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[music playing]
MAN: I'm going, OK.
I'm going.
Get out of my face!
NARRATOR: On a hot summer evening in 1992,
neighbors heard the familiar sound of an argument coming
from the Campano the residence.
-No way! I quit!
I promise, I quit!
[screaming]
NARRATOR: According to Christopher Campano,
his wife left the house shortly after their argument
to calm down.
-Quick, get out here!
Go! I quit!
NARRATOR: Caren Campano was never seen again.
[theme music]
Caren Campano was just two weeks shy of her 43rd birthday
when she disappeared.
She had just come back to Oklahoma City
after visiting her three children
who were living in New York.
Back to the home she shared with her third husband, Chris.
-She had come back to New York and she
went to talking about moving back because of her family.
And-- And she was upset.
NARRATOR: Chris and Caren Campano
were married in December of 1987.
Friends described them as an odd couple.
She was 15 years older than Chris
and it was her third marriage, his first.
They were introduced to one another
by Caren's best friend, who also happened to be Chris's mother.
Chris was a drifter, worked construction jobs,
and spend some time in jail for petty theft.
Caren was the main wage earner working as a bill collector
for this credit adjustment company in town.
On the evening of July 1, 1992, Chris and Caren
had one of their frequent arguments,
this time over his use of drugs.
CHRIS: And I was into drugs and she was, you know,
nagging at me and trying to get me into drug programs,
and you know, just trying to help.
NARRATOR: It was loud enough for the neighbors to hear.
-I could hear Caren screaming.
No, please, please.
And, don't do that.
Couldn't make out a lot of what's being said,
just a lot of screaming.
NARRATOR: According to Chris, after the argument Caren left
the house for a walked, headed to the Buy For Less
convenience store for some personal items,
a few blocks away.
Chris left, too, driving to a local bar for a few drinks,
staying until about midnight.
The next morning, Chris called Caren's office
to see if she had reported to work.
Her supervisor said, she hadn't shown up, or even called in.
Chris then phoned the police to report her missing.
When the police arrived to take Chris' statement,
they looked around briefly and reported
seeing no evidence of foul play, or anything
out of place or unusual.
KUHLMAN: If a person is going to run away or leave her husband,
she's not just going to walk away
and leave everything behind.
She's going to take the things that mean the most to her.
Especially when you're dealing with a woman, things
of, you know, toiletries, makeup, and that kind of thing.
And of course, we found all those things
intact in the bedroom, in the bathroom.
And it was if she just disappeared off
the face of the earth without taking anything with her.
NARRATOR: While the police were there,
Chris mentioned that the house had been burglarized the night
before while he was out drinking and that some items
were missing.
Police asked Chris to sign a waiver
to allow a search of the house.
DET NEILSON: And he agreed to do so.
And thought that would be good.
And even commented that he hoped that we found
something in the house that would
help us with the investigation.
KUHLMAN: The first thing I recall
seeing is, the bed was against the south wall.
And right next to the bed was a large white trash bag.
And underneath that trash bag I could
see a very large brownish-colored stain.
Of course, the next thing we did was went and got
some Hemosticks, which we carried in our vehicle.
NARRATOR: A Hemostick is a chemical strip that
can immediately tell whether or not blood is present.
KUHLMAN: You take the dry Hemostick,
and with your finger, just lightly smear it on the suspect
stain to where some of it is transferred on the Hemostick.
Take a drop of distilled water, put it on the Hemostick.
Flick off the excess water.
And you have a dark green, which is a positive presumptive
test for the presence of blood.
NARRATOR: The stain on the carpet was, indeed, blood.
But was it human?
And if so, whose was it?
-The first day we were in the house,
I put on a pair of gloves, and that spot on that carpet
was still moist.
This piece of carpet and the padding
was completely soaked with blood.
It was such a massive amount of blood,
that there were still actual moisture involved,
that it was not completely dry.
NARRATOR: The carpet was removed and delivered to the Oklahoma
City Police Departments Forensic Chemistry Lab.
-I went on to do a Octalony test.
It's a species determination test
to determine as to whether or not
that blood came from a human or an animal source.
NARRATOR: It was human blood.
-That was enough to convince me that we weren't dealing
with a routine missing persons case.
NARRATOR: The police needed more you go on, and felt
the answers lay inside the Campano's house.
When police discovered human blood inside the Campano's
bedroom, they suspected the blood
stain might belong to Caren Campano.
They also suspected that Chris knew more
about her disappearance than he was admitting.
-She left at 7:30.
And what did you do then? -I went to--
NARRATOR: Under police questioning,
Chris maintained that he knew nothing about his wife's
whereabouts, but his alibi was weak.
The bartender didn't recall seeing
Chris Campano on the night of July 1.
And police discovered that Chris had pawned some of Caren's
jewelry the morning after her disappearance.
Without a body, the only thing left for the police to do
was run more tests inside the house.
There weren't any visible signs of violence,
besides the bloodstained they found in the bedroom.
DR. JORDAN: We saw a typical little frame house
for central Oklahoma City, that, as you went inside,
looked quite clean, quite neat.
Things had been cleaned out of it.
The walls looked clean, ceiling looked clean,
the floor looked clean.
So there wasn't much to see at all.
NARRATOR: So they decided to look for blood which may have
been cleaned up, or wasn't visible to the naked eye.
To do so, investigators used a special chemical solution
called luminol, an extremely sensitive test which can detect
blood which has been removed by water,
or even detergents and bleach.
-Luminol is a fluorescence-type chemical.
Spray it on a substance that may contain blood,
it reacts with the heme group in the blood itself.
The iron portions will luminous of fluoresce.
NARRATOR: To do the luminol test,
investigators needed complete darkness,
so they waited until nightfall.
They began their chemical dragnet in the bedroom,
where they discovered the stain on the carpet
a few days earlier.
First, they took photographs of the room the way
it looked to the naked eye.
Then they sprayed the luminol.
The results were astonishing.
-There were some instances in that house where it glowed so
brightly that you could actually see the person standing
next to, there was so much blood in there.
NARRATOR: The luminol told a horrific tale.
Blood had been everywhere-- on the walls, the ceiling,
on the doors.
DR. JORDAN: It looked like a bloodbath had occurred there,
something from a horror movie.
NARRATOR: Even more telling was the blood spatter,
which is the placement of the stains.
Where they were located, the size of the drops,
and the trails of blood all told a story.
Someone had been beaten in the bedroom with a blunt object.
-They we're in two trails, what we refer to as castoff trails.
So if you had an object, for example, in your hand
and that object was blood covered,
and if you were swinging that object overhead,
the centripetal force of pulling the blood down
to the end of the object will pass the blood in the direction
that the object is being swung.
And in this case, it's going to the ceiling.
There are two distinct trails.
And you can tell that there's at least two swings
with the blood covered object.
NARRATOR: Luminol was then applied
to the rest of the house.
And even to the outside steps and walkways.
CAPTAIN BEVEL: At one point, there's a swipe of blood
that was on the kitchen door leading into the utility
room that would have been about head level
if you were carrying a body, had to turn the body sideways
to get through a normal door.
And then, at that point, it appeared the body was laid down
on the ground, and then drug from the utility room
down the back steps.
DR. JORDAN: And you could see pooled luminescence
on each step.
And then drag marks that were luminescent and all the way
down the walkway until you get to the point
that you were at the driveway.
And at that point, they disappeared.
Very, very dramatic presentation.
NARRATOR: The house was telling it's story.
One of an apparently gruesome attack.
But there was still unanswered questions.
Where was the body?
And the weapon?
And was the blood Caren Campano's?
Police still couldn't prove a *** had been committed.
Although the police knew someone was violently attacked inside
to Campano residence, they couldn't
be sure a homicide had been committed.
Was there enough blood in the Campano house
to prove that someone was dead?
And was that someone Caren Campano?
-The investigators, at a later time,
decided that we would go back and try to do a measurement
test to see how much blood had to have been bled out
on that carpet to make that size of a stain.
NARRATOR: Police made sure their test
was as accurate as possible.
They used a piece of the original carpet,
as well as a weight to simulate a human head.
Next, they poured human blood around the weight
until they created a stain measuring 887 square inches,
the same size stain they originality discovered.
-Statistically, one could say that between 1,300 and 1,400
cc's of blood would create that-- would create that stain.
NARRATOR: That's more than 40% of the blood volume
of a woman Caren Campano's size.
No one could survive with that amount of blood loss.
-So at that point, it became pretty apparent to me
that, if this lady was missing, and if this lady was dead,
that this lady probably was killed right there.
NARRATOR: The authorities now knew a homicide had been
committed in the house, and that someone
had died in the bedroom in a pool of blood.
But was the victim Caren Campano?
Police didn't have a sample of Caren Campano's blood
to compare to the blood stain.
If Caren's mother and father were still living,
it would've been a simple matter to examine their DNA,
since Caren would have received half
of her DNA from her mother, and half from her father.
But Caren's father was deceased.
The Oklahoma City Police Department
asked the FBI to get involved, to see if there was
any way they could figure out whether the blood found
in the house belonged to Caren Campano.
The police obtained blood samples
from Caren's mother, her two sisters, her three children,
and one of her ex-husbands.
-And so in this particular case, the object of the examination
was to see if this DNA from the blood stain of unknown origin
was matching-- at least half of the DNA
was matching-- to the relatives from Caren Campano.
NARRATOR: Hal Deadman of the FBI's DNA Analysis Unit
conducted what is called RFLP analysis, analyzing pieces
of DNA from four different chromosomes.
This is the DNA profile of Caren Campano's mother.
And next to it, on either side, are
two of her daughters, Caren Campano's sisters.
Both daughters share half of their DNA with their mother.
This lane shows a DNA sample from one
of Caren Campano's ex-husband's.
The next lane shows a sample from his son,
whose mother was Caren Campano.
The father and son both share the upper band.
The son would have received the lower band from his mother,
which matches the band from his grandmother, Caren's mother.
The next autorad compares the family members' DNA
to the unknown blood stain found in the Campano home.
The top marker matches the genetic profile
from the first of Caren Campano's children.
And the markers from the blood stain
also matched the bands from Caren Campano's two
other children from another marriage.
-The results were more fairly straightforward.
They were totally consistent with the blood
coming from Caren Campano.
NARRATOR: Eight months after the disappearance of Caren Campano,
police concluded that Christopher Campano
murdered his wife, and was arrested.
All of the evidence pointed towards Chris Campano--
the forensic evidence, the argument neighbors heard
on the night of Caren's disappearance,
Chris' lack of an alibi for the entire evening,
and the fact that he pawned some of her things.
The prosecution believed that Caren Campano never
left her house for a walk, as her husband had suggested.
[yelling]
Neighbors heard Caren and Chris arguing that night.
And the forensic evidence suggests that the argument
moved to their bedroom, where it escalated to
and turned violent.
As Chris stood near the window, he struck Caren in the head
with a blunt object at least three times, possibly more,
producing the castoff blood trails
on the ceiling and walls.
Caren fell to the floor, her head striking the bedpost,
where her blood was also found.
As Caren lay bleeding from her massive head injuries,
Chris left and went to a local bar.
He needed to wait until the neighbors were
asleep before removing Caren's body.
When he returned home, he wrapped Caren's body
in a sheet with a telephone wire and carried her
through the house.
Luminol tests showed that Caren's head brushed
against the door leaving a blood smear,
later cleaned with detergent.
Chris then dropped the body onto the floor
and dragged it through the side door and out towards the car.
He probably disposed of her body late that night
in a deserted location.
After returning home, Chris removed all visible traces
of blood, both inside and out.
The DNA analysis showed the blood found on the carpet
belonged to Caren Campano.
And the medical examiner would testify that Caren Campano
suffered horrendous head injuries
during the attack, which no one could survive.
Prosecutors were confident of a conviction,
even though they didn't have a body, or a *** weapon.
-I thought it was very likely we might
never find the body victim.
NARRATOR: But just preliminary hearing
was set to get under way, everything changed.
The police found Caren Campano.
-This part right here wasn't quite so grown up
with all this ivy, and she was laying right down there
by that large cottonwood tree, north to south.
And there were some blankets around her.
There was no greenery at that time.
If there had been greenery at that time,
you would never know she was there.
NARRATOR: The body lay in a remote area
off a major interstate highway, until some youngsters
on dirt bikes stumbled across it.
KUHLMAN: All we knew was that we had a female's body out there.
We had no idea who it was.
Of course we were hoping it was Caren, but we didn't know.
NARRATOR: There was another important find.
Police discovered a piece of the check underneath the body.
Although they couldn't determine to whom the check was issued,
it was from the Shell Oil Company,
and mailed to someone in New York.
The check was for $83.34.
Caren Campano was from New York.
And her family had a part interest in a gas station
there.
KUHLMAN: This was the first definitive piece that we had,
that we knew, at that point, there
was a great possibility that it was Caren.
And of course, we wouldn't know for sure
until they made identification through dental records and DNA.
NARRATOR: Dr. Tom Glass heads the Forensic Odontology
Department at the University of Oklahoma.
With the help of Caren Campano's dental records,
and an almost complete set of teeth
found in this skull of the body, Dr.
Glass' task was fairly easy.
DR. GLASS: What I do, in making the comparison, then,
is simply go frame by frame by frame of the patient's
antimordem dental x-rays, the x-rays made by the dentist,
with the frames of the same areas
made from the skeletonized remains.
She had a very thorough dentist, who
documented what he had done.
And that documentation allowed to the identification,
in Caren Campano's case, to be very profound.
NARRATOR: And the DNA analysis of the bone marrow
confirmed it.
The last doubts had been removed.
KUHLMAN: Personally, I'm glad she was eventually found,
because of the family back in New York.
I talked to them at length over the phone.
Later on, during the investigation, I met them.
They're really great people.
And I really had strong feelings for them,
hoping one day she would be found so they could
put their own fears to rest, and give her a decent burial.
NARRATOR: And Christopher Campano confessed.
The remarkable thing about, the autopsy
confirmed the prosecution's theory of how Caren died.
And that theory, remember, was based only
on the luminol, the blood spatter
analysis, and the blood volume tests.
-The maxilla were fractured. The mandibles were fractured.
The nose was fractured.
The sinuses were fractured.
The skull was extensively fractured.
And yet, the cervical spine was intact,
and there are only three fractures in the ribs.
So this is not the hallmark of somebody that's been run over
by a car, or somebody who has had
a train wreck, or something like that.
This is the hallmark of someone who
has sustained a severe beating about the head and face.
So it was obvious that this was an assault.
NARRATOR: Police and forensic science
had solved a difficult puzzle.
DET NEILSON: It all told a story.
If it was just more the pieces of the puzzle coming together,
even all the way to the end, when the body was actually
found.
It's like, you know, we've got most of the puzzle there.
You know what it is.
Even with some missing pieces, you know what it is.
But then, with that body found, it
was like that was the very last piece that just fit in there.
NARRATOR: In January of 1994, a year and a half
after Caren was killed, Christopher Campano
went on trial for his life.
His defense attorney couldn't refute the forensic findings.
They were just too strong.
-Once I had decided to make that leap and embrace the evidence,
then my task became easier.
It was a matter, then of looking at the psychological aspects
of the case, rather than the hard forensics of the case.
I suggested to the judge and jury,
if it was going to be deliberately planned out
and methodical, that kind of blood wouldn't be there.
There would have been none in the house, probably.
The homicide would have occurred elsewhere
if it had been a coldblooded killing.
NARRATOR: The jury bought at least part of the argument.
It found Campano guilty of manslaughter,
not the first-degree *** charge the State was seeking.
CHRIS: I feel sorry for her.
I feel sorry for what I did to her.
I can't bring her back, you know?
I just to pay for what I've done.
NARRATOR: Christopher Campano was
sentenced to 1,000 years in prison.