00:12:34
and an injury that led to a loss of
00:12:37
blood
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and your car has been abandoned that's
00:12:40
pretty good circumstantial evidence
00:12:43
that something bad happened to you
00:12:46
but you still got murder manslaughter
00:12:49
involuntary
00:12:50
self-defense accident what do you have
00:12:54
to fill in any of those five
00:12:57
scenarios right now
00:13:03
fourteen months after tamika houston's
00:13:05
disappearance
00:13:06
her ex-boyfriend terence moss was no
00:13:09
longer considered a suspect
00:13:12
that's because police found tamika's
00:13:14
blood in a wallet
00:13:15
belonging to chris hampton a man
00:13:18
who tamika had been dating at the time
00:13:21
of her disappearance
00:13:24
hampton once lived in apartment 215 of
00:13:27
the fremont school apartments
00:13:29
but more than a year had passed and
00:13:32
another family was now living there
00:13:35
then a young woman called police to say
00:13:38
she was inside apartment 215
00:13:42
with chris hampton around the time of
00:13:45
tamika's disappearance
00:13:48
and she'd seen something suspicious
00:13:52
there was a large brownish red stain on
00:13:55
the floor
00:13:56
in the bedroom and that the dresser was
00:13:59
pulled over
00:14:00
in front of the closet door which was
00:14:02
odd
00:14:04
entering apartment 215 fremont
00:14:06
apartments
00:14:07
there's the entrance door the living
00:14:11
room
00:14:12
investigators obtained a search warrant
00:14:15
and found
00:14:15
evidence of a cleanup in the master
00:14:18
bedroom
00:14:19
just as she described whenever law
00:14:22
enforcement sees bleach
00:14:24
they think clean up crime scene clean up
00:14:27
blood
00:14:28
so you start peeling away the carpet and
00:14:31
when we pulled the carpet up there was a
00:14:33
large
00:14:34
reddish-brown stain that was on the back
00:14:36
of the carpet and
00:14:37
into the padding on the floor
00:14:40
this stain tested positive for human
00:14:43
blood
00:14:44
and they found more blood elsewhere in
00:14:47
the apartment
00:14:49
not only was there blood in the bedroom
00:14:51
there was blood in the closet
00:14:53
which was in some instances even more
00:14:56
interesting how would a blood stain get
00:14:58
inside
00:14:59
a closet analysts sprayed
00:15:03
luminol in every room of the apartment
00:15:06
and found
00:15:07
even more blood
00:15:09
[Music]
00:15:11
you just know that this is where
00:15:13
something really bad and really violent
00:15:15
happened
00:15:16
you immediately know that she was moved
00:15:20
from here and taken into the closet and
00:15:23
laid in the closet
00:15:24
because the one in the closet's the
00:15:26
perfect size of a head
00:15:28
with the tests that are in use today
00:15:30
throughout the world we have a
00:15:32
sex determining link so we knew it was a
00:15:34
female
00:15:36
we had a full profile we had all 13
00:15:38
locations that we look at
00:15:39
dna testing confirmed the blood
00:15:43
was tamikas it just took all the life
00:15:46
out of me because i knew
00:15:48
that uh hey my daughter was in an
00:15:52
apartment and there was enough blood
00:15:54
that my daughter could have died the
00:15:56
blood evidence
00:15:58
and information provided by the young
00:16:00
woman gave investigators
00:16:02
a picture of what happened he sticks her
00:16:05
in a closet and goes and gets a girl and
00:16:07
has sex with her and
00:16:08
enjoys a meal and then has to figure out
00:16:11
how am i going to get this body out of
00:16:12
my apartment
00:16:16
when investigators confronted chris
00:16:18
hampton
00:16:19
he initially had nothing to say
00:16:22
but he must have realized the weight of
00:16:25
the evidence against him because
00:16:27
he made police an offer he stands up and
00:16:31
he says
00:16:32
let's go we said where we going are we
00:16:35
going to the jail
00:16:37
are we going are you going to show us
00:16:39
where she's at
00:16:40
he says i'll show you where she's at
00:16:43
hampton led investigators to a wooded
00:16:46
area
00:16:47
about 12 miles away and pointed
00:16:50
to the exact spot where he buried
00:16:53
tamika's body
00:16:55
he said he was sure because he left a
00:16:58
marker
00:16:59
he just said that he made a cross out of
00:17:01
sticks that he found laying around
00:17:03
on the ground and just laid him out on
00:17:05
the ground in a cross
00:17:06
pattern in a shallow grave
00:17:10
investigators found a woman's remains
00:17:14
dental records confirmed it was tamika
00:17:17
houston
00:17:19
it was really a difficult time for our
00:17:21
entire family
00:17:22
and to see my sister like suffer so much
00:17:25
you never really recover
00:17:26
fully from from um losing someone in
00:17:29
that way
00:17:30
it's like somebody
00:17:34
taking a pitchfork that's burning
00:17:39
and sticking it to your chest the side
00:17:41
your heart is on
00:17:43
it's another way to describe this pain
00:17:47
hampton told police that tamika stopped
00:17:50
by his apartment while he was ironing
00:17:53
his clothes
00:17:56
they got into an argument hampton said
00:17:59
it was because he was seeing other women
00:18:05
hampton admitted he lost his temper
00:18:08
and struck her in the head with his iron
00:18:11
a tiny drop of blood landed on the
00:18:14
inside of his wallet
00:18:17
blood also dripped onto the carpet
00:18:20
the evidence shows hampton wrapped
00:18:23
tamika's body in the bed sheets
00:18:25
and put it in the closet
00:18:32
then he pulled his chest of drawers in
00:18:35
front of the closet door
00:18:39
[Applause]
00:18:41
hampton brought another woman back to
00:18:44
his apartment
00:18:45
who saw the blood stain on the floor
00:18:56
the next day hampton used a friend's car
00:18:59
to transport tamika's body to the wooded
00:19:02
area
00:19:03
where he buried her in a shallow grave
00:19:09
hampton rented a carpet cleaner and
00:19:11
removed as much blood as he could
00:19:13
although he couldn't remove everything
00:19:17
large amounts of dna remained
00:19:22
later when he abandoned tamika's car in
00:19:24
a nearby apartment complex he
00:19:26
inadvertently dropped
00:19:28
his own keys on the passenger side floor
00:19:31
[Music]
00:19:32
a set of keys with a locksmith stamp
00:19:36
that led straight to his front door
00:19:40
if we had not found out where that key
00:19:42
went um we would probably still be
00:19:44
looking for tomeka
00:19:46
i imagine that the police officer wanted
00:19:48
to probably kiss
00:19:50
this locksmith uh if not do more than
00:19:52
that when he said that yeah i recognized
00:19:54
this key
00:19:56
at first hampton claimed it was an
00:19:58
accident
00:19:59
i'm not telling you that he premeditated
00:20:01
it i'm telling you
00:20:03
that he struck a blow with malice that
00:20:05
resulted in her death
00:20:07
and if you doubt for one second whether
00:20:09
or not that's true
00:20:11
look at what he did after it happened
00:20:15
chris hampton changed his mind on the
00:20:18
first day of his trial
00:20:20
are you guilty of the crime of murder
00:20:23
yes sir
00:20:24
christopher hampton pled guilty the
00:20:25
morning we were set to draw the jury
00:20:28
and i was surprised he pled guilty
00:20:31
we were ready had opening statement i
00:20:34
was going to try the case with
00:20:36
another prosecutor in my office we were
00:20:38
ready
00:20:40
as a result hampton was convicted
00:20:43
and sentenced to life in prison without
00:20:47
parole he came as close to getting away
00:20:50
with it
00:20:51
as double a14 stamped on a key
00:20:54
he came close to it the morals of the
00:20:57
story
00:20:58
are you don't know what the most
00:21:00
important piece of evidence is going to
00:21:01
be
00:21:03
until after the trial is over in this
00:21:05
case it happened
00:21:07
to be a key which led you to a crime
00:21:13
[Music]
00:21:14
scene
