14x19 - Skeleton Key

[bunniefuu]

Up next, a nursing
student disappears...

It's really a mystery as to
where she's vanished.

And her
ex-boyfriend is the prime

suspect.

I'm telling the police, "I'd
really like for you to take a

look at him."

But without a body,
is there even a case?

You don't have a crime yet.

I mean, what's the crime?

The only real clue
is a set of keys.

The trick for investigators is
finding out which door they

might open.

The keys are a mystery at
this point.

A little girl, tamika huston
wanted to be a professional

singer, and many thought she had
the talent to make it.

Would practice her songs.

She tried out for
"American idol" and sat

outside, I think, for a day.

And she was devastated when she
didn't make the first cut.

Realizing how
difficult it was to make it in

the entertainment business, at
the age of 24, tamika decided to

enter nursing school.

When classes ended and
summertime came, tamika finally

had some free time.

She didn't have class to
report to.

She didn't have a job to go to
every morning.

She was very spontaneous.

She was the type of person to
get in her car and kind of go.

And that's what
everyone thought had happened

when they couldn't get in touch
with her, but after two weeks

passed, her family became
alarmed.

I called police and said that
there's clearly something wrong.

"I can't locate my niece.

She's not returning anyone's
phone calls."

Tamika was 24 years old, and
it's perfectly acceptable for

someone who doesn't want to call
someone to not call them.

Police in
spartanburg, south Carolina,

went to tamika's house.

Her car was gone, and the doors
were locked, but they gained

access through an open window.

In the back room, police found
tamika's dog and a litter of

puppies, all on the verge of
starvation.

I remember the detective
coming and telling me that she

loved animals and she would not
have left her animals.

There were no signs
of v*olence and no indication

where she'd gone.

Police issued a "be on the
lookout" bulletin for tamika's

car... a 1991 black Honda.

It could have been a traffic
accident off the side of a road,

which would still be a tragedy,
but it wouldn't be a criminal

tragedy.

Family and friends
put up missing-person fliers all

over town.

As a mother, it's very
difficult not knowing where my

daughter is or hoping that and
thinking that she's okay and

safe.

Police checked
tamika's cellphone and

credit-card records, and there
had been no activity during the

time she'd been missing.

Tamika's ex-boyfriend,
Terence moss, went to police and

offered his assistance.

He had been living with tamika
until three months earlier, when

they broke up.

There was an incident at her
house where she accused him of

hitting her and striking her.

However many flares can go
off in a law-enforcement

officer's mind, that's how many
would have gone off with

Terence moss.

Moss said he knew
nothing about tamika's

disappearance, although he
admitted the as*ault, claiming

"it was a one-time incident."

I punched her.

I actually punched her.

And I fell down on my knees and
I started praying, and I was

like, "it's just so many demons
in here that, you know, we're

becoming physical with each
other now that we just need to

separate."

Because of that
incident, tamika had filed an

as*ault charge against moss, and
she disappeared just two weeks

before she was to appear in
court.

She was a victim of domestic
v*olence.

She's supposed to go to court
and testify against this guy.

As we kept pressuring and
pushing and repeating questions

to him, he became agitated and
finally just shut down from us

and refused to talk to us
completely.

Terence moss is prime suspect
number one.

One month had
passed since tamika huston

disappeared, and police were no
closer to finding her.

She could still be alive.

We don't know.

There was still kind of like an
undercurrent of a sense of hope.

Then a tenant in a
nearby apartment complex called

police with a tip.

Fliers were distributed all
over spartanburg.

Tamika huston's face became very
familiar to people in this area.

A woman saw the flier and saw
the description... picture of

the car on there... and said,
"this looks like a car that's

parked behind barksdale
apartments."

And she was correct.

It was tamika's car parked just
four miles from tamika's home.

Cars are easy to track with
respect to license tags and

v.I.N. Numbers.

And in many instances, cars are
more distinctive in some ways

than people are.

No one living in
the apartments saw anyone

driving the car or parking it.

Inside, police found no forensic
evidence, no blood, and no sign

of a struggle.

The only clue was a partial
fingerprint, which didn't match

tamika's ex-boyfriend,
Terence moss, or anyone in the

national fingerprint database.

The car wasn't the treasure
trove, I'm sure, police had

hoped for.

But investigators
did find a set of keys on the

passenger's-side floor.

You could see that one looked
like an automobile key and one

looked like a house key.

None of the keys
worked in tamika's car.

So we thought maybe those
were the keys to tamika's house.

But they didn't
work there, either.

The keys don't belong to
tamika huston, so maybe they

belong to the person responsible
for her disappearance.

The keys were
dusted for fingerprints, but

none were found.

Then, investigators noticed a
code on one of the keys.

It had a special stamp on it.

It was stamped with "a-a-1-4"...
Nothing that indicates who cut

the key, who put the stamp on
it.

It was just a key with a stamp.

Investigators took
the key to all the locksmiths in

the area.

Miraculously, one of them was
able to identify it.

He said, "I can tell you who
I made it for."

So, he pulls his records out,
and after looking through his

records for a while, he finds
who that code was, and that was

for fremont school apartments.

That's a great break.

It's a great break.

It is amazing how much luck the
hard workers have.

It's amazing.

Fremont school apartments was
once a local elementary school,

and the government converted it
into some public housing.

Detectives tried
the key in each of the 46

apartments.

Strangely, it didn't open any of
them, but it did open a

storage-area door.

It fit a door in the
basement, and the door that it

fit in the basement, when it
opened up, that was an apartment

that was closed.

It had been taken offline
because of flood issues.

Investigators asked
forensic technicians to look for

possible evidence inside that
room.

We ended up seizing all the
evidence out of that offline

apartment, and it was a
tremendous amount.

And we processed it for any kind
of DNA or anything for tamika,

and it ended up being a dead end
also.

No one in the
apartment complex had seen a

woman matching tamika's
description.

There was a lot, I think,
false hope during that time.

Then the apartment
manager offered a possible

explanation.

When a tenant is evicted,
maintenance often removes the

entire doorknob from the evicted
tenant's apartment door and

replaces it with a doorknob from
another apartment.

So that the person who moved
out can't come back later with a

copied key and enter that
apartment again.

Unfortunately, they
didn't keep good records of

which doorknobs were swapped,
meaning the doorknob from the

basement unit could have come
from any apartment in the

complex.

Investigators were
convinced that the apartment key

found in tamika huston's car
held the secret to her

disappearance, but it didn't
open any of the apartment doors

in the fremont school
apartments, only a basement

storage area.

So investigators asked for a
list of tenants, including those

who'd been evicted, and they
showed that list to tamika's

friends and relatives.

You get to a point where
you've run out of more

traditional leads, so you're
gonna pursue it even if it's a

somewhat unusual lead.

Her best friend mentioned
there's this guy named Chris

that she started seeing around
the time of her disappearance.

There was only one
person named "Chris" on the

tenant list...

Christopher Hampton.

He'd been evicted from the
fremont apartments one month

after tamika disappeared.

He also had a police record...
He served four years in prison

for bank robbery.

Investigators located
Chris Hampton.

He was in prison serving a


violation, but records showed he
was free at the time of tamika's

disappearance.

When questioned, Hampton said he
knew tamika but he didn't know

where she was.

Hampton's prints did not match
the partial print found in

tamika's car, but investigators
got a huge break when Hampton's

former girlfriend, the mother of
his two young children, called

police.

She said Hampton mailed her his
wallet for safekeeping, since he

wasn't permitted to keep it in
prison.

She says, "I've got his
wallet if y'all want to come

look at it."

She told police she
called because she'd been

following news stories about
tamika huston's disappearance

and was well aware that Hampton
had been living in the fremont

apartments.

She also said there was a tiny
speck of blood on the wallet.

It was very important.

If it wasn't for that media
coverage there, that young lady

may have never came forward.

I examined the photograph,
found the speck of potential

blood, took it through the
preliminary testing for blood,

and it passed.

It was positive.

But whose blood was it?

To find out, investigators
needed DNA from tamika's family.

In this case, we had the
mother and the father, so you

can quickly ascertain whether or
not this unknown sample could

have originated from an
offspring from those two

parents.

The DNA test left no doubt...

The blood was tamika's.

When confronted with this
evidence, Hampton again denied

any involvement.

But prosecuting a case without a
body is never easy.

Her body has not turned up.

You've got pets abused, no
contact with your family, and an

injury that led to a loss of
blood, and your car has been

abandoned.

That's pretty good
circumstantial evidence that

something bad happened to you,
but you've still got m*rder,

manslaughter, involuntary,
self-defense, accident.

What do you have to fill in any
of those five... Scenarios right

now?


tamika huston's disappearance,

her ex-boyfriend, Terence moss,
was no longer considered a

suspect.

That's because police found
tamika's blood in a wallet

belonging to Chris Hampton... a
man who tamika had been dating

at the time of her
disappearance.

Hampton once lived in apartment


apartments, but more than a year
had passed, and another family

was now living there.

Then, a young woman called
police to say she was inside

apartment 215 with Chris Hampton
around the time of tamika's

disappearance...

And she'd seen something
suspicious.

There was a large,
brownish-red stain on the floor

in the bedroom, and that the
dresser was pulled over in front

of the closet door, which was
odd.

Entering apartment 215
fremont apartments.

There's the entrance door...

The living room.

Investigators
obtained a search warrant and

found evidence of a cleanup in
the master bedroom just as she

described.

Whenever law enforcement sees
bleach, they think "clean up

crime scene, clean up blood."

So, you start peeling away the
carpet.

And when we pulled the carpet
up, there was a large,

reddish-brown stain that was on
the back of the carpet and into

the padding on the floor.

This stain tested
positive for human blood, and

they found more blood elsewhere
in the apartment.

Not only was there blood in
the bedroom, there was blood in

the closet, which was, in some
instances, even more

interesting.

How would a bloodstain get
inside a closet?

Analysts sprayed
luminol in every room of the

apartment and found even more
blood.

You just know that this is
where something really bad and

really violent happened.

You immediately know that she
was moved from here and taken

into the closet and laid in the
closet, because the one in the

closet is the perfect size of a
head.

With the tests that are in
use today throughout the world,

we have a sex-determining link,
so we knew it was a female.

We had a full profile.

We had all 13 locations that we
look at.

DNA testing
confirmed the blood was

tamika's.

It just took all the life out
of me because I knew that my

daughter was in an apartment and
there was enough blood that my

daughter could have d*ed.

The blood evidence
and information provided by the

young woman gave investigators a
picture of what happened.

He sticks her in a closet and
goes and gets a girl and has sex

with her and enjoys a meal, and
then has to figure out, "how am

I gonna get this body out of my
apartment?"

When investigators
confronted Chris Hampton, he

initially had nothing to say,
but he must have realized the

weight of the evidence against
him, because he made police an

offer.

He stands up and he says,
"let's go."

We said, "where we going?

Are we going to the jail?

Are we going... are you gonna
show us where she's at?"

He says, "I'll show you where
she's at."

Hampton led
investigators to a wooded area

about 12 miles away and pointed
to the exact spot where he

buried tamika's body.

He said he was sure because he
left a marker.

He just said that he made a
cross out of sticks that he

found laying around on the
ground and just laid them out on

the ground in a cross pattern.

In a shallow grave,
investigators found a woman's

remains.

Dental records confirmed...

It was tamika huston.

It was really a difficult
time for our entire family, and

to see my sister, like, suffer
so much.

You never really recover fully
from losing someone in that way.

It's like somebody...

Taking a pitchfork...

That's burning...

And sticking it to your chest...
The side your heart is on.

There's no other way to describe
this pain.

Hampton told police
that tamika stopped by his

apartment while he was ironing
his clothes.

I got plans. I'm going out.

Plans with who?

They got into an argument.

Hampton said it was because he
was seeing other women.

I'm not going out with no
little girl, all right?!

I heard all about it.

Hampton admitted he
lost his temper and struck her

in the head with his iron.

A tiny drop of blood landed on
the inside of his wallet.

Blood also dripped onto the
carpet.

The evidence shows Hampton
wrapped tamika's body in the

bed sheets and put it in the
closet.

Then, he pulled his chest of
drawers in front of the closet

door.

Hampton brought another woman
back to his apartment, who saw

the bloodstain on the floor.

The next day, Hampton used a
friend's car to transport

tamika's body to the wooded
area, where he buried her in a

shallow grave.

Hampton rented a carpet cleaner
and removed as much blood as he

could, although he couldn't
remove everything...

Large amounts of DNA remained.

Later, when he abandoned
tamika's car in a nearby

apartment complex, he
inadvertently dropped his own

keys on the passenger's-side
floor... a set of keys with a

locksmith's stamp that led
straight to his front door.

If we had not found out where
that key went, we would probably

still be looking for tamika.

I imagine that the police
officer wanted to probably kiss

this locksmith, if not do more
than that, when he said that

"yeah, I recognize this key."

At first, Hampton
claimed it was an accident.

I'm not telling you that he
premeditated it.

I'm telling you that he struck a
blow with malice that resulted

in her death, and if you doubt
for one second whether or not

that's true, look at what he did
after it happened.

Chris Hampton
changed his mind on the first

day of his trial.

Are you guilty of the crime
of m*rder?

Yes, sir.

Christopher Hampton pled
guilty the morning we were set

to draw the jury, and I was
surprised that he pled guilty.

We were ready.

I had an opening statement.

I was gonna try the case with
another prosecutor in my office.

We were ready.

As a result,
Hampton was convicted and

sentenced to life in prison
without parole.

He came as close to getting
away with it as "aa14" stamped

on a key.

He came close to it.

The morals of the story are,
"you don't know what the most

important piece of evidence is
gonna be until after the trial's

over."

In this case, it happened to be
a key, which led you to a crime

scene.