Billboard Helps Nab Murder Suspect

Billboards catch our eye every day, inspiring consumers to buy whatever it is they're selling. But as Cynthia Bowers reports, one billboard did a lot more, helping a Kansas man capture his daughter's killer.

Up until the summer of 2002, Roger Kemp says his suburban Kansas City daughter was living the American Dream. But one day, Ali went to work and didn't come home.

Kemp says Ali was working a summer job at the neighborhood swimming pool; he thought it was the safest place in the world.

But not for her. Unbeknownst to Ali, police believe a maniac had her in his sights. She was jumped in the pool house, sexually assaulted and strangled. Ali's dad found her battered body.

Since then his life has been about one thing: avenging his daughter's death. "You can't do this to a member of my family and get away," says Kemp. "And it's very simple. It's about justice and I was gonna get the guy. And I was gonna do anything I could to get him."

But cracking the case wouldn't be easy: all police had to go on was a composite sketch. The killer's identity was a mystery. Months passed with no arrest, but Kemp never gave up.

"I got out of bed ever day thinking this might be the day," Kemp recalls.

Kemp knew his only chance would be to get this guy's picture out in front of more people.

"He came to us and wanted to buy billboards," recalls Brian Henry, creative director at Lamar Outdoor Advertising.

Henry says he wasn't sure the campaign would work. "We know it works for products - if you're selling tires or batteries or things like that. But we're putting people's pictures up there," he says.

Although Henry was skeptical, he was bought into Kemp's passion and Lamar Outdoor Advertising decided to donate not just on one billboard but three, strategically placed along busy highways.At a time when an increasing number of crimes are being solved using up to the minute "CSI"-type technology, the idea of a picture on a big piece of paper seems primitive, a bit like the old wanted posters from the days of the wild West, Bowers suggests.

But each of the "wanted posters" would be seen by about 150,000 people every day.

"Nothing substantial had come in. Once the billboards went up, it was just overnight, calls started pouring into our Crimestoppers hotline," explains the hotline's Sgt. Dave Sarver.

Even so, it took two years before police got a tip that panned out. And this coming summer, Benjamin Appleby, the guy who had serviced the pool where Ali worked, will stand trial for a murder he confessed to on videotape.

"I know I strangled her, I don't know what I strangled her with," Appleby said during his videotaped police interview.

With a suspect in custody, the old billboards came down, only to be replaced by new ones, still donated, but bearing pictures of other accused killers.

"Out of the 10 we've shown so far, eight have been caught - seven of those due directly to people seeing the billboards," says Sarver.

The idea is catching on across the country.

Although Roger Kemp can finally stand down, he won't stand still. These days, he teaches basic self defense to girls from all walks of life through a foundation established in his daughter's name.

And he never stops thinking of Ali. "We thought she was gonna make a difference in this world," he says.

Ali Kemp did make a difference, Bowers points out, just not in the way he had imagined.