Sex, Lies And The Doctor's Wife

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

(CBS) 
Investigators pieced together what they believe happened in the house, using forensic evidence found at the scene.

“We know for a fact that the attack started downstairs, in front of the fireplace,” says David. “The first injury was being cut or stabbed on the back left aspect of her neck. Her sweatshirt was removed forcibly and then she was forced upstairs with a blood trail going the whole way. That's how it started.”

The attack, he says, continued in the upstairs bedroom, where police found Karen’s clothing on the floor and blood on the bed.

David believes his wife actually managed to escape but was murdered in the hallway.

To David, it’s an open-and-shut case. “Daniel Wade Moore confessed to involvement. Daniel Wade Moore is an absolutely 100 percent profiled match to somebody who would do a crime just like this. That's what crackheads do.”

But Moore says he was not in the house on the day Karen Tipton was murdered. “I was nowhere near it. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I don’t know who did,” says Moore, currently incarcerated in the Morgan County Jail.

But Moore does admit he told his uncle he was at the crime scene. Why would he do that if it wasn't true?

“I wanted to get my grandfather and my uncle to leave me alone,” Moore explained, saying he lied to scare his uncle and grandfather so they would stay out of his legal problems.

“Daniel said, ‘I’ve been involved in something. And I’m afraid that it would put granddaddy in harm’s way,’” says Sparky Moore.

Daniel Moore says all he cared about was getting back to his drugs, but it’s an explanation that investigators and David Tipton find hard to believe.

Sparky Moore, who turned his nephew in, now believes Daniel invented the entire story about his involvement in the murder.

“I think he would have said anything to do the drugs. To be on his own to do the drugs,” says Sparky Moore. “It just becomes more and more clear that he didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Daniel Moore says the evidence proves he was not involved in the killing.

The case against Moore is largely circumstantial. Nobody saw him enter or leave the house, not even the pavers working on the driveway next door.

Also, Moore says none of his fingerprints were found at the crime scene and says no fiber or hair evidence was found in his truck, motel room or apartment.

Moore’s mother, Virginia Byrd, and his older sister Tracy say Daniel couldn’t kill anyone. “He’s got too much of a conscience to allow him to do anything that horrendous,” says Tracy.

And although Moore started using drugs in his teens, he had never been accused of violence.

The only person Daniel says he ever thought of killing was himself. “I didn’t really want to die. I just didn’t want to keep living the life I had,” he says.

He says that’s why he stabbed himself in the interrogation room. “They started telling me how, you know, my family was such good people and it was just a shame that I wasn’t nothing but a junkie and, you know, ‘seen hundreds like you,’ and, ‘you’ll never change,’ and, you know, that was true,” says Moore. “He walked out of the room and I just said, ‘That's it.’ Took out a knife out of my pocket and I just closed my eyes and did like that.”