Melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
- I'd lay in bed with my imagination,
And I would play out possibilities
Of what happened that night.
I thought about how scared she must have been.
It was hard to go to sleep some nights.
- A young woman living on her own,
Murdered in the middle of the night.
- She was at her most vulnerable,
Alone and in bed.
- A crime that jolted a sleepy seaside community.
A killer walking among them.
- I don't think it really sets in that we're all
A little more in danger at that point.
- Young, fun, and pretty, corey had plenty of admirers.
Had one of them liked her too much?
A strange coworker.
- That's scary stuff right there.
- Exactly.
- An adoring friend.
- Her statements about how much she loved corey,
It piqued our interest.
- And, a young man who made some people very uncomfortable.
- She called him the night creeper.
- A gallery of potential suspects.
Piles of evidence.
But the truth would only be revealed
By a tiny telltale clue.
- Did everyone's jaws drop?
- My eyes filled up with tears.
I couldn't believe it.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
A beach town, plenty of leisure,
And an exciting nightlife.
It all seemed ideal.
But for corey parker, a fun night with friends
Turned out to be her last one alive.
Police put together a wide ranging list
Of potential suspects,
But a tip about someone with a secret obsession
Would blow the investigation wide open.
Here's andrea canning with "rear window".
- Maybe it was the hypnotic hum of night
Coming to life.
Then again, maybe it was just the booze,
Or the talk of some easy money.
- We're all just sitting there having a couple of beers,
Fishing, relaxing, and enjoying.
- Somehow, three friends kicking back on a lakeside dock
Found their evening sliding into the past.
A brutal, unsolved murder, an investigation stalled,
An old name resurrected.
As they remembered, their eyes grew wide.
- What is your gut telling you as you're sitting on that dock?
- We're probably on to something.
- And someone who'd prefer to stay hidden.
Strange how the night can shine a light into the darkest places.
Like so many others, corey parker came to florida
For the waves and weather, but she stayed for the people,
Like amy laden.
- Do you remember the first time you met corey parker?
- I do.
- Corey, a young twentysomething
When she and amy became fast friends.
- We were at pete's bar on the beach,
And we were actually in the bathroom waiting in line.
- And what did you say to her?
- I think she started the conversation and just said,
"hey, I see you around all the time.
"you know, we should hang out."
And I said, "all right."
- Did you two get into a lot of trouble?
- Um, we didn't get caught doing things,
But we probably would have.
- Corey was a transplant from upstate new york,
Towering and sweet like a sugar maple.
- Corey was 5'11", and she would wear heels.
So she was so tall and I'm very short.
So I think every time she walked into a room,
People looked at her.
And she was so beautiful.
- Did she kind of looked like a model being 5'11"?
- Yeah.
- She could model.
She could definitely model.
- Instead, she chose a humbler route,
Taking classes at the local college
And waiting tables at ragtime tavern
Near jacksonville beach.
Amy says that was pure corey.
- Did she like being a waitress?
- She loved it.
'cause she could talk to people, and she was super friendly.
- She was a people person? - Yes.
- Another reason she loved corey,
Both were fiercely independent.
Corey, in particular, had just moved
Into her own apartment.
- This was absolutely an exciting moment
For her moving into this place,
Because she was finally being able to do it on her own.
- This was a big, kind of, independence day for her,
Then, moving into this apartment?
- It was a really big deal, yeah.
- I was excited that somebody else
Was gonna be moving in,
That I might be able to-to talk with.
- Ashley burg remembers corey's move-in day
That September of 1998.
Ashley, then eighteen, lived next door with her mom
And older brother, joe.
Corey, at twenty-five, seemed like a big sister.
- We would sit outside, she would do her laundry,
We'd have a little glass of wine, um,
And just-just talk.
- About work, school, and corey's new boyfriend,
A young man she'd only met three weeks earlier
At one of her favorite late night haunts, the ritz.
Ashley sensed her neighbor was falling in love.
- It started gettin' pretty close for them.
I really feel like that.
- But there was something troubling, too.
Corey was feeling uneasy about her ground floor apartment.
Her bedroom and front door were across from another building.
- It was someone else in our building
That saw a peeping tom, um, and saw that someone
Was looking into her windows.
- Ashley says for that reason, corey preferred hanging out
In the back of the apartment in the kitchen.
That's where they were the day before thanksgiving.
Corey was making dessert to bring to a friend's house
For the next day's feast.
- So we drank a beer, started making some pies,
And, um, she was telling me about thanksgiving.
She was telling me where she was going.
And I didn't even know she could bake.
- When she finished, corey went out for the evening.
Amy, who'd left town for thanksgiving,
Remembers being tempted to stick around jacksonville beach
So she could party with her best friend.
- Looking back, I wish I had.
But I opted to go down to my mom's the night before
And spend the night.
- Photos from that night show corey inside her hangout,
The ritz.
She's seen looking back at the camera.
One of the women there was a new friend,
Her name was tiffany zienta.
- We were young and all in college and felt that,
You know, we'd just all go hang out.
- You and corey went out a lot.
- We did.
- Your relationship kept getting closer and closer?
- Yes.
Well, on my part, I guess. I can't answer for corey,
But yes, from my vantage point.
- That night, tiffany says, corey,
Usually the bubbliest in the room,
Had fizzled out early, around 1:30 a.M.
- We left at the same time.
- And how do you part ways?
- She got in her car,
And I got a ride from a coworker.
- She says corey promised to stop by her place the next day.
But thanksgiving came, and corey was a no show.
- I didn't think much about it, but I did tell my mom
That I was a little bummed out that she didn't call
And didn't come by.
- Was that like corey did not call and say--
- No. Not at all.
- Is she the type who would have said,
"hey, you know what?
"I'm gonna bow out for tonight."
- Correct.
It wasn't until the day after thanksgiving,
Black Friday, that someone finally noticed corey missing.
She didn't show up for her morning shift
At the restaurant.
No one had heard from her in more than a day.
- So one of the cooks who was a friend of ours said,
"I'll go check on her".
'cause she didn't live far from where she worked.
- The man returned to the restaurant to report
That corey hadn't answered her door.
Alarmed, the manager sent him back.
- He walked around the back of her apartment
And her blinds were closed
In the back, her bedroom,
But there was a little opening and he could see her foot
And there was blood on her foot.
- The coworker immediately raced back to work in a panic.
Police were called.
Corey parker had just been found.
- What had happened to corey?
Chilling clues are about to be discovered.
A gruesome scene inside her apartment.
- You could tell that she had fought for her life.
- And why detectives are sure her attacker was no stranger.
- That speaks to some sort of a relationship.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- It was just before noon on black Friday.
Ashley burg woke up to banging at her front door.
It was the police.
- They're like, "are you corey parker?"
And I said, "no, I'm not."
I said, I point at the-the, kind of, like,
The window next to me, which is her house,
And I said, "she lives right there."
- Moments later, officers were in corey's apartment.
- And I heard what, you know, they had said,
"there she is."
And I just fell to my knees.
- Twenty-five-year-old corey parker was dead.
It was clear she'd been murdered.
Investigators called former state attorney
Angela corey, then an assistant prosecutor.
- The police were all there when I arrived.
Um, and so they walked me through the scene.
- How hard was it seeing corey parker in that way?
- This was brutal, because you could tell
That she had fought for her life.
You could tell that she was at her most vulnerable,
Alone and in bed, and that she had been,
You know, brutally and viciously stabbed
In the middle of the night.
- Stabbed more than a hundred times.
- This was a sick individual who did this.
- Very. Very.
- It didn't take long for word of corey's death
To spread from the tiny apartment.
Amy laden, still visiting her mother out of town,
Got a call from corey's boyfriend.
- He was crying and he said, "did you hear?
"what's going on? I'm so confused."
I said, "no, what's wrong? Everything's fine."
And he said, "corey.
"there's something wrong with corey.
"somebody found her in blood."
And I said, "no, no, she's fine.
"I talked to her yesterday. Everything's fine."
- Still, she drove back to jacksonville beach,
Straight to the police station,
Just to make sure.
- Did it finally register at the police station, eventually?
- Um, I went into a room with a detective.
They did confirm that she was found in her home dead.
I kept thinking something happened to her heart.
I don't know why I kept going back to that in my mind.
I don't know why.
- Tiffany zienta,
Who'd been out with corey two nights earlier,
Was finishing her bartending shift
When a customer broke the news to her.
- I had this feeling kind of washed over me
And, um, called amy and, um, asked her if it was true.
And she said it was.
- Detectives on the scene, meanwhile, were busy talking
To corey's neighbors and sizing up the layout
And location of her apartment.
That in itself was a red flag.
- My first time here at first glance,
Doesn't necessarily feel like the safest situation
For a young woman living in this ground floor apartment.
- Right.
Um, there's a lot of transient traffic
That comes through here.
The beach is three blocks from here.
- Detectives billy carlyle and katie kingston,
Both now retired, worked the case.
- She was a beautiful woman.
And, uh, whenever she would walk to and from her apartment,
I'm sure there were, you know, a lot of guys
That were looking at her.
- There's a lot of apartments around here.
You must have had to do a lot of canvasing.
- We did.
- Yes.
- A lot of individual canvases.
We had to talk to every one of those people,
Document it all.
- And there's a lot of partying that goes on at the beach.
And so you have people wandering up and down the streets here,
Two, three o'clock in the morning sometimes.
So, you know, yeah, that's a concern.
- Neighbors told police there had lately been
A peeping tom creeping around the area,
So it was possible she was killed by a complete stranger
Who'd broken into her apartment.
- It looked like that the suspect
Had put his hand on the kitchen counter
Right there at the lip of the sink
In order to lift himself up on the cabinet
To be able to extricate himself from the window.
- You could see what almost looked like handprints
Coming, like, they lowered themself out the window.
And those were in blood.
- It was corey's blood.
Traces of her murder left by the killer.
But the idea that this was a random killing
Didn't sit well with detectives.
- Was your gut telling you that this was someone she knew?
- Yes. Yes. - What was it?
Why were you thinking that?
- Because the-the extensive, um, stab wounds, uh,
She was stabbed 101 times.
And that speaks to some sort of a relationship.
- They hoped to find traces of her killer
In the mess left behind.
There was plenty of evidence to test.
Fingerprints on wine glasses and cigarette lighters,
Hair and blood everywhere.
- You just never know what's valuable.
So you try and photograph everything,
And then you try and examine everything
That you can that you think's potentially involved in it.
- And everyone.
The first person they needed to talk to
Was the new man in corey's life.
- You all wanted to talk to the boyfriend.
A logical place to start.
Any red flags there with him?
- No.
We determined through plane flight tickets
That he was, um, out of town at the time.
He wasn't even here in jacksonville beach.
- Was it a solid alibi? - Yes.
Solid confirmation.
- But these were early days in the investigation,
And there were many people in corey's world
For police to rule in or out,
Including a man who lived right next door,
Ashley burg's brother.
Police had a reason to talk to him.
- Did he have a solid alibi?
- No.
- Questions about a neighbor's whereabouts.
And then, suspicions about a co-worker's feelings
For corey.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- This was low-key jacksonville beach, florida,
Where the main concern of the day was how high
The waves were riding.
A young, single woman attacked in the night in her bed
Just didn't happen here.
- I think this case illustrates every woman's nightmare.
That as-as hard as corey parker tried to be safe
And she had all her doors locked,
She still was the most vulnerable
In the sanctity of her own home.
- Women who lived alone were scared.
- Melissa nelson, then an assistant prosecutor
Who joined the case, recalls the fear.
- Neighbors were scared.
People she worked with were alarmed.
So it was a very scary time for that community.
- Tiffany zienta, raised in jacksonville beach,
Couldn't believe this had happened
To someone she knew.
- I mean, they kept calling it the bloodiest crime scene
In jacksonville beach in twenty-five years.
That's not really comforting to feel or to hear.
- Ashley burg was also frightened for another reason.
Detectives thought her brother, joe,
Had been too vague about where he'd been
In the hours surrounding corey's death.
- Did he have a solid alibi?
- Not really, no.
- What was he doing?
- Well he, you know, he was at the apartment,
Just hanging around.
And, you know, he comes-comes and goes.
So we really couldn't establish that he had a solid alibi
At the time of the crime.
- Their interest grew when they found a hair on a sock
In corey's bedroom.
The hair looked like it could have come from joe.
- I know we did a microscopic comparison
And, um, that the microscopic comparison
Developed that likeness.
- The test they used back then wasn't definitive,
But it was enough to make police suspicious
And for joe to worry.
- So they would ask, "well, why is your hair on her sock?"
He couldn't answer that.
He was petrified.
Petrified.
He didn't know, you know, what they were gonna do next.
- What police did was take a sample of joe's dna
For testing and press on.
Meanwhile, there was another young man
They were interested in, a dishwasher named eric ely.
- Eric was a, um, coworker that worked with corey at,
Uh, ragtime tavern.
- And everyone knew he really liked corey.
- Had come on to her on multiple occasions
And had also, um, done that to several
Of the other waitresses up there.
They just thought he was a creepy guy.
- Who'd grown stranger by the day.
Police found out he'd been pestering corey
To have thanksgiving dinner with him alone.
Each time she turned him down.
Detectives brought the young man in for questioning.
- But to the detectives, what the dishwasher did next
Was a move straight out of a norman bates playbook.
- He made this really nice thanksgiving dinner
In hopes that he could call her and say,
"I've made thanksgiving dinner.
"I'd like for you to come over
"and enjoy thanksgiving dinner with me."
- So he made the dinner first?
- Yes. - And then called?
- Right.
- That's a tiny bit on the creepy side.
- Yeah, it was-it was a little strange.
- It was clear he was infatuated.
- From there, the interview took an even darker turn.
The young man admitted to violent fantasies.
- He's talking about rape.
I mean, that's scary stuff right there.
- Exactly.
- That paled in comparison to what he said next.
He described how he thought corey had been killed.
- In fact, that's how corey was killed.
- Did you think about the scenario that he might
Have felt really rejected by corey and he snapped?
- Anything's possible.
Yes, I mean, that comes into your mind.
You know, he asked her multiple times to go out with him,
And although she was cordial to him,
She just never went there.
- He sounded like an obvious suspect.
- Despite all his incriminating descriptions,
The dishwasher was adamant he hadn't killed corey,
And police didn't have any hard evidence
That put him inside her bedroom.
- He's got a denial, and you've got nothing
To put him there.
- For the time being, police had to let the man go.
And just when it seemed their case
Couldn't get more complicated, it did.
Corey's friend had been talking around town about the murder,
And she was saying all the things that catch
A detective's attention.
- Are you ready for another potential suspect?
This close girlfriend, of corey's,
Was she a little too close?
- Tiffany was infatuated with corey?
- Yes.
Her statements about how much she loved corey,
It piqued our interest.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin.
Twenty-five-year-old corey parker
Had been brutally murdered in her bedroom,
And the list of possible suspects
Was getting longer.
Detectives were about to focus on
A close friend of corey's
Who seemed cooperative at first, but they wondered,
Was she hiding something?
Back to andrea canning with "rear window".
- In the months after corey parker's murder,
Police had several potential suspects,
Including a next door neighbor with a vague alibi
And an obsessed dishwasher.
But they didn't have enough to make an arrest.
Corey's family even offered a reward for information.
Prosecutor melissa nelson.
- And to that end, everybody who presented
As a potential suspect,
They were running that to ground.
Could it be this person? Is it this person?
- Amy laden found herself looking around
At corey's other friends and wondering,
Could it be one of them?
- Everybody was an actual suspect.
So that became a little bit scary to me.
- Her killer could have been right under your nose.
- Yeah.
- Tiffany zienta remembers just wanting to be helpful.
Like most of corey's friends, she met with the detectives.
- They wanna talk to you, detectives?
- We all write a statement.
- Well, they wanted to talk to you.
- Absolutely.
- Tiffany told the detectives she had been with corey
At the ritz bar Wednesday night into the early morning hours
Of thanksgiving.
She said they left the bar at the same time,
Around 1:30 am.
Tiffany hitched a ride with another friend
To go bar hopping.
Corey, she noted, got into her own car
And headed home.
Later, tiffany said, she called corey's home phone.
- It was, like, 2:15.
It was right after we left the original bar.
- Detectives followed up on what tiffany had told them.
Carlyle says they quickly noticed
A wrinkle in her story.
- Her phone call was not on the phone records
Of corey parker's, um, home residence phone.
- So she's starting to make some inconsistent statements?
- Exactly. Inconsistent statements.
- More troubling to police was what they were hearing
From corey's friends.
They were saying tiffany had been describing the murder,
The stab wounds to the body,
Details that hadn't been made public.
They also believed she harbored deep feelings
For corey that weren't mutual.
- Tiffany was infatuated with corey?
- Yes. - What were you told?
- Well, we were just basically told
That it was bordering on a little-a little strange.
You know, with what we'd heard about her statements,
About how much she cared about corey
And how much she loved corey,
You know, it just, it piqued our-our curiosity
And interest.
- Now, detectives wanted to sit down again with tiffany.
But by then, more than five months had passed
Since corey's murder, and tiffany had left town...
For new orleans.
The move only made her look worse to police,
So they tracked her down, hoping to confront her.
But tiffany wasn't having it.
- She, at some point, decided she wasn't
Gonna cooperate further and, um, referred us to her lawyer.
- So detectives decided to get a warrant for tiffany's dna.
- We had to get a, uh, a court order
To get her standards, um, her hair and, um, her blood.
- Are you starting to think she could be corey's killer?
- Well, you just have to follow that lead.
We felt like, based on what we knew to that point,
That she was of a person of interest,
Definitely, uh, maybe a viable suspect.
- I'm not the person that's gonna kill somebody.
- Looking back, tiffany is convinced
Detectives set their sights on her
From the moment she first talked to them.
The fact that she was the last friend
To see corey alive, she says,
Shaped everything that followed.
- I never knew that saying I was the last one with her
Was gonna come back to haunt me, you know?
The police are like, "well, killer was the last one."
Well, until you think about it that way,
You don't think about it that way.
- First of all, she says, she never lied
About that call to corey,
No matter what the phone record said.
- How do you explain that?
- According to my attorney, he had had other clients
That had called people
That didn't show up on phone records either.
I don't know.
I don't know why it didn't show up.
I have no idea.
- As for being in love with corey...
- Is there any truth to that?
- No, because I'm not gay. I thought she was beautiful.
I thought she was a great person.
Have I been infatuated with corey?
No.
- Everything else she did in this case, she says,
Was out of innocence or panic.
She learned about the bloody crime scene
From a friend, a paramedic who'd been there.
She went to new orleans to rest, not escape.
She got a lawyer out of fear, not guilt.
How are you feeling as this is getting more intense?
I mean, this is a murder investigation.
- Helpless.
Bullied. Helpless.
Like there were gonna be no answers
And this was gonna be hanging over me
For the rest of my life.
- But before they could make an arrest,
Detectives needed to link her dna to the crime scene.
That's when things got really interesting.
- Coming up, yet another person of interest,
This one lurking in the shadows.
- It wouldn't take much if she had her lights on,
For him to sit up there in the dark
And be able to watch her.
- And then, detectives get their hands on
The one thing that might solve this case.
- We were jumping for joy.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Jacksonville beach had been home to tiffany zienta,
Now it seemed home had turned on her.
- Did you think, "there's a chance I could get arrested?"
- Yes. For something I didn't do.
- But she wasn't arrested. And neither was anyone else
In the months following corey parker's murder.
A year went by.
Former state attorney angela corey.
- So this wasn't solved after the commercial break?
- Oh, no. No, no.
We went into this knowing we were in for the long haul.
As they, what's that phrase?
We knew it was gonna be a marathon, not a sprint.
- They had their list of possible suspects,
But they didn't have the evidence
Or the science yet to definitively link
Anyone to the crime.
- Dna testing was actually in the middle
Of evolving at that time.
- Eventually, the science and the evidence came together.
Investigators recovered a strand of foreign hair
From corey's underwear.
They believed that single strand was rich in dna.
- That had been clearly ripped out of a head.
- Likely, they believed, the killer's head.
Now they had to test it against their possible suspects.
- You essentially had your killer in your tests.
You just didn't-- - locked in a tube.
- ...Didn't know his name.
- Hairs on slides. That's right.
- That's when the case took its most dramatic turn yet.
Thanks to this man.
- Would you call yourself a bounty hunter?
- I've been called bounty hunter before,
But I'd prefer fugitive specialist.
- Fugitive specialist, okay.
- William rentschler knew about corey's murder,
And he knew there had been a reward posted
For information leading to her killer.
- So it was kind of like, hey, why not take a look?
- Yeah. - So, on his own,
He started talking to corey's old neighbors
To see if officers had missed anything.
- When I came across the one individual,
Some-some things struck me as odd.
- The individual was a young man named robert denney.
He was seventeen years old, living in a nearby building
When corey was killed.
He'd been questioned and dismissed by detectives
Early on, in part because he was so young.
What seemed odd to william was that the teen disappeared
Not long after the murder.
As memorial day weekend rolled around,
William found himself on a dock with two friends.
- We were fishing and then having a couple of beers
And I was going over my notes.
- Suddenly, he remembered that robert denney had worked
At the same restaurant as his friends.
They recognized the name instantly.
- They felt that he was an offbeat individual.
- About two months after the murder,
They said denney seemed distraught,
Saying he had to go home to texas,
That his child had just been killed.
They quickly found out that he'd made it all up.
So he's a liar. - Correct.
- He lived near the victim? - Correct.
- He moved out of town shortly after the murder?
- Correct.
- What is your gut telling you as you're sitting on that dock?
- It's highly unusual and we're probably on to something.
- William shared his suspicions with detective katie kingston.
She then went over to check out
Denney's old apartment for herself.
- You can see how close it is.
- It was apartment number four, and its back balcony
Was less than three feet from corey's old kitchen.
When police met with denney's coworkers,
They said he had talked about watching a young woman
From his balcony.
- Do you think he'd been watching her for a while?
- Absolutely. - Yeah.
- No question about it. - Yeah.
- It was something straight out of hitchcock.
A rear window, a vulnerable young woman,
A man watching, seeing, but unseen.
Denney didn't match the description
Police had gotten earlier in the case
Of that peeping tom, but that didn't mean
He hadn't been spying on corey, said detectives.
- Then it wouldn't take much, if she had her lights on,
For him to sit up there in the dark
And be able to watch her as much as he wanted to.
- Kingston didn't know where the man lived now,
But she found out he had a sister in the area.
What the woman told the detective
About her brother was unsettling,
To say the least.
- She called him a night creeper.
And she said that he would creep around the house at night.
Um, she had woken up before and he was staring at her.
- The sister said kingston could find her brother
In easton, maryland.
He had moved there to be with a woman he met online.
Kingston and carlyle immediately headed north.
They needed to compare their suspect
To that hair sample from the crime scene.
- And you need his dna?
- Absolutely. - Yes.
- With the help of easton police,
They called up their suspect and flat out lied.
They made up a story about a recent assault.
Could he come in for questioning?
- So he agreed to come in, and he sat down with us.
- What followed was vintage cat and mouse.
Police tried to get denney's dna off a cigarette.
Denney went for the smoke, but when he was finished...
- He took the cigarette butt and put it behind his ear,
Um, wouldn't put it in the cigarette ashtray.
- So they moved on to plan b.
They offered him a bottle of water.
- Well, he takes the water,
But he doesn't take the top off of it.
And he sat there the whole time,
Never drank from the water bottle.
So now you're on to plan c.
- Which was this:
They asked denney to fill out some forms,
Police procedural stuff, they said.
- And what we were gonna do was have him sign those forms,
And then put 'em in an envelope,
And then seal the envelope.
There was three different envelopes.
- Denney filled out the forms, but didn't lick the envelopes.
- And he looks at us and says, "you guys have tried
Three separate times to get my dna sample."
He says, "you can seal 'em yourself.
Is there anything else?" - the best laid plans.
- The best laid plans of mice and men.
He didn't fall for it.
- Denney was done, but carlyle wasn't.
- I wasn't going anywhere without a dna sample.
- So they staked him out at the computer store
Where he worked,
And snapped these photos as their prey came outside
For his cigarette breaks.
Once again, their mouse was a step ahead.
He was, um, smoking the cigarette,
And then he would, when he was finished with it,
He would take it and put it behind his ear.
- Do you think he knew that maybe you were watching him?
- I'm sure.
- But on the second day, denney did something
He had probably done a thousand times before.
- He starts spitting on the ground,
Out of the clear blue.
- Spit has dna in it.
- And we were like-we were-we were jumping for joy
At that point.
- So you've never been so happy in your life
To see someone spit.
- Never been so happy to see that.
- When denney left, carlyle raced over,
Collected the sample,
And drove straight to the fbi's dna lab.
All there was left to do now
Was wait just a little bit longer.
- Coming up...
- There's unidentified fingerprints,
And there is unidentified hairs in the victim's hands.
- Had someone else been at corey's?
And then, we sit down with robert denney.
- Did you murder corey parker?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- It had been a year and a half since corey parker's murder
When police discovered, or rediscovered,
Robert denney, her old neighbor.
- We were full bore on robert denney at that point.
- Here's why.
Denney lived right behind the victim,
He disappeared soon after her murder.
And detectives learned this: Denney had an older brother
In prison for murder.
- You're starting to think this might run in the family?
- You can't help but think that.
- Denney's brother had been convicted
Years earlier in texas,
And his crime was eerily similar to this case.
- The interesting thing about the brother
Was that in his case in el paso,
He stabbed that woman ninety-six times.
And we're dealing with a homicide
Where our victim's been stabbed 101 times.
So the similarity was just too much to overlook.
- The detectives had to wonder if denney had killed corey
In a twisted attempt to outdo his sibling.
One thing detectives were sure of,
He had become fixated on her.
A coworker recalled being in robert denney's apartment.
- Robert pointed down to corey's window and said, uh,
"I watch that girl down there."
- They were convinced denney was her killer,
But they needed proof.
So they waited for tests to compare denney's saliva sample
To that strand of hair found at the scene.
And wouldn't you know, denney's dna was a match,
Not just to that hair,
But also to a tiny speck of blood
Recovered near her kitchen sink.
All the other possible suspects,
The next door neighbor, the dishwasher,
And tiffany were cleared in the case.
- We were jumping up and down.
- We wanted to go get him then.
- And prosecutor angela corey said no.
- He could come up with a story to explain that dna away.
"oh, I carried her groceries in for her
And I cut my finger."
You can't give anybody a chance to explain it away.
- The prosecutor wanted him on the record,
Denying he'd ever set foot in the victim's apartment.
Then, they'd hit him with the dna proof,
Trapping him.
So they sent katie kingston back to maryland,
To robert denney's house.
- Well, I was gonna play like I didn't know anything, and...
- You were acting. - ...Just acting kind of dumb.
- She told denney they had found the man
Who'd killed his old neighbor, corey parker.
The detective was just here to tie up loose ends.
He seemed willing to help.
What he didn't know,
The detective was wearing a wire.
- Then, the detective asked the crucial question:
Had he ever been in corey's apartment?
- That was all the detective needed.
The cat, it seemed, had finally gotten its mouse.
- When we heard the recording,
I had the arrest warrant ready to go,
And I finished plugging in what they told me
Over the phone.
And we were ecstatic. We knew we had him.
- Corey parker had been dead almost two years to the day
When police slipped the handcuffs on robert denney.
At the police station right after his arrest,
He protested his innocence.
- And when carlyle mentioned denney's brother,
He again told the detective he had it all wrong.
- Detectives weren't buying his tears.
They were convinced they had enough evidence
To put robert denney away for life.
And yet, it took almost five years
To bring him to trial.
It was, after all, a complicated investigation.
Denney's dna was found at the crime scene,
But there was also evidence they couldn't link to him.
- We had alternative suspects.
We had a lot to explain in the form of the science.
- The defense seized the opportunity,
Noting there were any number of people
Who might have killed corey.
- There's still unidentified pieces of evidence
At this crime scene.
- Robert denney's attorney, rick sichta.
- There's unidentified semen stains,
There's unidentified fingerprints,
And there is unidentified hairs in the victim's hands.
So, it's a question of whodunit.
- Not a case of denney did it, he said.
To underscore that, denney even took the stand
To show jurors he was just a boy next door,
Not a monster at the door.
Only it didn't work.
After a three week trial, the jury needed
Less than an hour to render a verdict.
Guilty of first degree murder.
- It is the judgement and sentence of this court---
- Denney was sentenced to life in prison,
Which is where we met for this interview.
- Did you murder corey parker? - No, I did not.
- He believes the sins of his brother
Made police quick to zero in on him.
- There has been a connection made
As far as the theories of the police,
The prosecutors, that this was some twisted
Brotherly bond or rivalry.
Is there any truth to that? - None at all.
Simply because my brother is convicted of murder
Does not make me a murderer.
- He says the way police later got his dna,
Shows they were determined to link him to corey's murder.
- When I first heard that my spit
Was what they collected to match to any dna
At the crime scene, it was just unreal.
I'm thinking to myself, "how could this be?"
- He's also convinced that the labs,
Including the one at the fbi,
Didn't follow protocol when they tested his dna
Against the evidence from the crime scene.
- There's definitely evidence that suggests
They may have mixed up samples.
- I think the hardest part to wrap your head around
Is that there could be contamination
On both the blood and the hair. - Right.
I can understand why you would feel that way.
And maybe that goes to explaining
What the police might have done with the evidence.
We don't know.
If I knew, I wouldn't be here.
- It just seems a little far fetched
That the police would randomly pluck you
Out of obscurity years later and decide to frame you.
- I understand.
And I've thought about this for years.
And it happened.
Um, police do frame people, um,
We see it all the time now in america.
- The police have framed you, and two separate crime labs
Have contaminated the evidence?
- Yes. - You can see how that--
- I can see how that is-- - ...Looks very far fetched.
- ...Very far fetched. Yes, I can understand that.
- The detective in this case says that he is 1000% certain
He has the right person. - He's wrong.
He does not have the right person.
- So who did it then?
- If I knew, I wouldn't be here now.
I wish I knew.
- Yet, the people who arrested and prosecuted denney insist
Two independent labs did follow protocol
Linking his dna to evidence from the crime scene.
A florida appeals court denied denney's motion
For a new trial.
- I hope he rots in hell. I hate robert denney.
- As for tiffany zienta, she says it took a long time
To get over what he and the police did to her.
- How did you deal with it? - Drank more.
Tried to lose who I was. Tried to change who I was.
Didn't like myself very much.
It's taken me a while to get back to who I need to be.
- Amy laden has also struggled with the past.
- I go to that day.
Why didn't I invite her to thanksgiving with me?
Maybe she would have gone.
So even to this day, you know,
There's a lot of guilt with that.
- But there's also gratitude.
To investigators who never gave up,
To three strangers on a dock playing armchair detective,
And most of all, to a best friend.
- I definitely feel blessed to have known her
For the amount of time I did.
You know, I can't imagine
What she would have accomplished by now.
- Whatever it was, amy feels certain
It would have been like the woman herself:
As vibrant as a northern sky,
As unforgettable as a southern night.
- That's all for this edition of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.