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[Music] a young woman just landed her first big modeling job a few hours later she
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disappeared the weave pattern on some fabric the mixture of some concrete and a dog hair
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were the keys to the mystery [Music] [Music] it was a friday night in central illinois around 10 p.m a motorist saw an
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abandoned car along the side of the road the driver's side door was open the
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lights were still on the engine was running but there was no one inside a purse was
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inside the car the inside of the vehicle was a little bit disheveled it appeared to be a little bit
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suspicious there was no identification in the purse the car's license plate number was
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registered to david swann a 34 year old employee of the local newspaper when police called swann he said his
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girlfriend karen slover had borrowed his car that night to pick up her three-year-old son christopher who had
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spent the day with his grandparents but the car was nowhere near the grandparents home it was 40 miles away
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facing in a different direction at that point she's just missing you know at that point we're not sure if it's a
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kidnap it assume you assume it's a kidnapping hijacking on highway investigators asked family and friends
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if karen might simply have run away everyone said it was impossible friends said karen had just gotten her
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first professional modeling job and was excited about it she was an aspiring model and she had
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received a phone call from paris international indicating that they were going to
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possibly offer her some work out of state she was very excited about the modeling
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job she was flitting around the office with a big smile on her face and pretty much letting everyone know that she was
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excited about it two days passed still there was no sign of her then 40 miles away
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some boaters on lake shelbyville noticed something they thought it was some garbage a
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garbage bag that had floated up to the shoreline first thing i thought of when i saw that was how
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this this is going to be bad inside the bag was a woman's head nearby police found other garbage bags
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with the rest of her body i realized that there was a missing person from the friday night before a
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female in a neighboring county and the thought flashed through my mind that this probably is that missing female
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from the neighboring county dental records confirmed that the body was karen slover she was just 23 years
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old she liked everybody everybody liked her who could do such a bizarre thing you don't think about that happening to
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you until it does the bags were sealed with duct tape inside were chunks of cement and cinders
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consistent with the material found on the floor of the car karen was driving apparently
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the killer used the cement to keep the bags under water but the body gas is most likely raised them to the surface
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analysts found six dog hairs stuck to a piece of the tape but there were no fingerprints found on the tape or the
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bags the lake apparently washed away all other trace evidence i have been in law enforcement 33 years
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and i have seen a lot of carnage this affected me probably worse than anything that i've ever seen
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[Music] at karen slover's autopsy the medical examiner found she was shot in the head
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six times with a 22 caliber handgun at point-blank range somebody was very angry and
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i think when the actual murder occurred absolutely lost control and just continued to shoot until probably the
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gun was empty the last time anyone saw karen slover alive was when she left work to pick up
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her son who was spending the day with his grandparents more than likely karen was killed
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sometime between 5 8 5 pm when she left her job and 10 o'clock when roughly 10
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o'clock when her car was found out on the interstate there was many theories involved one was
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was she abducted by a pervert serial killer type investigation the first potential suspect was her
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ex-husband michael the father of her little boy there was obviously some violence in
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that relationship we talked to several people who indicated that michael had battered her in the past
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i don't think it was a good relationship karen wasn't very fond of michael's
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family either they were the ones babysitting karen's son christopher on the day of her murder
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karen had a tough time with her ex-in-laws they're the ones who watched her son
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and it was frequently stressful when she either would go to drop him off or to pick him up
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but karen's former husband michael slover had an alibi for the time of karen's disappearance he was working as
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a security guard at cub foods he had made an arrest that afternoon at cub foods the police had been there
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since michael had an alibi investigators turned their attention to karen's current boyfriend
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david swann he'd had some run-ins with law enforcement he'd been put on probation
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in the past he had pretended to be or impersonate a law enforcement officer in the past he'd spent time in a mental
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ward at a hospital 34 year old david swann had been dating karen for only a short time
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a background check revealed a disturbing incident he had been involved in killing a deer and then had
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put the deer over a swimming pool and had used a chainsaw or like instrument to clean the deer
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and due to the fact karen had been dismembered and we weren't exactly sure what the means of dismemberment were we
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were interested in information like that and david's alibi was shaky on the night
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of the murder he was attending a friend's wedding rehearsal and witnesses said he was 45 minutes late for the
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rehearsal dinner that followed this created a 45-minute window that could not be accounted for
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we were concerned that david swann was free for a period of time and could have possibly committed the crime during
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that time period i felt like he very very possibly could have been the one i remember telling the
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sheriff that i think i've got the guy [Music] karen told french he dreamt of moving to
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georgia to pursue her modeling career was it possible that david grew angry over her plans to leave
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investigators brought in a profiler to study david's past the fbi profiler indicated that david did match the
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profile of the type of person that could be responsible for this type of crime but investigators had no hard evidence
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against him and without it they couldn't obtain a search warrant despite repeated interrogations he
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denied having anything to do with karen's murder if david swann was the killer
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he might have committed the perfect crime [Music] police were convinced david swann was
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involved in karen slover's murder he had an alibi for the night of her murder except for a 45-minute period he
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said he was running some errands but no one could corroborate that [Music] after six months
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police decided to interrogate david one last time hoping he'd incriminate himself
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we all held hands and prayed that lord if this is your will that this if david swan is in fact the one involved
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you know let us get a confession if he is not if he's not involved give us a
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sign we can go elsewhere in this last interrogation police continued to ask where he was on
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the night of the murder during the time he couldn't account for the pressure paid off
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but not the way police expected we had him in there over four hours and right at the very end i mean we pushed
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and pushed and pushed him and right at the very end he tells us about this atm thing
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[Music] david said that the reason he was late to the rehearsal dinner was that he went
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to the bank investigators went to that bank and checked the atm surveillance video
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it showed david swann just as he said it would we were able to verify through the atm tapes david swan did not
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have a window of opportunity to commit this crime with david swan cleared there were no
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other suspects investigators feared that karen slover's murder might never be solved i took it
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personally i spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking about this case wondering what i was
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missing what we weren't doing what we needed to do to actually come up with the killer in this case
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as a last resort police looked one more time at the crime scene it was clear there had to be another car
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at the scene there had to be more than one person involved with this you couldn't leave a
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vehicle along the interstate and walk back to wherever you you left from someone had to drive there and pick you
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up and take you back so who would have had the motive and the opportunity to commit this crime
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karen's ex-husband michael had an alibi for the night of the murder but his parents did not they were the ones
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watching karen's son christopher on the day of the murder michael slover senior
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he works at a power plant up in the decatur area and once he clocked out he has no alibi
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after that time he's not slower who wasn't employed or anything she had no
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alibi or anybody to collaborate their alibi 51 year old jeanette slover detested her
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ex-daughter-in-law karen and everyone knew how much she loved her three-year-old
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grandson christopher i think the relationship between jeannette and the boy was not normal
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that jeannette treated the boy as her own and actually believed it was her own son
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in fact she told friends that after christopher was born she began breastfeeding him
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investigators checked telephone records and discovered that michael jr called his parents 12 times on the weekend of
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the murder also suspicious the slovers owned a used car lot just one mile from their house
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the lot patrolled by two junkyard dogs was always dirty and in disrepair just after karen disappeared neighbors
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said the lot got a makeover michael jr and michael senior were seen by the neighbors out of miracle motors
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out cleaning up the lot cutting brush cutting weeds burning items and the neighbors would told us that you know
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this place was a junk heap they'd never been out there to clean it up was it possible they were trying to
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remove something connected to karen's murder to find out investigators contacted richard monroe a
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well-known forensic geologist concrete and cinders were found with karen's body could he tell if they came
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from the slover's car lot both samples were placed in a scanning electron microscope and hit with high
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energy radiation in a vacuum in the sem the darkness that's in the little chamber there is no
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light source the only light puts in is the x-rays this enables the images of the samples
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to be magnified up to 5 000 times their actual size visually the samples looked similar
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monroe then ground the samples into a powder and bombarded it with x-rays to identify the chemical makeup of the
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samples monroe concluded that the material found in the bag with karen's body
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and the material from the car lot were similar enough to raise suspicions it wasn't a direct physical match where
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it was exactly from a certain piece but all the elements fit together to say you
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have a high level of consistency but investigators needed more than that and to get it
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they turned to an unlikely source the united states army [Music] more than two years after karen slover's
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murder investigators now suspected that her ex-in-laws were involved the motive karen's former mother-in-law jeannette
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wanted sole custody of her three-year-old grandson i think jeanette slover is filled with
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rage i think that the relationship between jeanette and karen was not good i think that
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jeannette felt like the boy was her own that karen was a threat to take the boy from her and she had to eliminate the
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threat investigators found no forensic evidence inside the slover's house but
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concrete from their used car lot was consistent with concrete found in the garbage bags with karen's body
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investigators wanted more proof and went to unusual lengths to get it they called in the army to help them
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remove all the top soil from the slover's 5 000 square foot car lot during the late winter snowstorm
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five gallon buckets were filled with material for six painstaking months teams of investigators sifted through
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the debris finally they found a potential clue a button that read authentic paris sports club
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the jeans karen was found in had the exact same buttons i get goosebumps thinking about it right
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now i'm not kidding you i mean i've got goosebumps just think i mean it was so
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exciting because we had worked so long so hard on this and really had not come up with anything that was the first
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piece of evidence we felt like we had that was going to lead us to the direction of the killers
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further sifting revealed some rivets which were also consistent with karen's
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jeans then investigators found a different type of button it was cloth covered plastic the
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type used on shirts and blouses i called the investigator and i asked where's the white sleeve that was on
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karen's body he goes wet sleeve and i said i can see here in the crime scene
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photos that there's a cloth covered button on that sleeve i want that sleeve
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scientists took a fiber from the button on karen's blouse and placed it under a comparison microscope
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both buttons were composed of a cotton polyester mix the next thing was to identify the weave
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patterns on both buttons in this case we had a simple one by one weave pattern and that was consistent both with the
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button that was found at miracle motors in the button that came from the sleeve of karen slover
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both buttons were the same size made of the same material covered with the same fabric with an identical weave pattern
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finally the slovas had two dogs and scientists wondered if the hair on the duct tape
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came from one of them the analysis of animal dna for forensic applications is unusual in that there
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are probably only three or four labs in the country that do it only one of the six dog hairs from the
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duct tape provided enough dna for an analysis we concluded that there was a dna match
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between the hair on the duct tape and the reference dog and that therefore the chances were very
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high that the hairs came from the same dog jeanette and michael slover senior and
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their son michael jr were all charged with first degree murder michael jr was charged because
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he aided his parents in the planning and commission of the crime the motive the slovers were afraid karen
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would move out of state depriving them of time with christopher based on the forensic evidence
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prosecutors believe karen went to the slover's car lot to pick up her son [Music]
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[Applause] [Music] during the dismemberment buttons from her blouse and jeans fell
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on the ground and they used cement and cinders from their lot to give weight to the plastic
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bags containing karen's body some of the dog hair stuck to the tape they used to close the garbage bags
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and its dna matched the slover's dog they dumped karen's body into lake shelbyville and abandoned her car
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along a deserted highway [Music] but the forensic evidence linked the slovers to the murder in
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every imaginable way obviously this was a highly circumstantial case but the forensic
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evidence we had was was pretty clear-cut although michael jr was working at the time of the murder
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he called his parents 12 times that weekend and helped clean up the crime scene afterwards prosecutors were
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convinced he was actively involved in planning the murder and cover-up the three slovers were all convicted of
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first-degree murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison we were delighted that it was finally
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over and the fact that all three of them were found guilty was even a major blessing because we
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felt all three of them were were involved i think the lord had some intervention
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in this and put us down the right path so that's just my little evangelizing to you
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for what it's worth [Music] [Music] [Music] you