Sex, Lies And The Doctor's Wife

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

(CBS) 
In October, 2001, Daniel Moore was charged with capital murder.

His defense attorney, Sherman Powell, says he believes in his client’s innocence.

From his cramped office down the street from the jail, Powell has been defending criminals for 35 years, but he says Daniel Moore is different. “I never would have agreed to represent him if I had felt like he had done this. Because it was as brutal a thing as I've ever seen.”

Instead, Powell says, investigators’ initial suspicions were right: Karen Tipton was killed by someone she knew, and he says he can prove it. “This was not something that a burglar, robber, or rapist or anybody does. Not even a contract killer does it. This was a crime of passion.”

And Daniel Moore says David Tipton was the killer. “The only person who had the opportunity was her husband, David Tipton.”

On Nov. 4, 2002, three and a half years after Karen Tipton’s murder, Moore finally went on trial.

Prosecutors believed they had a strong case against Moore, convinced this murder was a robbery gone wrong.

But for many people in town, including Jonathan Baggs, the prosecution’s case just didn’t add up.

"Someone wanting money for drugs would pick an easier target. To pick a home in this kind of neighborhood, in broad daylight, it doesn’t make sense to me," says Baggs.

And then there’s the brutality of the murder. Sherman Powell says a drug addict needing money wouldn’t have gone this far. “This wasn’t just a murder. It was somebody was really mad.”

Bob Tressel, a crime scene analyst hired by the defense, says this murder was personal. “This escalated from just a conversation between two people into an argument, into a fight, and ultimately into a stabbing murder,” he says.

Using a 3-D model, Tressel showed 48 Hours how he believes the killer got into the house. “There was only one door that was not dead-bolted. Karen Tipton either had to let the perpetrator in herself, or he had to enter using a key.”

And contrary to police theory, Tressel thinks that the way the alarm was dismantled points to someone other than Moore.

“Daniel Moore worked for the alarm company that installed this alarm system. He would be familiar with how to shut this alarm system completely off without having to remove the keypad,” says Tressel.

Tressel does agree with the prosecution that the killer first assaulted Karen in the great room and that she went from there to the foyer.

He says the drops of Karen’s blood found on the floor in the foyer are significant.

“The blood drops that we see are essentially round blood drops,” Tressel says, suggesting that Karen, though bleeding, was not running in fear, nor struggling to get away. Tressel also says Karen did not attempt to escape through the front door, and instead went upstairs.

It’s when Karen is in her upstairs bedroom, says Tressel, that her attacker becomes a killer. At that point, he argues, Karen, already bleeding, has to fight for her life. In his scenario, Karen tries to flee down the hallway, where the killer catches her and she collapses against a table. “She has two stab wounds to her back. This is probably where all the fatal wounds occur,” says Tressel. “The body was then moved, dragged back out of view from the stairwell. The perpetrator knew that you could see the top of that landing from outside.”

Tressel also says someone tried to clean up the blood, an act that he argues is unlikely to be done by a stranger eager to flee the scene.