Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 50 - Best Foot Forward - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next an exotic dancer vanishes it was driving me crazy that she didn't come home
was a jealous boyfriend involved he was kind of vague or was she simply a runaway she could
have met someone who had money someone who improved her life but a police cadaver dog and the burned key
point to a violent confrontation i watched forensic files csi i just feel like there's no hope there's no hope
[Music] attention all strippers here's a song you can work it out too as soon as this beat come in you let the
freak come out let it take total control [Music] instead of finishing high school shamaya
smith dropped out and worked as a dancer at the cahoots gentlemen's club in east
hartford connecticut i didn't approve of it i've always talked to her about getting a a job it's a lot safer
one night shamaya didn't return home after work concerned her family called police she's
a very respected young lady and all we want is her to come home safe and sound in a search for answers police
questioned shamaya's boyfriend the boyfriend reportedly had some drug involvement he was living with
shamaya smith at her parents home when she went missing and he had seen her the day she went
missing he told police she left for work around 3 p.m but said he didn't know who had given her a ride
the boyfriend's story that your girlfriend is leaving and meeting a stranger this would lead most people to conclude
that maybe the story wasn't true shimaya's family gave police a potential clue someone had left a message on shamaya's
cell phone at 11 55 a.m before shamaya left for work bye the significance of this message
was enormous it gave the police and investigators another avenue to go down no one knew
who this person was i didn't know i just knew something something wasn't right the number was
traced to a wealthy local businessman 56 year old kenneth otto we found out that mr otto was a standing
person he had a family a wife and kids he was a somewhat successful industrial business owner had no prior criminal
record and liked to hang around strip clubs [Music] ken otto was a regular at the cahoots
club where shamaya worked and he admitted he had given shimaya a ride to work that afternoon he said that he called
shamaya and when he called her she requested that he bring her to work because she didn't have any
transportation so he agreed to bring her to work he said that he last saw her going
through the front doors of the cahoots and that he drove off but police found another customer who
insisted he had given shamaya a ride to cahoots that afternoon his name was harold brown another
regular customer he claimed he not only dropped shamaya off at the club he stayed and went inside for a few
hours he also claimed he drove shamaya home later that night but according to her
family she never made it inside so police now had two men both insisting they were the last ones to see
shamaya alive and shamaya's boyfriend was still a suspect but where was shamaya two customers of the cahoots gentlemen's
club both claimed they drove shamaya smith to work on the day she disappeared [Music]
one of those men ken otto took a particular interest in shamaya other dancers at the cahoot said that
kenneth otto would spend more time with shamaya he would give her extra attention
sit next to her buy her drinks talk with her kenato also admitted he'd given shamaya 500
to continue her education and i told her nobody's going to give you 500 dollars just for nothing
you had to do something and i was like just promise me you won't never go along with anybody again like
that because people you just don't you can't trust everybody in ken otto's version he claimed shamaya walked
into the club on the day he gave her a ride but the club's security tapes disputed
that we viewed the videos surveillance tapes from cahoots and found that she never entered the
establishment on the day that she went missing in harold brown's version he not only claimed that shamaya went
into the club after he dropped her off he also said he went in too and stayed for several hours again
the security tapes didn't show shamaya or harold brown in the club that day but the security tapes from the day
before explained brown's confusion it was determined that he brought her home the day prior
to her going missing brown had simply gotten his dates confused it was apparent that he was being
truthful there was no motive that we could establish why he would commit a crime
so police focused their attention on ken otto since he'd left a message on shamaya's
phone several hours before he admitted picking her up on a hunch shimaya's sister decided to try
subterfuge she called ken otto and left the message on his voicemail i caused him to
pretend to be shamaya if i was like hey kenny it's maya just wanted to know if you want to hook up
just call me when you get this message and she never received a phone call back and that was very telling because now
you ask yourself why wouldn't he call her back then and ask how she's doing when police asked ken otto directly
if he'd ever had a sexual relationship with shamaya he said that wasn't possible
he told us that he was unable to perform sexually due to some surgery a condition that he had he has erectile
dysfunction it was not very i tried to think of a word successful investigators checked
shamaya's cell phone records and discovered that five days before her disappearance
she made two cell phone calls that bounced off a tower directly across the street from a
75-acre piece of land owned by ken otto we thought maybe there's a possibility she might be there being held against
her will we had officers on the ground and i directed that they go into the property
and confirm that there was no one there in need of assistance police asked canado if they could search
the property he agreed to consent search of his property on easter sunday when police arrived they noticed
construction equipment a trailer some vehicles and a fire pit there was some heavy burning in the fire
pit there was a smell of fuel but something else bothered investigators apparently otto didn't mind the police
looking around but the cadaver dogs were another story he became very upset when the dogs
arrived it appeared to me that he was worried we were going to find something there was a wood chipper on the property
there's history of cases in the past where people have used wood chippers to dispose of human bodies
at this point convinced he'd cooperated as much as he needed to otto asked the police to leave you know
what i needed to wrap this up i uh i didn't know you were coming out here with all these guys and walls and
stuff so yeah wrap this up all right now all right when someone grants a consent to search
their property they're entitled to revoke that but by this time the cadaver dogs had
already picked up a scent in the fire pit one of the dogs found a chunk of flesh that we it appeared to
be animal flesh once again ken otto had an explanation you might find a beaver there excuse me
a beaver i i shot one a while back and burned it in the pit okay there was no obvious evidence of of uh
of a beaver being in the fire pit ken otto explained that he liked to kill animals and chop them up and spread
them in the sand it was disappointing that mr otto revoked his consent but we knew we
would be back two weeks after shamaya smith's disappearance investigators no longer considered her
boyfriend a suspect the boyfriend saw shamaya leave the house and walk out and that was the last time
that he saw it i believe that the boyfriend was telling the truth investigators were more interested in
shamaya's relationship with ken otto a customer at the cahoots gentlemen's club and a piece of land he owned
in rural connecticut it's about 75 acres large it's landlocked that means it's surrounded by
other forests there's one road which is the dirt road access to it by his own admission otto was the last
known person to see shamaya alive when he picked her up at her home on the day she disappeared otto allowed
police to conduct an initial search of his property but asked them to leave when he realized
they brought cadaver dogs in order to perform a more detailed search detectives needed
both a warrant and lots of heavy equipment and manpower there were two jurisdictions involved in this
there was a substantial rainstorm that came during that week that hampered the efforts and they all came together
causing an eight-day delay not only could the rainstorm have washed away any evidence
but eight days gave otto plenty of time to clean up a possible crime scene all of our fears are realized when
the police go on the property ken otto is in a full-sized tractor attempting to bury the frame of his 30-foot trailer
that was demolished and burned mr otto's property looked like man-made hell a person that
was in the process of destroying everything trees digging holes destroying the dirt
road that goes into the property but the one thing otto hadn't yet destroyed was the fire pit i was very happy to see
that the fire pit hadn't been disrupted all that much almost immediately detectives got a break in the embers
they found a house key i took the key cleaned it up placed it in the door lock of shamaya smith's home
and it unlocked and opened the house so it was shamaya smith's house key but this
didn't prove otto killed her in the fire pit police also found a spent bullet and
three shell casings from a 40 caliber handgun on the ground near the burned out trailer
investigators found a mop a vacuum cleaner and a large piece of carpet serologists
looked for blood even though it had been sitting in the rain and mud for days it's definitely a forensic science
nightmare especially when you're dealing with uh mother nature tampering with the
evidence and really just presenting extra challenges the carpet was marked with a grid
of four inch squares which were then swabbed with phenolphthalein and hydrogen peroxide
a chemical combination which turns pink when it comes in contact with blood i started getting areas that were
positive with my screening test and so that got me a little excited and i was ready to forge ahead on this thing
each area that tested positive was marked with a piece of tape slowly an unmistakable pattern
began to emerge it ended up being an area that was four feet by one foot in size
to everyone who saw it it was a body it appeared to be a human body the outline was in human blood
but when it was tested for dna investigators got a setback no dna was present it was just too much
bacterial contamination investigators were beginning to wonder if they would ever
solve this case i'm looking for the worst but hoping for the best and the worst is she's not coming home so i
tried to prepare myself for whichever comes my way but when you in a situation like this you really
can't prepare yourself in the search for shamaya smith investigators collected dozens of what appeared to be bone chips
from the fire pit on ken otto's property and sent them to the forensics lab this skeleton was burned so
significantly that it was nearly destroyed as if it would have been in a commercial cremation
the fragmentation was so severe that you had pieces that were the size of a fingernail
it really is like a needle in a haystack it's an anthropologist nightmare after close examination forensic
anthropologists concluded the majority of the bones were human but that didn't mean police were any closer to knowing
if the bone ships were shamayas there was a lot of thermal destruction this would
suggest of a tremendous fire that lasted for as much as days i had never worked with samples
that had been so charred and so burnt before so i was very hesitant as to whether i
would be able to generate a dna profile from these remains but in a case with so few lucky breaks
the forensic anthropologist finally got one they found a piece of a foot with soft
tissue there was still organic material there was still definitely the potential of
getting dna out of that foot well the other big challenge was that we didn't have a known
sample from shamaya smith so what we had to do in that case was take those dna profiles regenerated from
tissue and burnt skin and bone and then make a comparison to shamaya smith's biological mother and biological
father dna tests revealed that the bone and tissue found in ken otto's fire pit was from shamaya smith we have enough
evidence to establish that the reason he destroyed all that evidence is because he violently
caused her death two months after shamaya's murder ken otto was arrested at a local airport
he was carrying a briefcase containing ten thousand dollars he had toiletries his passport and
various other items and he also had a small bag with uh some condoms in it and some cialis which is basically
viagra generic viagra i have no doubt that he would have bought a ticket and flown to
parts unknown taking mr otto into custody was a pretty proud moment in my life by his own admission ken otto
pick shamaya up for work but the evidence shows that instead of taking her to the cahoots gentlemen's
club he drove 30 miles to his property on the outskirts of town no one knows what happened after that
just sit down for a second but prosecutors believe that at some point otto shot and killed shamaya
inside the trailer with a 40 caliber handgun then he rolled her body in a piece of
carpet creating the blood stains later found by forensic analysis then he burned shamaya's body
for days in the fire pit when cadaver dogs picked up the scent in the fire pit otto asked police to leave
and he had eight days to carry out the most extensive cover-up investigators had
ever seen but he couldn't destroy everything investigators found shell casings a spent bullet shamaya's
house key hundreds of bone fragments and even part of her foot which all told the
gruesome tale of a needless murder i think she was very naive about everyone she knew like she just put her
trust in everyone and you cannot do that ken otto was tried and convicted of shamaya's murder
and tampering with evidence at the end of the day uh he's a cold-blooded killer for that reason mr otto you can stand up
on the count of murders into the custody of the commissioner of corrections for a
period of 60 years i was ecstatic when i heard the jury decision that he was guilty for murder
it was a great feeling to uh you know not only to bring the case to an end but also uh again for the
family you know to have to have a uh a good outcome for the family was very important to me the whole thing was
really frustrating i'm thinking okay well maybe this man may get away with it but
i was determined i was going to fight to the end we were all going to fight to the end so
my sister cares in peace and she can get the justice she deserves for virtually everyone involved the most
difficult aspect of the crime was determining ken otto's motive mr otto exhibited sadistic behavior with
his treatment of animals and he may have been deciding to carry that kind of behavior
up to a higher level and harm a human being i couldn't understand why he would do what he did
we all have unanswered questions we couldn't even have a proper funeral for her because there was nothing to have
it may look like a pile of burned fragments that are completely unrecognizable but
in the hands of a trained forensic anthropologist they will find something uniquely human
and they will tie him to that victim mr otto thought he was going to outsmart us
and um he was pretty sure of it and he was going to do anything he could to to try to outsmart
us but it didn't work

In 2007, Shamaia Smith disappeared from the strip club she worked at in East Hartford, CT. Police look at various customers of the strip club, but focus on local businessman Kenneth Otto.

Brief Summary

Shamaya Smith, a dancer, disappears; evidence points to Kenneth Otto as her murderer after a violent confrontation.

Key points

The Disappearance of Shamaya Smith. An exotic dancer vanishes, leading to a complex investigation involving multiple suspects.
Ken Otto's Alibi. Ken Otto claims he gave Shamaya a ride, but inconsistencies arise.
Forensic Breakthrough. Investigators find bone fragments in a fire pit, leading to a shocking revelation.
Justice Served. Ken Otto is convicted of Shamaya's murder, bringing closure to her family.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

There's no hope, there's no hope.

0:30WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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