Sex, Lies And The Doctor's Wife

Was Karen Tipton's Murder A Crime Of Passion Or A Robbery Gone Wrong?

(CBS) 
As police investigators combed the house for clues, officers tracked down the Tipton children at school, where they had never been picked up.

Who would kill this 39-year-old housewife and mother? The crime scene was puzzling. David reported that Karen’s purse and some jewelry were missing but there was no evidence of forced entry. Most striking of all was the vicious nature of the killing – a sign to investigators that the killer may have been someone who knew Karen Tipton.

David says he knew he would be eyed as a suspect when he called 911. “I realized I had to be a suspect because I was the first on the scene and the husband. I knew that. But I had 100 percent supreme confidence that I could prove that I couldn’t have done this because I wasn’t even in the same town at that time.”

Police believe that Karen was murdered sometime between 1 p.m., after she made a phone call to a friend, and 2:30 p.m., when she was supposed to leave the house to pick up the kids from school.

Dr. Tipton’s office manager confirmed he left his office in Huntsville at 3:30 p.m. “It would have been 4:15 at the earliest when I arrived at the house,” says David.

The 911 call came in at 4:27 p.m.

David Tipton was soon ruled out as a suspect by police.

Decatur Daily crime reporter Jonathan Baggs says the police were at a dead end once they ruled out Tipton . They even asked the FBI to help profile the killer. “There was a lot of pressure to solve this case and solve it very quickly,” explains Baggs.

But days went by with no solid leads, until one month later, when a high-speed pursuit of a shoplifter ended with the arrest of 24-year-old Daniel Wade Moore.

Within 48 hours, police believed they had found Karen’s killer.

Two days after Daniel Wade Moore was arrested, he made a shocking admission to his uncle Sparky Moore, a local contractor. “He said ‘You know the Tipton murder? The doctor’s wife that was murdered on Chapel Hill Road?’ And I said ‘Yeah.’ And he says ‘Well, I was there.’ He said ‘Me and two other guys broke into a home, nobody was supposed to be there and the guy that was with me had stabbed her and killed her.’”

Sparky Moore reported the conversation to authorities. The next morning, police tracked down Daniel Moore to a motel room littered with drug paraphernalia and brought him to police headquarters for interrogation.

When police stepped out of the room for a break, Moore pulled out a penknife and stabbed himself 16 times.

While Moore recovered from his wounds in the hospital, police decided they had the right suspect. Moore had a drug problem. He had no alibi on the day of the murder. He had tried to kill himself during police questioning.

And when they searched Moore’s apartment, they found a critical piece of evidence: an alarm company toolbox. It turns out Moore had worked for the company that had installed an alarm system in the Tipton home.

David Tipton believes Moore entered the home simply by knocking on the door and identifying himself as an alarm company employee. David says Moore had been at the house a few months before the murder.

“We were expecting someone from the alarm company as a matter of fact, because the alarm wasn't working. He very likely had his alarm tool kit with him. He lied his way into the house,” says David.