Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 29 - Room with a View - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a murder that stumps even veteran detectives it was a nasty nasty
crime scene and a crime that offers few clues there were no signs of any struggle or fight was this a sex crime
by a jilted lover her body was positioned in a way that was very sexually suggestive it's hard to imagine
that anybody's capable of something like this until one man's words reveal a twisted motive and a killer with a
bizarre past [Music] jacksonville florida with its warm sandy beaches and sub-tropical climate was the
perfect place for 25-year-old corey parker to attend college she liked it a lot better than the cold
winters of her hometown of rochester new york corey was beautiful she was very tall
she had a presence about her some of our best times together was a girls night in
you know rent movies and go hang out at the house corey worked her way through college as
a waitress during the thanksgiving holiday of her junior year she didn't show up for work
so her fellow employees were concerned they thought immediately that something was wrong so the manager directed one of
the cooks to go by her apartment to check on her her apartment door was locked but her co-worker looked inside
and saw her body on the bed covered in blood this crime scene was one of the worst
that this county has ever seen in terms of its uh just gruesomeness there was blood all over her bedroom all
over her body almost as if it had been painted on her the scene appeared to be staged
cory's body was positioned in a way that was very sexually suggestive she was nude
her legs were spread apart there's every indication that there was a sexual motive to this crime
interestingly the autopsy found no evidence of sexual assault cory parker was stabbed 101 times of
those 101 stab wounds i believe 54 were postmortem overkill does indicate to investigators
a relationship between victim and perpetrator police learned that the night before her
murder corey spent the night at a local bar with friends witnesses said she left around 1am
the clothes cory wore to the bar were folded neatly at the bottom of her bed we also know that she had prepared
herself for bed and crawled in her bed so we know that she wasn't attacked until after she
was in bed so either he was waiting in her bedroom closet or he let himself into the apartment
investigators found a gold-plated zippo lighter in cory's bedroom although corey
smoked none of her friends recognized it investigators dusted the lighter for fingerprints
but none were found it became apparent to us that there was no way that that was corey parker's lighter
inside the kitchen of corey's apartment police found a blood stain on the kitchen counter
next to the sink and on the windowsill above the sink both inside and outside this led police to believe the killer
entered and exited the apartment through the kitchen window the reason we believe
the killer didn't go out the door was because of the light that was outside the kitchen window offered the suspect a
way to both get in and out of the apartment without being illuminated corey's phone records revealed that a
former co-worker 27 year old eric jones had been calling her repeatedly before her death
he had been asking cory out for some time she had been telling him no employees at the restaurant told us that
he had an obsession or an infatuation with her and was continuously talking to her when she'd come to work or trying to
ask her out jones had no criminal record but acted bizarrely when interviewed by
police not only did he have a history of mental illness by his own admission but he told
police officers that he had fantasies about raping and killing women which clearly
jumped out at law enforcement he described sexual fantasies that he had about cory some some were fairly violent
he even told investigators how he would have murdered corey had he been given the chance
he described how he would have slit her throat early in the early in the murder so that she couldn't scream for help
and that description was similar enough to how she was really killed that it again raised the police suspicion
[Music] the medical examiner who performed corey parker's autopsy found no signs of
sexual assault but corey had been stabbed over 100 times there were numerous defensive wounds on
her hands and arms proving there had been an intense struggle our theory was that corey parker fought
for her life in order to prevent a sexual assault investigators found several foreign
hairs in corey's hands one had an intact root the fact that the hair had root material
on it and was not from her would allow you to at least presume that that hair had to
be attained forcefully dna testing revealed the blood in the kitchen came from the same person as the hair in
corey's hand surprisingly this dna did not match the prime suspect eric jones corey's co-worker despite his
bizarre behavior i think it's fair to say was mentally unstable at this time and while
prescribed medication to control his mental illness he was not taking it and so i think at the time
that he gave these statements he was mentally unstable the dna from corey's apartment
did not match any of the dna profiles in either the state or national criminal databases
in the search for corey parker's killer investigators discovered that she had just started dating someone new
his name was david wilt but it didn't take long for investigators to eliminate him as a
suspect he was out of state at his parents house for thanksgiving and so you know he had a very solid
alibi investigators interviewed everyone corey spoke with at the ritz bar on the night
of her murder most of the people corey saw that night left the bar before she did
but one friend tiffany smith stayed with corey until one in the morning tiffany told police
they both left the bar at the same time in their own cars and went their separate ways
but tiffany told friends that wasn't the only contact she had with corey that night she said she called corey from her
cell phone around 2 am and corey answered the phone she said when corey answered the phone
that corey was asleep and she asked her what she was doing corey said i'm sleeping tiffany also told
friends she drove to corey's apartment around 4am and knocked on her door but no one answered so she left
her statement that she went by corey's house puts her at the crime scene during the time that corey could have possibly
been killed and that added to that suspicion that she could possibly be involved
but when investigators checked tiffany's cell phone records they made a startling discovery
tiffany didn't call corey after they left the ritz bar obviously investigators were curious as to why she
would say that she had called and actually spoken with corey when it wasn't true
but why would tiffany make up a story like that everybody was talking about the possibility that maybe she was sexually
interested in corey tiffany mentioned to me in just a very casual conversation that she had been
vicarious [Music] tiffany had a real true affection for corey in addition tiffany told friends things about the
crime scene that had not been released to the general public she was describing the state of the victim's body and the
scene without having been privy to either photographs or a walk-through of the scene they thought it was certainly
suspicious i thought it was really strange that she would have any idea of how corey had been killed
tiffany denied any involvement in the murder but when asked to provide a dna sample
she refused the fact that she did not willingly give up dna or hair samples led the police to
believe she had something to hide even though corey parker's friend tiffany smith insisted
she had nothing to do with corey's murder she made untruthful statements about her
activities on the night of the murder she also refused to provide a dna sample she actually put herself at the crime
scene in one of her statements but scientists found a surprising piece of information in the blood evidence
left by the killer they found the tell-tale y chromosome a y chromosome is present
only in men we did develop a male profile from this particular sample which was a blood sample
from a point of entry or exit into the apartment we were optimistic that this could be from the suspect
so tiffany was eliminated as a suspect they believed that tiffany was saying things to kind of inject herself into
the investigation to make her seem more important than she was investigators believe tiffany learned
details of the crime scene from a friend who worked on the emergency crew police were forced to consider the
possibility that corey's murder was a random act perpetrated by a man with an uncontrollable hatred for women
eventually police performed dna tests on 38 men co-workers fellow students former
boyfriends with no success i was very concerned that they would never solve the case and what i learned
from watching other crimes is that the longer it goes on the less likely it is to solve a crime
18 months passed and police continued to work the case pouring through the file re-reading the
police interviews to generate new leads police offered a reward for any new evidence which would lead to a
conviction and degenerated a lead some employees of a local steakhouse a few miles from corey parker's apartment
called police to report that a co-worker robert denney behaved suspiciously after
corey's murder you just seemed to be upset and was crying had come into this restaurant one day and told them that
his child had been killed in an automobile accident in texas and that he needed to get back home denny's
co-workers responded generously by raising money so he could return to texas to attend his son's funeral
after collecting that money the owner of the restaurant went over to give the money to his sister when he was told
that robert denney did not have a son and that that story was fabricated and there was something else about robert
denney he lived in the same complex as corey parker with a direct line of sight into her apartment
robert denney told some co-workers about this woman that lived in an apartment below him and he began to
talk about how he would watch her and even went so far to graphically describe that he would masturbate while
watching her when police decided to question denny again his sister told police that he'd
left the area she had actually kicked him out of the home she shared with her husband
because of his odd behavior staying up all hours of the night his what she described as an addiction
to pornography she told one law enforcement officer that she had awoken to him looking over her bed and staring at her
then police learned another disturbing piece of information robert denny's older brother was serving
a life sentence in texas for stabbing a woman 97 times corey parker was stabbed 101 times what
are the chances of two young men coming out of the same family committing such heinous heinous and atrocious murders
and did he get that idea from his brother was he trying to emulate his brother 18 months after corey parker's murder
investigators found robert denney 800 miles away in maryland where he was living with a 52-year-old married woman
robert denney had struck up an email relationship with a married woman and eventually had convinced her
to let him come up there and live with her and her husband he and this woman had a sexual
relationship right under the husband's nose when police questioned denny they told him they were investigating
his possible involvement in a different crime hoping he'd let down his guard they told him that they were
investigating a potential allegation that he had been involved in a fight in eastern maryland which they thought that
he would voluntarily give his dna to prove that he had not been involved in the fight and we were not leaving
eastern maryland until we got his dna this proved to be harder than investigators anticipated
denny smoked during his interrogation but always made sure to keep the cigarette
butts detectives offered him a bottle of water but he wouldn't touch it finally they asked him to sign a
document saying he refused to provide his dna we asked him to put the letter into the
envelope and seal the envelopes he refused to seal the envelopes and at that point basically told us look you've
tried three times to get my saliva on something first the cigarette butt then the water bottle and now the envelopes
seal it yourself is there anything else i can do for you so investigators put denny under
surveillance at his home and at the computer store where he worked he took a cigarette break every 45
minutes but was careful to keep the evidence when he smoked his cigarettes he would
put out the butts and then put the butts in his pocket so they could not be collected
two days passed and investigators finally got a break just after a brief rainstorm
denny came outside to smoke but this time he did something different he walked around and then all of a
sudden began spitting on the sidewalk not once not twice but six times because of the
rain the saliva was sitting on top of the rain water making it easy to collect and the barrier helped reduce
contamination it was very easy to designate where it was from that point on it's the same as
testing for a hair or a blood stain or semester the results left no doubt the unknown dna from corey parker's
apartment belonged to robert benny the fact that he denied ever having been in her apartment
made this evidence all the more incriminating and there was one other piece of evidence that implicated denny
the gold-plated lighter found in corey's bedroom he said it wasn't his but a former girlfriend told police
it was his lighter she was able to identify the emblem on and she was positive that was his
lighter prosecutors believe robert denney was obsessed with his beautiful neighbor corey parker
and monitored her comings and goings he also looked inside her apartment whenever he could
prosecutors believe denny saw corey get ready to go with her friends on the night before thanksgiving
[Music] then armed with a knife and wearing gloves he entered corey's apartment through the
kitchen window the evidence suggests he hid somewhere possibly in her closet and waited
for her to return [Music] corey had no hint that anyone was inside and went to bed
[Music] that's when denny attacked [Music] but corey fought back much harder than he'd anticipated
in the process she pulled out some of his hair which contained his dna his lighter slipped from his pocket
during the struggle he stabbed her repeatedly at some point he cut himself and bled inside his gloved hand
as he left the apartment through the kitchen window he left a blood smear on the windowsill
providing his dna robert denney went on trial for first degree murder the jury deliberated for 45 minutes we
the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment we the jury further find
that the killing was done with premeditation since he was only 17 years old a minor
when he committed the crime denny was sentenced to life in prison without parole
robert denny is a hard person to understand there was obviously some dysfunction in his family that
is far greater than most of us probably know he was methodical in cleaning up he
was careful and he almost got away with murder but for that one drop of blood and hair that
he shed that he didn't ever expect to be discovered this girl was a very likable
very intelligent very beautiful 25 year old that had a bright future in front of her she came
from a good family and had a good social network had everything in the world to live for and
in one instance this cold-blooded killer takes her life [Music]

This series profiles intriguing crimes where science catches the bad guy. Follow coroners, medical examiners, physicians, law enforcement officials, journalists and legal experts as they put together the pieces of the crime puzzle.

Brief Summary

Corey Parker was murdered in Jacksonville, and Robert Denney was convicted after DNA evidence linked him to the crime.

Key points

The Gruesome Murder of Corey Parker. Corey Parker was found brutally murdered in her apartment, with 101 stab wounds. The crime scene was one of the worst in the county's history.
The Obsession of Eric Jones. Corey's former co-worker, Eric Jones, had a troubling obsession with her, raising suspicions after her murder.
Robert Denney's Disturbing Behavior. Robert Denney, a co-worker, exhibited bizarre behavior and had a history of watching Corey, leading to his eventual arrest.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He described how he would have slit her throat early in the murder.

The suspect's chilling confession about his fantasies.

5:10WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

80/ 100High tension

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