Sex, Lies And
The Doctor's Wife
(Page 1 of 7)
Nov. 12, 2005
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Karen Tipton was murdered on March 12, 1999,
inside her home in Decatur, Alabama. (CBS)
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(CBS) Karen Tipton was in the prime of her life when she
was brutally attacked and murdered in her home in
Decatur, Ala., in 1999. Tipton’s husband, a prominent
doctor, was soon ruled out as a suspect, and the focus
of the investigation shifted to a young man arrested
several weeks after the crime.
Prosecutors viewed this as an open-and-shut case until
the defense introduced issues related to alleged
extra-marital affairs and use of pornography, and
another theory on what may have led to Tipton’s murder.
Correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.
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David Tipton has tried hard to balance his day job as
head psychiatrist at a mental hospital in Ahoskie, N.C.,
with his role as a single dad to 14-year-old Caroline
and 10-year-old Catherine.
The girls say they are close to their dad, who has been
raising his two daughters alone since his wife and their
mother died six years ago.
Caroline says she misses her mom. “I do. What little I
got to know her. I do miss her a lot.” Caroline was 7
years old when her mother died; her sister Catherine was
only 3.
And Caroline tells Catherine about their mother. “Yeah,
every now and then it will be something like, ‘OK, this
is what she would have done. This is how she would have
laughed and smiled.’ Because that is probably what I
remember most is just her smile.”
David was a medical student when he met Karen Croft, a
technician, at an Alabama hospital in 1984.
Karen’s brother Lance and sister Laurie say that, after
five years of dating, Karen announced David was the one.
“She said at one point, you know, ‘He is just a great
guy. He’s going to make some person a great husband. It
might as well be me,'” Laurie remembers.
They married on June 24, 1989, and soon moved to
Decatur, Ala. Karen was looking forward to starting a
family right away.
But almost 10 years later, on March 12, 1999, the
family's life was shattered.
David Tipton says it was a perfectly normal day, and
that they had made plans to see a show that night.
David says he came home from work earlier than usual. As
he walked from the garage into the house, David says he
noticed the deadbolt on the garage door was not locked.
He thought it was a bit unusual but nothing “to go into
a panic over.”
Inside, David says he immediately spotted that the alarm
panel had been removed and was lying on the kitchen
counter.
“It was unusual, but it was not so weird. Given the fact
that our alarm system was not working and we were
expecting it to be fixed. But, yes, it was a little
strange,” David recalls, adding that the panel was on
the wall when he left for work that morning.
As he went into the home’s foyer to hang up his coat,
David says he spotted a small drop of blood on a tile.
“Then I look around, I’m going upstairs. I still think
Karen’s upstairs. It’s a big house.”
David says he called for his wife. He was also expecting
his kids to be home at the time.
“The next thing I saw was more blood, in the foyer,
toward the door, and it was smeared,” remembers David.
“I’m wondering if somebody has been hurt, come into the
house, I’m wondering whether there really is nobody home
because I’m calling up, not hearing anything.”
“And I walked up the stairs and get to the top and find
a dead body there that looked somewhat like Karen,” says
David.
Karen’s nude body was at the top of stairs, viciously
stabbed 28 times. Her killer had also cut her throat.
Daniel called 911 to report that his wife had been
murdered, and he didn't know where his children were.
Sex, Lies And The
Doctor's Wife
(Page 2 of 7)
Nov. 12, 2005
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Karen Tipton was murdered on March 12, 1999, inside her
home in Decatur, Alabama. (CBS)
(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.
Sex, Lies And The
Doctor's Wife
(Page 3 of 7)
Nov. 12, 2005
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Karen Tipton was murdered on March 12, 1999, inside her
home in Decatur, Alabama. (CBS)
(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.”
Sex, Lies And The
Doctor's Wife
(Page 4 of 7)
Nov. 12, 2005
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Karen Tipton was murdered on March 12, 1999, inside her
home in Decatur, Alabama. (CBS)
(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.
Reporter Jonathan Baggs remembers the trial was a huge
deal in Decatur. “I think people were riveted by all of
it,” he says.
Prosecutors believed they had a strong case against
Moore, convinced this murder was a robbery gone wrong.
But for many people in town, including 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.
Sex, Lies And The
Doctor's Wife
(Page 5 of 7)
Nov. 12, 2005
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Karen Tipton was murdered on March 12, 1999, inside her
home in Decatur, Alabama. (CBS)
(CBS)
At trial, the defense suggested there were a number of
possible killers. But Sherman Powell believes the most
likely suspect is the man cleared by police, Karen’s
husband. “She would not have run from him if he
assaulted her on the couch. There’s no evidence that she
tried to escape or tried to call. It had to be someone
she was familiar with,” he says.
Powell says that the driveway pavers working next door
told police they saw Tipton’s truck at the house at
least an hour before officers arrived.
But why would Dr. Tipton want to kill his wife? Powell
says it could have been jealousy. “There is some
indication of extramarital affairs that were ongoing at
this point in time,” he says.
Crime reporter Baggs believes Karen Tipton was having at
least one affair, and thinks that could have led to her
death.
At trial, the defense called a neighbor who said she
often saw a light-colored pickup parked at the Tipton
house during the day. And on the stand, David Tipton
admitted that just weeks before the murder his best
friend, Mike Ezell, had e-mailed Karen suggesting they
swap spouses.
“I was offended by that. I was offended not only by Mike
but by Karen, as well,” says Tipton.
“What do you mean?” asks Moriarty.
“That she had carried on a silly conversation with a
friend of mine,” says Tipton.
Powell says Karen may have had reasons of her own to be
angry. An expert testified Karen was on the family
computer the day she died and Powell believes she may
have made a shocking discovery. According to the expert,
its hard drive was loaded with pornography.
“The majority of the stuff in there was gay men
interacting and I have never seen a lady yet who would
sit down and look at that kind of stuff,” says Powell.
He speculates that Karen could have discovered the porn
and confronted her husband, sparking a fight.
“Nobody that knew me would consider me capable of doing
such a crime. Am I capable of killing somebody? Yup. Am
I capable of killing a loved one? No. Am I capable of
torturing my wife to death? That’s crazy,” says David
Tipton. “It’s easier for people to think of me being a
killer than it is for Daniel Moore to be a killer. It
scares people to think that some stranger off the street
could show up in your house and the next minute you’re
in a torture chamber. But in the end you really kind of
need to look at the evidence.”
Prosecutors believed they had all the evidence they
needed. Although none of Moore’s blood or fingerprints
were found at the scene, police discovered two tiny
hairs in the Tipton bedroom, hairs they believed
belonged to Daniel Moore.
Standard DNA tests were inconclusive, so the state
called in Dr. Sudhir Sinha from ReliaGene Labs, who
tested the hairs for mitochondrial DNA, a less
discriminating test.
Mitochondrial DNA cannot pinpoint one person. It can
only pinpoint a group of people. Dr. Sinha says that the
hair does not belong to either the victim or the
husband, but it is consistent with the hair of Daniel
Moore. That means, he stresses, that he can’t
definitively identify Moore as the source but cannot
exclude him.
“It rules out 99.8 percent of the population, leaving
two tenths of one percent, and he’s in that two tenths,”
says David Tipton. So are many other people but, Tipton
says, “He’s the only person in that group who had the
means, motive and opportunity to do the crime.”
Means, motive and opportunity. According to the
prosecution, Moore had all three. The jury deliberated
for two days, and found him guilty.
Sex, Lies And The
Doctor's Wife
(Page 6 of 7)
Nov. 12, 2005
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Karen Tipton was murdered on March 12, 1999, inside her
home in Decatur, Alabama. (CBS)
(CBS)
On Jan. 23, 2003, Moore was sentenced to death by lethal
injection.
That February, Daniel Moore became the newest inmate on
Alabama’s death row, moving into a cell some 250 feet
from the execution chamber.
Moore’s only hope now was an appeal. Sherman Powell got
to work, but never dreamed what he would learn just days
after the conviction: a new witness had come forward
with information that seemed to contradict the
prosecution’s timeline.
In a sworn statement, neighbor Pam Smith says she saw
Karen Tipton at her mailbox at 3:30 p.m. on the day she
was murdered, a time when police believed Karen was
already dead.
Smith says she called police right away but says she
never heard from authorities after the initial call.
Police claim they have no record of Smith’s call.
Asked whether she thought police had just lost the call,
Smith says, “I think my story didn’t fit with their
theory, that’s what I think.”
Whether or not Pam Smith saw Karen Tipton that day, her
information suggested to Powell that police had
suppressed evidence
Powell immediately filed a motion for a new trial, and
what happened next changed the Moore case forever.
Prosecutors turned over a 245-page report on the Tipton
murder, compiled by the FBI, a report that prosecutors
had repeatedly denied existed.
In fact, the FBI had been involved from the beginning,
called in by police to help develop suspects and analyze
information about the victim.
The FBI report says Karen Tipton was leading a “secret
life,” which included “extra-marital affairs.” The
report also said that Karen may have known her killer
and the FBI recommended that, even though they had
alibis, both David Tipton and his friend Mike Ezell be
given lie detector tests.
Moore says the prosecution and police withheld
information because “it shows opportunity and motive --
someone other than me.”
Prosecutors and the police refused 48 Hours’ request for
an interview. Tipton, on the other hand, had plenty to
say about the FBI report.
Tipton says the FBI never did a real investigation and
says the report is simply information the police
supplied to FBI profilers shortly after the murder.
“Nothing that was evidence, as part of the
investigation, was hidden from anybody,” he says.
He says that the report contained the same allegations
that were made at trial and that they were based on
rumor, not fact.
“The affairs that were alleged were never found,” Tipton
insisted.
But as Powell points out, this was a capital murder
case, and even if the FBI report contained no new
information, prosecutors were still required by law to
turn it over.
And because they didn’t, some jurors now say they have
their own doubts about the decision they made. “I just
think it doesn’t give him the fair trial he deserved,”
one female juror told 48 Hours.. “I think Daniel
deserves a new trial,” a male juror said.
Judge Glenn Thompson agreed, and in an extraordinary
decision, he accused the prosecutor, Asst. Attorney
General Don Valeska, of intentionally suppressing
evidence and willfully defying court orders in order to
win a conviction.
And the judge didn’t stop there. He ruled that the
prosecutors’ actions amounted to double jeopardy,
forcing Moore to be tried twice for the same crime.
And that, the judge said, left him with only one option:
freeing the same man he had sentenced to death.
Sex, Lies And The
Doctor's Wife
(Page 7 of 7)
Nov. 12, 2005
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Karen Tipton was murdered on March 12, 1999, inside her
home in Decatur, Alabama. (CBS)
(CBS)
Shortly before Moore’s release from prison earlier this
year, a bitter David Tipton uprooted his two daughters
and moved to North Carolina, driven out of town by
rumors and innuendo.
“We have been victimized and exploited for six years by
the local press. And by a rumor mill that treats us very
badly,” says Tipton.
“In what way?” asks Moriarty. “I'm the man that killed
his wife. I'm the multiple affairs. I'm the, you know,
wild, crazy, sex-party, sex-swap, wife-swapper, king of
the sex-swapping club. All of these things have been
said about me,” says Tipton.
But even 700 miles away, the Tiptons were shaken by the
news of Moore’s release.
“They’re (his daughters) afraid that he would come after
them, and why not? Everybody should be afraid,” says
David.
In Decatur, Moore was savoring his freedom. “It was the
first time in over four years that I got to look out and
see the stars.”
But he didn’t get to enjoy his freedom for long. The
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to review Judge
Thompson’s decision to free Moore and stayed all
proceedings.
In less than a week, Moore was back behind bars.
“Sometimes I think I did die that day in the interview
room and that this is Hell. Because it's like every time
when you finally think it's fixing to be over, something
else puts it off.”
Moore will stay in jail while the Court of Criminal
Appeals decides his future. The court has two choices:
it could order a new trial, or it could decide that a
second trial would amount to double jeopardy. In that
case, Moore would be released for good.
Moore’s defense attorney claims the prosecutors still
haven’t come completely clean, and are withholding some
evidence. “It has been selectively edited to deny the
defense a fair trial,” he charges.
Some of the jurors were asked if they would have
convicted Moore if they had known about the FBI
documents. “I’d probably go not guilty,” one male juror
said. “I’d still be undecided,” said a female juror.
“And I would probably be guilty,” another male juror
said.
Moore’s fate now rests with the Alabama Court of
Criminal Appeals, which heard oral arguments in August.
Tipton says the worst-case scenario would be if Moore
was released. “Very few other things could compare to
that, that he's going to walk free and not ever be
tried, not ever even be held accountable for this.”
If Moore is guilty, says crime reporter Jonathan Baggs,
it’s ironic that the tough state prosecutor may be the
one most responsible for setting a killer free. “Yes, it
bothers me that if he’s guilty he may walk free. But it
bothers me also that the prosecution withheld evidence.
Whether it helps or not, you’ve got to play by the
rules,” says Baggs.
Tipton says he would not be afraid if Moore was set
free. “But he should be afraid of me… I think that he
needs to be dead. I'm not allowed to kill him. The
second best is to have the state to kill him. I say that
he should fear us more than him to send a message, that
he doesn't need to approach us.”
Whatever the court decides, there may be no justice for
Karen Tipton and no peace for her family.
“It has a life of its own. The lies have continued. It
will always continue. It wouldn't matter if Moore
confessed. It wouldn't matter. There will be thousands
of people in north Alabama that will believe I killed
Karen, and that she was having an affair and deserved
it. That shadow is there and will always be there,” says
Tipton.
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