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Today marks 20 years since emergency responders found a murdered woman inside of a burning home in Kill Devil Hills. The victim was 33-year-old Denise Johnson. You wouldn't know it looking at this home that something terrible happened here 20 years ago, a horrible crime that is yet to be solved. I remember seeing heavy black smoke up in the air. I just remember a pool of blood and her laying in it. We knew obviously something was way wrong. This wasn't just a routine call.
On July 13th, 1997, someone brutally murdered 33-year-old Denise Johnson inside her childhood home in North Carolina, then set it on fire. For 22 years, Johnson's killer has eluded police living among us undetected. This is CounterClock, the investigation into the unsolved murder of Denise Johnson. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra.
According to Kill Devil Hills Police, in the first few minutes between Denise's murder and first responders coming to her address, there was a visitor, the first eyewitness. First responding police officer Mark Evans remembers this man said he called 911.
What drew my attention to him was that he was up there at the house trying to knock on it, trying to get the person out, which indicated to me that somebody was possibly inside of this house. This gentleman knew that there was somebody occupying that house and was trying to get her out. For him to make that phone call like he did indicates to me he was either on that street or close by or several houses down for him to go back and call Fallon in and be there by the time I arrived.
Denise's one-story house was glowing from fires inside of it, and even though the fires were pretty small, smoke was still billowing out of the eaves. All of this was happening while it was still really dark outside early in the morning, and most of the neighbors directly next to there were not even awake yet.
He was yelling and frantically saying that he was trying to get somebody to the door. And after everything was going down, we went back over and talked to him briefly. He, I'm almost 100% sure he said he was leaving to go to work. He may have been a fisherman or something down in Oregon, but this gentleman left early morning to go to work on a consistent basis. And
I believe he was one of the ones that saw a notice to smoke and he called, you know, went and ran back to the house to call 911. That was the only person around. Did he live on that street or was he just driving by? I believe he lived on the street. I'm almost sure he lived, you know, maybe several houses down, but he lived in that area, if not on that street, somewhere close by, maybe across street or something that would lead him to come by that house every morning.
This Good Samaritan's actions in the moments of chaos stood out to Mark Evans.
Police did get a statement from this man, one that would determine the trajectory of this case in the first weeks and months of the investigation.
From this point on, we're choosing not to name this man in the podcast. He's never been named as an official suspect. In fact, there's never been an official suspect in this case. But I will say, going forward, it's incredibly important you listen to the details of this part of the story. The information obtained from this eyewitness was significant to investigators early on.
Most of the police officers for the Kill Devil Hills Police Department, including Mark Evans, thought for a long time that the first eyewitness in Denise's yard that night was the person who called 911. Turns out, that's incorrect. As I investigated this case, I began wondering how, in 1997, a man in someone's yard in the middle of the night phoned police. Cell phones were barely around back then.
So I dug up an old newspaper article, hoping it would produce other names and anyone who could corroborate and remember this first eyewitness. And that's when I struck gold. The article written just a day after the crime noted the eyewitness was a fisherman picking up a friend for work. The friend lived on Denise's street, not the eyewitness himself. The man being picked up is named Rob Constantineau. I tracked Rob down through Facebook and found him right away.
Even though it has been 21 years, it's all pretty much pretty fresh in my mind because it was not that I was traumatized or anything by it, but it's just something that you remember.
I get up around 4 a.m. to get down to the marina at Oregon Inlet by 5. And I had arranged for a friend of mine to come and pick me up that morning because I had car troubles. So I was sitting in my living room waiting for him, and I saw headlights turn down the street. So I said, okay, my friend's coming. I went in and kissed my girlfriend goodbye.
I went out on the deck to see where he was because the lights had stopped in the street. I walked out on my deck, looked down there, and he was stopped in front of Denise's house. Rob's memory of the crime scene and the chaos that morning and the man in the truck that never made it to his house to pick him up for work is incredibly sharp.
He was running back and forth from his truck, and he said, call 911. Your neighbor's house is on fire. And I could see smoke coming out of the house. So I immediately called 911, told them what the deal was, gave them the approximate address, which I knew was just a couple of doors down from me. Then I went down there. After making that 911 call to dispatchers, Constantine hung up and rushed to where his friend was down the street.
You know, there was no one on scene, just him and I. I walked down there, and he was up banging on the front door. And I was like, dude, you know, I could see that there was fire in the house, but it wasn't, like, fully engulfed, you know. And I was concerned for his safety, like if he were to break a window or something and give air to the fire, maybe it could get bigger or something. So I was like, dude, you know,
"Be careful, be careful, get away from there." And within, I'd say within five minutes, it might have been three minutes, but within five minutes, the first fire truck arrived on scene and then police. We were standing there, like I said, his truck was parked in the road. They asked me to move it, so I hopped in it and I moved his truck, went and parked it into my driveway. I was there, they went in the house, I saw them drag her body out.
of the house. Answered a few questions. I was there for probably 45 minutes or an hour and they let me go and I went on to work. And I believe my friend that was picking me up, I believe he stayed there after, you know, quite a bit longer.
Because Rob was now another person at Denise's crime scene before police or any other first responders, I wanted to know as much as possible about what he observed. Was there any other people out there that time of morning? No. No, there was not.
There was a substantial amount of smoke that was coming out of it. And when I walked down there, I mean, you could see like a glow inside the house where whoever had set the fire. But it wasn't like giant flames. I mean, like it wasn't like coming out of the roof or nothing. It was contained and it wasn't a very big fire.
Throughout our interview, Rob's answers about what he heard, saw, and experienced included a lot of what the man next to him was doing and how that man was acting, because how he was acting stood out to Rob. The man that was driving to pick up Rob Constantinou for work began doing things outside of Denise's address, 2014 Norfolk Street, that got Rob's attention on the morning of the fire.
He may have actually even broken a window out of the front door to try to gain an entry to the house. And it was about that time, you know, when firefighters showed up on scene. But I was just, it was just kind of surreal, you know, like, wow, you know, it's a full house fire. Of course, we didn't know that anybody was inside, especially that somebody had been killed, you know. It really was just kind of like, hey, man, you know, don't get too close, dude. You never know what could happen if you go busting a window out. Did
Did he say that he knew this young woman or that there was some sort of sense of... He didn't say that at the time, but it came out later that, yes, he did know her. Apparently, they had had a relationship in the past. I don't know how close they were or whatever, but, yeah, apparently it came out. I found out later, I don't know whether it was through him or from the police, interviewed me a day or two later that he did, in fact, have a relationship with her.
As it turns out, the stranger trying to rescue Denise from her house fire wasn't a total stranger after all. Police investigators questioned the man significantly in the months after the murder. And on the day of the crime, he wasn't allowed to leave the scene at all. Here's first responding Kill Devil Hills police officer Mark Evans. I remember telling the gentleman on the scene to do not leave.
"Do not leave until we figure out what's going on." And they talked with investigators. I do remember that because by the time we got the door open, the fire department was quick on extinguishing the fire. We noticed the body, Ms. Johnson, and we drug her out and we knew immediately we had a homicide on our hands. So my intention was to secure that scene down and to tell that gentleman that was there, "Do not leave until we can talk to him further."
Something that seemed very interesting to me was that after only about an hour or so of gathering his statement, police allowed Rob Constantinou to leave. Rob says questions the police asked him were mostly about his friend. I had called him the night before to arrange his ride, and I was the one that got in his truck.
and drove it out of the scene, you know, to make way for the firefighters and everything. So they were asking me a lot of questions about, you know, what I saw in his truck and it smelled like smoke in the air and this, that and the other. And so I was a pretty staunch alibi for the guy. And I really didn't think anything of it. I just thought it was a coincidence, you know, that he happened to know the girl. I mean, I didn't really put a lot of stock in him, you know, being a viable suspect.
What do you know that you saw when you moved it and what you felt like in that moment? I didn't, I mean, like I said, I didn't see anything in the vehicle and I certainly didn't smell. It didn't smell like smoke or anything. As far as what I saw in his vehicle and everything and the way he was acting,
I didn't read a lot into it, to be honest with you. I mean, he was pretty, I could tell he was shaken up a little bit, especially when they pulled her out of the house. Because if I remember correctly, I don't think she had any, I don't think she was clothed. I think she was nude. You know, we were standing right there in our front yard, basically right on the edge of the street. So we could see pretty well. It was a pretty intense moment, you know, especially for him because he, apparently he had known her a lot better than I did.
Rob says his friend's behavior didn't really stick out to him as criminal, but there was one thing, a very small detail only Rob knows that he says to this day still puzzles him.
The one thing that struck me that was a little odd, well, I wouldn't say odd, but it was a little different. It was the direction that he came from that morning was not the direction that you normally would have
have come to come from his house. Normally you would have came, like I would normally think you would have came from the other end of the street. This was the only time he'd ever come to pick me up. This guy and I used to be roommates back in the, like the first, when I first moved to the Outer Banks, I was roommates with this guy, him and another guy. But where he lived was north of
and west of where I live. And so I would have thought that his normal route to come to my house, he would have come turned onto Norfolk, on the north end of Norfolk, and came south to get to my house instead of going on the back streets, instead of coming up Durham. Rob lived three homes north of Denise on the same side of the street.
That's why he would have seen Denise's home before yours coming from the south because you would have hit 2014 Norfolk Street visually before you got to your address. Correct. So that's why he drove right by it. So had he been coming a normal route, as we say, from the north, he would have hit your home and you both would have witnessed the fire together. Correct. He definitely did not come by my house first. I mean, he definitely came. I mean, he was.
It seemed that Rob's friend went out of his way to end up in front of Denise's house. The best way to really understand what Rob was describing was to drive the routes for myself. We also have a map on our website, counterclockpodcast.com, if you'd like to follow along.
Okay. And there's people that live there now. A family friend of the Johnsons bought it from them after the murder, and now it's like somebody else lives in there.
I got out and stood in the driveway. More than two decades ago, where I was standing was covered in police tape and detectives. It's just like crazy because like whoever did it, like they came out right here. Like they were on this road. Like the person that did this walked or drove right here. The house at 2014 Norfolk Street is small. It's light blue, the same color as it was in 1997. And there's one front door in the middle with no porch.
Someone renovated the cottage and built what used to be a flat top roof into an A-frame. There's windows on just about every side, and right at the center of the roof, someone hung a bright yellow sun made of metal. Her family always said the sun they kept up there because that's what Denise's thing was like the sun and sunshine.
Looking at it, the house wasn't super kept up. There was a broken basketball hoop in the driveway, an SUV that didn't look like it worked or had run in years. There was also some trash and bottles littered around the front. It could use a fresh coat of paint and a power wash. The people who own it now weren't home. So we moved on to figure out the layout of the street and how close Denise's home was to Rob Constantino's. He said he came out on his top porch, and there's only two homes with a top porch, that one and the one with the brown porch. Yeah.
The homes on Norfolk Street with top porches like Rob had said he lived in were at 2018 and 2022, just steps away from Denise's house. Rob said he lived in the house at 2018, but said it also could have been 2022. He couldn't remember for sure. Rob said he saw some smoke. I don't know if you could see smoke from 2022. You could see smoke from 2018. We're talking dark at night, and there is not a single streetlight around here.
So to see Black Smoke, you'd have to be pretty close. As we were driving, we mapped out which route was easiest to get to Norfolk Street from the main road. And it was clear coming from the south was out of the way. The route coming from the north would have been faster and put the man at Rob's house first instead of Denise's. But that's not what Rob said happened. Seeing the road and the routes in person was helpful, but I'm not sure yet how relevant it could be.
Seeing the road in person and actually driving it told me just how small and close everything is in this neighborhood and reminded me of something I'd heard about the scene on the day of the murder.
As investigators made their way into the crime scene, a big observation they had was that Denise's dog and closest companion, K. Ridge, was nowhere in sight that morning. He hadn't run to a neighbor's house, nothing. Every person who was at the scene mentioned K. Ridge in their interview for this podcast. Mark Evans.
Do you have any recollection of a dog running around or being in the area? Well, the fire department went in and I remember there was some talk, you know, quickly after the fire was extinguished, there was a dog maybe in the back of the yard. I never recall any dog coming out of the front of the house or when they drug her out.
Even Rob Constantineau remembers the dog. One thing that I will say that struck out to me is very odd was she had a dog.
And I never saw the dog during all this. And her dog was one of the neatest dogs. I mean, if you walked by her house on the street, that thing would come out and bark and raise total cane with you. And I never saw the dog during the whole thing, during the whole deal. And I'd even told the cops that. I was like, you know, where's the dog? And I never did hear anything about the dog. You know, I would have thought with all the commotion that was going on that we'd have heard that dog. I'd have heard that dog barking, right?
right there on even if he was closed up on the back porch because he was if I'm not mistaken I think it was a golden retriever if I remember correctly he was a very vocal dog and normally goldens are pretty nice but this guy he didn't like anybody going anywhere near that house and so I just found like whoever did it might have known the dog or something you know what I mean it just kind of struck me as odd that you know the dog was kind of like nowhere to be seen
Investigators told Denise's family that K Ridge was in the back of the home in a section of the house that was enclosed but had a concrete floor. It's another thing is, you know, she always had him in the house, but he was outside when they got there. It was a kind of a room that had concrete floors, but it wasn't finished yet out the back door. And that's where the dog was.
Donnie Johnson, Denise's sister, says Denise never would have purposely left the dog outside. It was her baby, yeah. Well, Denise loved animals. I mean, she loved animals to death anyway. And, you know, she really wanted to be a vet. It was her dream. But any dog she had, it was a tight friend. And that's why I know K-Roots was with her all the time. So when they said he was outside when they got there, I just found that very strange, too.
Kayridge became a piece of evidence and a tool for investigators after the murder, and they planned to use him to help catch their killer.
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Operating with high hopes, Kill Devil Hill's police detectives used Denise's golden retriever, Kay Ridge, as a tool to help identify her killer. So they were hoping that the dog would have some sort of reaction to somebody? That's interesting. Whose idea was that?
Huh. Was he that kind of dog, though? He could have been. I mean, he was a golden retriever. You know, they're pretty smart dogs. But Denise spoiled him so bad that, you know, she didn't ever really make him do anything. They were just a good companion. She spoiled him rotten. On the beach, he would just run all over your blanket, you know, and I would yell at him, Denise, get this dog. I'm like, oh, he's just having fun.
I often remember, you know, in the days and months after that, that, you know, in Denise's namesake, it was like that dog came in contact or had to know what was going on. And that dog could talk. That would shed some light on who committed this crime. The location where police found Carriage and why he wasn't inside with Denise has remained as much of a mystery as the murder. It's another puzzle piece no one can seem to fit into place.
Someone I hoped could help me navigate the mystery more was a man who'd asked questions from the beginning, former Outer Banks Sentinel newspaper reporter Darrell Law. Darrell and I met up at a local coffee shop in Kill Devil Hills, chatted about the case for a few minutes, I showed him my folder, and then drove to Denise's house a block away. I think I got a better pen.
The feeling was terrible. Everybody, it was just, you know, we couldn't believe it happened in our little town. Had many sleepless nights thinking about this. I have thought it through in many ways. There was some controversy around some of the articles I wrote and, you know, I kind of got a little shell-shocked after some of the feedback. But we, I stayed on it and I did weekly updates. I mean, I've always thought about this. I have a lot of information in a folder at home. I
Met with the police as few as, I think it was about seven years ago they had me in, in the conference room and kind of picked my brain. And I told them they could have any of the names and numbers I had in my folder. What was your sense of where they were then about the case, the investigation and looking, re-looking at it? I mean, seven years ago was still a long time after the murder itself. I don't think they'd done or found anything.
Rewinding back two decades, Darrell Law at the time was one of a handful of reporters working for the newspaper. His beat was Kill Devil Hills, and he remembers a very different town back then. This was a sleepy, sleepy town and a sleepy neighborhood back then. It shook the community. I mean, now that thinking back to it all, people were a lot tighter back then. It was a lot smaller. We didn't have cell phones. Everything wasn't immediate back then.
Being a small newspaper, it was pretty rare that they would get the chance to cover a serious crime like this, the brutal murder of a well-known social butterfly. And for Daryl Law, the case is personal. It did mean something to me. I knew her personally. We were acquaintances. When I first was assigned to cover the case at the Sentinel that morning, it didn't dawn on me exactly who Daryl was.
it was and then they dropped the picture on my lap and I was like oh my gosh you know this is somebody here I lived oh gosh about a half a mile from here back then over my mom's rental house there was a lot of people upset over this in fact I went to the funeral at the believe it was Kitty Hawk Methodist and uh it was packed as I remember I had to stand during the service and uh
There was hundreds of people there, and she was well-loved and liked, and it was just a sad time for everybody, really. Like any dedicated beat reporter, Law had an in with the police department and got to know active police chief Ray Davis well. But from the start, he says Davis and the department weren't saying much. You know, they were being pretty closed-lipped about it. I mean, I went and talked to the police chief in his office yesterday,
the next day and you know he had a big textbook on his desk that was homicide 101. I thought that was interesting. What were some of the initial big pieces of information for you as a reporter that you were like I gotta be on this? Well they were looking at a person who called it in which is I've learned over the years a standard operating procedure. The person that drops the dime as it were back in the day.
is someone they'd look at and at least glean for more information. And that person and his friend were being looked at. There was talk of that person's truck being impounded in search. And then there was talk of a knife being found in their sink. But that all went quiet pretty quickly.
The man that he's referencing is our unnamed first eyewitness who was picking up Rob Constantino for work. A few days after the murder, Darrell Law says he actually interviewed the guy. Well, I had one of the early suspects tell me that he had more information. He just couldn't talk about it. And I've never followed up with that person. Can't imagine they're going to talk now. It's been 21 years. Maybe they would, but...
That looks like it frustrates you. It does. You know, part of it is I professionally wish I had stuck with it better. And my life just drifted away from that after I got married and I got away from community newspapers for financial reasons. And I work for the state government now, so I don't work on news. I don't work on crime stories anymore. But it doesn't mean I think any...
less of the whole thing. In fact, we had one of the retired detective, Mulford, worked at the pier with us for a long time. He was one of my security guards and we used to talk about what was going on.
As we were leaned up against our cars, looking over at Denise's house, Law and I kept talking. By the end of our interview, I could feel the weight of Denise's case he's carried over the years. Other than anniversary stories, he's never been able to publish any new articles. I think it is sad and it's upsetting to really go back and try and put myself into that day
Law's last comment stuck with me as we went our separate ways from Denise's house. What he said, that the killer could still be living in town, sent another round of questions through my head.
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The idea that the killer could still be local raised a lot of questions for me. How did this person know Denise? How did they know where she lived? And why did they kill her? And did they follow her? There's no way of knowing those answers for sure, so I had to go back to investigators' timeline of Denise's movements the night before murder. Current Kill Devil Hills police captain John Taller explains more. He's the person in charge of the cold case now.
It was mentioned, for sure, that she had been at the Amoco station, that she had been seen there prior. So I know that was released. And she was in the company of some unknown woman that has never come forward that we're aware of.
It was the last time that she was reported alive, so it was important as far as establishing the last time that somebody saw her alive. But we were never able to identify the person she was allegedly with at the gas station. It was a female, and they just had a description of her.
To this day, police still don't know the identity of the woman that was seen talking to Denise at that gas station. Detectives put Denise at the store at 1 o'clock in the morning, a few hours before her murder. They found a receipt for what she purchased that had a timestamp on it. Investigators questioned as many people as they could at the store.
I couldn't find an electronic version of that interview with the clerk, but I know I have read it in the paper copy of the report, her interview. And as I recall, she seemed to think that they were together, but were they together? Were they just standing in line? Had they bumped into each other, chatted? Had they been hanging out that night? We don't know because we've never been able to figure out. That woman has never been identified and has never come forward.
What happened after Denise walked out of that convenience store is anyone's guess. Her sister, Donnie, aches to know. As we were driving in Kill Devil Hills, my husband and I mapped out how far the Amco gas station actually was to Denise's house. The mystery woman came up again in our conversations.
When two women are walking next to one another and one branches off, she might have told her like, hey, I'm going to go meet up with my boyfriend or hey, I'm going to go meet up with this person. But only the last person that was with her would have known that.
So, like, speaking to that person would have been really nice, not only for police, but for... And that person, from what we know, never reported into police that she was with her? That's strange. Police have never identified that woman or spoken with her. And you know that woman would have had to know what had happened to Denise. Yeah, because she would have... Either by not communicating...
to her from then on out or having heard the news within the community if she was local. Yeah. She also could have just been a total stranger that physically was walking next to her and they had no connection at all. But you would still think that person would know Denise's face. Hey, I was at the same place at X time. Yeah.
Police referred to the gas station's location as being near Avalon Pier, which is an old fishing pier directly on the beach. The pier is on the other side of a five-lane highway from Denise's neighborhood. The site of the old gas station is now a hookah and tobacco store. It looked like a converted convenience store, minus the Rastafari blankets and hookah pipes hanging in the windows. It was one road over and less than a quarter mile from Denise's front door. So eerie.
As I was standing in the parking lot where Denise was last seen alive, I was starting to feel so close to some answers. There was just one more thing I needed to do. Track down the man who'd remained the biggest question mark so far. Rob Constantino's ride the morning of the murder, the unnamed Good Samaritan at Denise's front door that morning on July 13th. The only reason I called him that morning was just because he lived nearby and
Him and I, to be honest with you, we're not really good friends. You know, when we lived together back in the day, we didn't really get along all that great. And so we weren't real tight. And so I wouldn't have really had the cause to talk to him about it. But he never came to be like, you know, hey, man, that's crazy. Can you believe it? You know how people get after something traumatic, you know, they want to talk to him. No, and that was, you know, you might consider that to be a little strange that he didn't.
reach out to me and, you know, be like, wow, you know, like you said, but no, he never did. What kind of developed in your mind in the, in the days and weeks after that, because it seems like there was this sense of, okay, more, more was coming to light than maybe you even knew the relationship or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Well, I, it's kind of hard to say. I mean, it was kind of, uh, initially his family, they hired their own detective or GI guy.
After that, Rob says he never heard from the man who was supposed to pick him up again. But he knows who he is and wishes that if he does know more, he'd help me and definitely help police.
Especially since it hadn't been solved. Yeah, absolutely. It kind of makes you wonder, like, maybe he could have done it. You know? Yeah, absolutely. The thoughts cross my mind. I mean, it's hard to believe because I see the guy all the time. But, you know, I mean, you never know about people. But absolutely, it's definitely crossed my mind that, you know, hey, maybe he was the guy. You know, maybe it was him. But I just find it hard to believe that he...
I made a pit stop at the local clerk of court's office in Dare County to do some digging on the man.
Do you know where you're going, young lady? Oh, Court of Courts. All right, come on through. You're going to follow, basically follow her. She's going upstairs, and you're going down to the far left corner where that lady's standing up the rail up there. I found a few records on him, and turns out in 2010, the sheriff's office arrested him for hit and run. And this is your copy. Don't even stop and pay for them. Oh, really? Just take them in there. Okay, thank you. His arrest report had a phone number, so I gave him a call. Phone rings.
and kept calling. All I got was his voicemail advertising his current fishing business. I waited him out, calling a few times a week. Two days before we left to go to North Carolina, the man called me back at the very moment that I was on the phone with Donnie Johnson, Denise's sister. Okay, so that was crazy. I've been calling him every day for like the last week.
And he called me back. What did he say? I said, look, I'm calling with an investigative series. And he said, yeah, I know all about it. I said, really? I said, well, what do you know about it? He goes, well, I don't really want to talk about it right now. And then he was like, what is it that you're working on again? I said, well, I'm working on a podcast series. And I've been talking with people about the case who were involved in the case and who were witnesses.
And he said, well, are you in town? And I said, I will be in town. He said, well, give me a call when you get here and we'll talk about it. When we finally got to the Outer Banks a few days later, the man never answered my phone calls. He completely ghosted.
But I wasn't done with him just yet. Remember that fishing business he advertised on his voicemail? I found the name of it and his boat, so I went. But I took Donnie's advice and didn't go alone and went with my dad. Is this where I turn? Yes. I don't know if he's still here, but I'll go ask. I don't think that's him. I know who that guy is. You guys know where the...
boat docks at. Does he dock here? I'm looking for the ***. Yeah, all the way down the end at the far end down there on the other side. Okay, what color boat is it? It's kind of like a tannish boat. Okay, cool. Thank you. It's actually like the first one. Okay, thank you. I was told it docks at the end. Kind of a tan. There it is. We found the boat, but no one was on board. All I saw were two men and a truck next to it.
Hi there guys! Sorry, I'm looking for Mr. Okay, is he here? Huh? I called him but I didn't get an answer.
The men were just sitting there, idling in a pickup truck. Neither of them was the person I was looking for, but one of them talked to me. He told me he was the first mate on the fishing boat the man captained. The mate pulled out his cell phone and called the captain. We waited a few seconds together, but the call went to voicemail. All right, well, I'll try and give him another call. Thank you. Have a good one.
I left the two strangers in their truck and just walked away. Just left. That was his first mate. So we came to the dock. I just talked to his first mate and we missed him by a couple minutes. So I'm gonna keep calling him. His mate tried to call him. He didn't answer either. So we'll see.
The boat dock was a bust, but I didn't feel like it was entirely. I got the sense from the guy I talked to that the man I was looking for knew I was coming, somehow. So I left feeling I'd gone as far as I could, at least for that day. Perhaps then wasn't the time, but eventually, I planned to get a hold of him and have that talk that he agreed to. I started down the road for my next lead. Denise's sister told me about in our very first conversation for the podcast. She had a roommate that lived there, but...
The other woman living inside Denise's house the summer of the murder. In 1997. And the last time you talked to her was in 1997? And that was it? Mm-hmm.
The young woman disappeared after the murder and resurfaced in Florida. Hi, I'm looking for Miss Karen Bittinger. Next time on CounterClock. I said going home when I said I was going to go home. I probably would have been dead on the floor too.
If you're enjoying this series, follow us on social media to get the behind-the-scenes look at the investigation. We're on Twitter at at CounterClockPod, and on Instagram, look for the handle CounterClockPodcast. CounterClock is an AudioChuck original podcast. Ashley Flowers is the executive producer. And all reporting and hosting is done by me, Delia D'Ambra.
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