The Alibi: Disturbing The Peace
Jan. 22, 2005
On Sept. 28, 2000, Kim Camm and her two children were victims of a triple murder in New Albany, Ind. They were found shot to death at home in their garage.
Kim and her 5-year-old daughter, Jill, were shot in the head. Her son, Brad, 7, was shot in the chest. The murders were reported by Kim’s husband, David Camm, a former Indiana state trooper.
"In some ways, it still seems like a nightmare that just didn't happen," says Janice Renn, Kim's mother.
Three days later, the community mourned for the Camm family. But just hours after the memorial service, police arrested their prime suspect, David Camm, for murdering his wife and two children.
Camm, who claims his innocence, has a very good alibi. Eleven witnesses say they were with him at the time of the murder.
It's simple police work to suspect the survivor when family members are murdered. But this case quickly became very complicated. David Camm is from a very large, prominent family in the county, and he has what seems like an airtight alibi.
On top of that, there's no obvious motive for these murders. So proving what happened behind these garage doors, beyond a reasonable doubt, is going to be very tough. Correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports on this murder that was broadcast in May, 2004.
 Former Indiana state trooper David Camm, who claims his innocence, was arrested for murder of his wife and two children. |
"If there's anybody who wanted to get married, have 2.5 kids and a white picket fence, that was Kim," says Debbie Renn, Kim's sister. "Being a little sister, I thought he was nice and he was cute and to me he seemed to bring Kim out more as a person." Camm, who came from a close and influential local family, was seen as a mentor who never showed a violent side. "He wanted to reach out. He looked for a way to help, he stepped up to the plate," says sister, Julie Camm. Kim and David Camm were married in 1989. Kim raised the children while working full time as an accountant. Camm, a state trooper, was liked and respected by his colleagues, including fellow trooper Shelly Romero. |
 Kim Camm and her two children, Jill, 5, and Brad, 7, were found shot to death in their garage on Sept. 28, 2000. |
“He was very trusting, very
loyal, extremely honest. He could be
trusted with anything, just one of the most upstanding people you would
ever fathom in your life," says Romero. But three years into the marriage, Camm began having an affair with a woman he’d met at the gym while Kim was pregnant with their second child. “It was sheer stupidity on my part,” says Camm. “I allowed myself to get caught in something that never should have happened. And you know, I take full responsibility for that.” Camm moved out, but a few months later, they reconciled and things seemed to be back to normal. And, at least financially, life was getting better for the Camms. David quit the state police to work for his uncle’s construction business, was making more money and had more time for his family. "I had never been happier," he says. "I should have left five years ago." |
But investigators later discovered that he had been involved in several other affairs over the years. In fact, prosecutors have rounded up a dozen women who either had affairs with or were propositioned by him.
"He was very flirty," says Andrea Craig. "He was always trying to rub my feet underneath the radio console. He would ask me several times if I wanted to get together, hook up."
“It was a given he was going to hit on you,” adds former colleague, Romero. "He was going to propose an innocent kind of liason or something like that."
But did those affairs somehow constitute a motive? “That’s utterly ridiculous,” says Camm.
“We don’t have to prove motive,” says prosecutor Stan Faith. “All we have to do is prove that he did it. We don’t have to say why he did it. We'll never know the reason why he did it exactly because the three people that could tell us are dead."
“He never said I'm perfect,” says David's brother, Donnie. "I don't think any of us are. We all have faults and we make mistakes."
The family is convinced that police rushed to judgment.
“The prosecution can’t decide what his motive is. They’ve been bouncing around on different motives and they can’t find one to stick," adds Donnie.
"Now they have gone to — well, he killed his wife and his kids so he can pursue extramarital affairs. My question would be if he was so successful at doing that, why does he have to kill his family?”
On the day of the murder, Kim and the kids were on the move until 7 p.m., when Kim and Jill picked up Brad from swim class and headed home.
Around the same time, Camm was off to a weekly pickup basketball game with friends and relatives.
Those who attended the game that night say that Camm couldn't be guilty of murder because he was with them, playing basketball until he headed home around 9:15 p.m.
If those men are right, then it's awfully hard to believe that David Camm is guilty of murder. Kim, Brad and Jill got home about 7:30 that night. Camm says he was at the gym playing basketball until 9:15 p.m., and he has 11 eyewitnesses to back him up.
After the game, Camm says he pulled into the driveway around 9:22 p.m. and saw his wife lying in a pool of blood. Minutes later, Camm made a frantic call to the state police.
One of the first officers on the scene was detective Sean Clemons, one of Camm's closest friends. "I always considered Dave a friend. I thought I knew Dave. I thought he was a good person."
But Det. Sam Sarkisson became suspicious after Camm told him he tried to revive his son, Brad, before realizing that his entire family was already dead.
“Usually, if you have someone come upon a crime scene, and they talk about rendering aid, or being involved in the crime scene, then there’s footprints,” says Sarkisson. “I didn’t see footprints.”
But it wasn’t just the lack of bloody footprints that drew suspicion to David Camm. Detectives immediately noticed the entire scene was just too neat.
"We don't think it occurred the way he said it did," says Sarkisson.
Police believed that Camm got home, killed his family, cleaned up the crime scene, and called them - all within seven minutes.
His family was outraged. “I can probably see a husband or wife killing their partner in the heat-of-passion type thing. But not your kids! You cannot kill your own kids. David could not kill his kids,” says Camm's uncle, Sam Lockhart.
As for the motive, police believe they got their answer at the laboratory. An autopsy on David's daughter, Jill, found evidence of sexual abuse. Faith believes she was molested by her father, which may have set off a violent confrontation the night of the murder. “I think that’s a likely scenario."
But if Jill was molested, it's hard to say who did it.
The medical examiner says Jill was likely molested “within hours” of her death. But by all accounts, Camm had not seen Jill since 7 a.m. that morning, nearly 13 hours before the murders.
David Camm says unequivocally that he did not molest his daughter. "I don't know anything about her being molested. I don't know anything about that."
His family backs him up.
"Now we’re saying he left the ball game, went home, sexually abused his daughter, then murdered his family and somehow got them, the kids, conveniently buckled back in his car? That's crazy," says David's sister, Julie Camm.
When their son-in-law David Camm was arrested, Janice and Frank Renn couldn’t believe it.
"I just couldn't believe that the person I knew, thought I knew, could do that," says Kim's mother, Janice Renn.
But in the 15 months between the killings and the start of Camm’s trial, the Renns have become convinced that their son-in-law is a murderer.
“There’s no way you’re going to bring the kids back and my daughter back,” says Kim's father, Frank Renn. “No way, no matter what they do with David. But he’ll have to suffer, when he dies someday - if it’s soon or if it’s 40 years from now - he’s got to answer to God.
The murders of Kim, Brad and Jill Camm have gripped this small Indiana town. And as the trial begins, defense attorney Michael McDaniel knows all eyes are on the courthouse, and on his client.
“Right now, David is the only one out there that they can punish,” says McDaniel.
"My life is on the line," says Camm. "I'm not just fighting for me, it's not just me, I want justice for my wife and my children."
David Camm and his supporters believe they have a strong hand to play in court. Eleven witnesses put him at the gymnasium at the time of the murders.
With all those witnesses, prosecutor Stan Faith has a lot of talking to do to convince a jury Camm could have committed the murders. His first theory was that Camm committed the murders between 9:23 and 9:30 p.m., minutes before he called police. But scientific evidence put that theory in jeopardy. The blood in the driveway, which had coagulated and separated before police arrived, proves the family was murdered much earlier. "These folks had to be killed a couple hours before David got home -- would've been killed while he was playing basketball," says McDaniel. |
 Prosecutor Stan Faith
|
Faith has a phone record that proves Camm made a call from his house at 7:19, placing him at the scene at a time Faith now believes the murders were probably committed.
"We have a piece of evidence that's objective and it's recorded that indicates that he was in the house before 7:30 p.m. and gives a precise time," says Faith.
It's a phone record that Faith says proves Camm made a business call to a contact from his house at 7:19 p.m., just a few minutes before Kim and the kids arrived at home.
But if Faith is correct, Camm would have to have left the basketball game less than 15 minutes after arriving.
Yet all 11 witnesses say he was at the basketball game that started at 7:15 p.m., and that there was no way he could have made that phone call.
Faith, however, says phone records don’t lie.
It seems hard to believe, but five weeks after the surprise 7:19 p.m. phone call was introduced, defense attorney McDaniel dropped his own bombshell. He discovered that the phone company has trouble telling time.
"What you had was an hour's difference between real time and the time that appeared on the phone records," says McDaniel.
As it turns out, it all appears to be a huge mistake. Indiana is one of two states that has two different time zones. Camm’s home is in one time zone, but his cell phone company's computers are in another time zone.
A phone company employee testified that a glitch in the computer's computer resulted in an incorrect time on the bill - and that David's phone call was actually placed at 6:19 p.m., well before his family returned home.
It could have been all over for Faith, but he had one more card to play. He says he has scientific evidence, tiny droplets of blood on David's T-shirt and sneaker, that removes any reasonable doubt.
Crime scene reconstructionist Rod Englert of Portland, Ore., believes that every blood stain tells a story. He says high velocity blood splatter, blood that has been hit by something going very fast, like a bullet, is the key to solving this murder mystery.
Englert, who was hired by the prosecution in the Camm case, examined the T-shirt David wore the night of the murders. He found eight tiny dots, which he identified as high-velocity blood spatter.
"This is so unique and so separate from other stains that one can say with confidence, that this is from high-velocity mist that the person got on him and would have to be within four feet of the shots when they were fired," says Englert.
He also found smudged droplets of Kim's blood on David's sneakers.
"The shooter had to be facing her left side," says Englert, who believes Kim's hand could have splattered her own blood as she fell to the floor. "Because the shot is through the left side of her head, it exits out the right and then what happens when you're shot through the brain? You're bleeding, you're dropping blood and it's hitting the concrete, and as you go down, you strike that."
This was enough to convince Frank Renn of his son-in-law's guilt. “It's going to be proven it was on his shirt. And that told me right then that David did it. There's no more doubt in my mind that David did it."
But David's family still has a lot of doubt.
"Blood spatter is not an exact science, and their expert admitted two experts can disagree," says David's sister, Julie Camm. "You have a 50/50 chance of having the right answer. That's reasonable doubt."
Defense attorney McDaniel has his own expert, who claims those tiny dots were transferred onto Camm’s shirt while he was moving around the bloody crime scene, after his family was murdered.
"He's given his conclusions that there isn't any high-velocity blood spatter on the front of David's T-shirt," says McDaniel. "There isn't any impact on his shoes or socks."
Now, the jurors have to decide what to believe - eight spots of blood that prove David Camm did it or the 11 witnesses who say he couldn’t have committed the crime.
Three days after they began deliberating, the jury reaches a verdict: guilty. David Camm is now a convicted murderer, sentenced to 195 years in prison without parole.
"They painted this small portion of a picture of my brother and they got a conviction based on that," says David's sister, Julie.
“You just sent an innocent man to jail,” screams David's brother, Donnie, at the jury outside the courthouse. “There’s a predator loose and it’s your fault, all 12 or 15 of you!”
Juror Judy Price says the deliberations were “the most gut-wrenching experience I have ever experienced in my entire life.”
When deliberations started, jurors say, the vote was 8 to 4 in favor of convicting Camm. In just a few hours, it was 10 to 2.
That’s where things got stuck – and ugly. Some jurors say they were crying, others were yelling.
"I wanted so bad to find him not guilty," says Price, one of the last holdouts.
The biggest obstacle to a guilty verdict was the testimony of the basketball players, says juror Ruth Caruso. “But when when you start breaking down to each person’s testimony, it’s all different. They each said different things.”
But in the end, the jurors came to believe Camm had the opportunity - and a motive.
"He might have been molesting his little girl," says Caruso.
Even though Camm was never charged with molesting Jill, that allegation weighed heavily on jurors’ minds.
But Price was still troubled by the evidence the other jurors found compelling - those eight tiny drops of blood. She was troubled by the blood spatter until another juror whom she had come to trust, won her over with an impassioned argument.
During the two years since the guilty verdict, Camm has been doing time while his family has been battling to prove his innocence. "We're not gonna quit on him," says Lockhart. "We know he didn't do it."
In August, there was a development that could only be described as stunning. An Indiana appeals court threw out the convictions, and in the process, sent this case back to the beginning. The court blasted the judge for improperly admitting evidence of adultery, ruling that evidence could have unfairly persuaded the jury that Camm had a motive for killing his family.
Prison, however, has taken its toll on David Camm, who is still not a free man. There's a new prosecutor, Keith Henderson, who says he'll try him again, and this time, he has stronger evidence that Camm abused his daughter, Jill.
But Camm's new lawyer, Katharine Liell, says there's no proof that Camm molested his daughter. She says she'll fight to keep those charges out of the new trial. She also says that the real killer can be identified through DNA that was left at the scene on Bradley's sweat pants but never fully investigated.
"Kim struggled with a killer or killers," says Liell. "We know Dave Camm did not commit those murders."
A second trial will be a replay of one of the worst days in the lives of two families. At least Camm's family will get another chance, but Kim's family has to relive the murders with nothing to gain, no matter what the verdict.
"I see my daughter getting killed, and those two little kids. I just can't imagine what went through their last minutes of their lives," says Kim's father, Frank Renn.
"And I don't know of anybody who should have to go through this thing twice. Once is bad enough, but doing it twice? I don't know. It'll be hard. You never get over this."
