Forensic Files - Season 1, Episode 3 - The House That Roared - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[yelling] NARRATOR: On a hot summer evening in 1992, neighbors heard the familiar sound of an argument coming
from the Campano residence. [yelling] According to Christopher Campano, his wife left the house shortly after their argument
to calm down. [yelling] Caren Campano was never seen again. [music playing] Caren Campano was just two weeks shy of her 43rd birthday
when she disappeared. She had just come back to Oklahoma City after visiting her three children, who were living
in New York, back to the home she shared with her third husband, Chris. CHRIS CAMPANO: She come back from New York,
and she went to talking about moving back because of family, and she's upset. NARRATOR: Chris and Caren Campano
were married in December of 1987. Friends described them as an odd couple. She was 15 years older than Chris,
and it was her third marriage, his first. They were introduced to one another by Caren's best friend, who also happened to be Chris's mother.
Chris was a drifter, worked construction jobs, and spent some time in jail for petty theft.
Caren was the main wage earner, working as a bill collector for this credit adjustment company in town.
On the evening of July 1, 1992, Chris and Caren had one of their frequent arguments, this time
over his use of drugs. CHRIS CAMPANO: And I was into drugs, and she was nagging at me and trying to get me in drug
programs, just trying to help. NARRATOR: It was loud enough for the neighbors to hear.
I could hear Caren screaming, No, please, please, and don't do that. And I couldn't make out a lot of what was being said,
just a lot of screaming. NARRATOR: According to Chris, after the argument Caren left the house for a walk headed to the Buy For Less
convenience store for some personal items a few blocks away. Chris left too, driving to a local bar for a few drinks,
staying until about midnight. The next morning Chris called Caren's office to see
if she had reported to work. Her supervisor said she hadn't shown up or even called in.
Chris then phoned the police to report her missing. When the police arrived to take Chris's statement,
they looked around briefly and reported seeing no evidence of foul play or anything
out of place or unusual. JOHNNY KUHLMAN: If a person is going to run away or leave
her husband, she's not just going to walk away and leave everything behind. She's going to take the things that mean the most her.
Especially when you're dealing with a woman, things of toiletries, makeup and that kind of thing.
And of course, we found all those things intact in the bedroom and in the bathroom.
And it was if she just disappeared off the face of the earth without taking anything with her.
NARRATOR: While the police were there, Chris mentioned that the house had been burglarized the night
before while he was out drinking, and that some items were missing. Police asked Chris to sign a waiver
to allow a search of the house. Then he agreed to do so and thought that would be good
and even commented that he hoped that we found something in the house that would
help us with the investigation. JOHNNY KUHLMAN: The first thing I recall seeing is the bed was against the south wall,
in right next to the bed was a large white trash bag, and underneath that trash bag I could see it a very
large brownish colored stain. Of course the next thing we did was went and got some hemosticks, which
we carried in our vehicle. NARRATOR: A hemostick is a chemical strip that can immediately tell whether or not
blood is present. JOHNNY KUHLMAN: Take the dry hemostick and with your finger just lightly smeared
on the suspect stain for some of it to transferred onto the hemostick. Take a drop of distilled water.
There goes the hemostick. Flick off the excess water and you have a dark green which is a positive presumptive test for the presence of blood.
NARRATOR: The stain on the carpet was indeed blood, but was it human? And if so, whose was it?
The first day we were in the house I put on a pair of gloves and that spot on that carpet was still moist.
This piece of carpet and padding was completely soaked with blood. It was such a massive amount of blood
that there was still actual moisture involved. It was not completely dry. NARRATOR: The carpet was removed and delivered
to the Oklahoma City Police Department's forensic chemistry lab. JOYCE GILCHRIST: I went on to do a Ouchterlony test,
it's a specie determination test to determine as to whether or not that blood came from a human or an animal
source. NARRATOR: It was human blood. JOHNNY KUHLMAN: That was enough to convince
me that we weren't dealing with a routine missing persons case. NARRATOR: The police needed more to go on
and felt the answers lay inside the Campano's house. When police discovered human blood inside the Campano's
bedroom, they suspected the bloodstain might belong to Caren Campano. They also suspected that Chris knew
more about her disappearance than he was admitting. She left at 7:30. INTERROGATOR: And what did you do then?
NARRATOR: Under police questioning, Chris maintained that he knew nothing about his wife's whereabouts, but his alibi was weak.
The bartender didn't recall seeing Chris Campano on the night of July 1st, and police discovered that Chris
had pawned some of Caren's jewelry the morning after her disappearance. Without a body, the only thing left for the police to do
was run more tests inside the house. There weren't any visible signs of violence
besides the bloodstain they found in the bedroom. DR. FRED JORDAN: We saw a typical little frame house
for Central Oklahoma City that as you went inside looked quite clean, quite neat.
Things have been cleaned out of it. Walls looked clean. Ceiling looked clean. The floor looked clean.
So there wasn't much to see at all. NARRATOR: So they decided to look for blood which may have been cleaned up or wasn't
visible to the naked eye. To do so, investigators used a special chemical solution
called luminol, an extremely sensitive test which can detect blood which has been removed by water
or even detergents and bleach. JOYCE GILCHRIST: Luminol is a fluorescence type chemical.
Spray it on a substance that contained-- that may contain blood, it reacts with the hemo group in the blood itself,
the iron portions will luminesce or fluoresce. NARRATOR: To do the luminol test,
investigators needed complete darkness, so they waited until nightfall. They began their chemical dragnet in the bedroom,
where they discovered the stain on the carpet a few days earlier. First they took photographs of the room the way
it looked to the naked eye, then they sprayed the luminol. The results were astonishing.
There were some instances in that house where it glowed so brightly that you could actually see
the person standing next to you, there was so much blood in there. NARRATOR: The luminol told a horrific tale.
Blood had been everywhere-- on the walls, the ceiling, on the doors. CAPT. TOM BEVEL: It looked like a blood
bath had occurred there, something from a horror movie. NARRATOR: Even more telling was the blood spatter, which
is the placement of the stains. Where they were located, the size of the drops and the trails of blood all told a story.
Someone had been beaten in the bedroom with a blunt object. They were in two trails, what we refer to as cast off trails,
so if you had an object for example, in your hand, and that object was blood covered,
and if you were swinging that object overhead, the centrifugal force of pulling the blood down
to the end of the object will cast the blood in the direction the object is being swung, and in this case
it's going to the ceiling. There are two distinct trails, and you can tell that there's at least two swings
with the blood covered object. NARRATOR: Luminol was then applied to the rest of the house and even to the outside steps
and walkways. JOHNNY KUHLMAN: At one point, there's a swipe of blood that was on the kitchen door leading into the utility
room that would have been about head level if you were carrying a body and had to turn the body sideways to get it through a normal door.
And then at that point, it appeared that the body was laid down on the ground and then drug from the utility room
down the back steps. DR. FRED JORDAN: And you could see pooled luminescence on each step and then drag marks that were luminescent all
the way down the walkway until you get to the point that you're at the driveway.
And at that point, they disappeared. Very, very dramatic presentation. NARRATOR: The house was telling its story.
One of an apparently gruesome attack. But there were still unanswered questions.
Where was the body, and the weapon? And was the blood Caren Campano's? Police still couldn't prove a murder had been committed.
Although the police knew someone was violently attacked inside the Campano residence, they
couldn't be sure a homicide had been committed. Was there enough blood in the Campano house
to prove that someone was dead, and was that someone Caren Campano? The investigators at a later time
decided that we'd go back and try to do a measurement test to see how much blood had been let out on that carpet
to make that size of a stain. NARRATOR: Police made sure their test was as accurate as possible.
They used a piece of the original carpet as well as a weight to simulate a human head.
Next they poured human blood around the weight until they created a stain measuring 887 square inches,
the same size stain they originally discovered. Statistically one could say that between 1,300
and 1,400 cc's of blood would create that stain. NARRATOR: That's more than 40% of the blood volume of a woman
Caren Campano's size. No one could survive with that amount of blood loss. So at that point it became pretty apparent to me
that if this lady was missing, and if this lady was dead, that this lady probably
was killed right there. NARRATOR: The authorities now knew a homicide had been committed in the house, and that someone had died in the bedroom
in a pool of blood. But was the victim Caren Campano? Police didn't have a sample of Caren Campano's blood
to compare to the bloodstain. If Caren's mother and father were still living, it would have been a simple matter
to examine their DNA, since Caren would have received half of her DNA from her mother and half
from her father. But Caren's father was deceased. The Oklahoma City Police Department
asked the FBI to get involved to see if there was any way they could figure out whether the blood found in the house
belonged to Caren Campano. The police obtained blood samples from Caren's mother, her two sisters, her three children,
and one of her ex-husbands. So in this particular case, the object of the examination
was to see if this DNA from the bloodstain of unknown origin was matching-- at least half of the DNA was matching to the relatives
from Caren Campano. Hal Deadman of the FBI's DNA analysis unit conducted what is called RFLP analysis,
analyzing pieces of DNA from four different chromosomes. This is the DNA profile of Caren Campano's mother,
and next to it on either side are two of her daughters, Caren Campano's sisters.
Both daughters share half of their DNA with their mother. This lane shows a DNA sample from one
of Caren Campano's ex-husbands. The next lane shows a sample from his son, whose mother was Caren Campano.
The father and son both share the upper band. The son would have received the lower band
from his mother, which matches the band from his grandmother, Caren's mother. The next autorad compares the family
member's DNA to the unknown bloodstain found in the Campano home. The top marker matches the genetic profile
from the first of Caren Campano's children, and the markers from the bloodstain also match the bands from Caren Campano's two other children
from another marriage. Results were fairly straightforward. They were totally consistent with the blood
coming from Caren Campano. Eight months after the disappearance of Caren Campano,
police concluded that Christopher Campano murdered his wife and was arrested. All of the evidence pointed towards Chris Campano.
The forensic evidence, the argument neighbors heard on the night of Caren's disappearance,
Chris's lack of an alibi for the entire evening, and the fact that he pawned some of her things.
The prosecution believed that Caren Campano never left her house for a walk as her husband had suggested.
Neighbors heard Caren and Chris arguing that night, and the forensic evidence suggests
that the argument moved to their bedroom where it escalated and turned violent. [thump]
[thuds] As Chris stood near the window, he struck Caren in the head with a blunt object at least three times, possibly more,
producing the castoff blood trails on the ceiling and the walls. Caren fell to the floor, her head striking the bedpost
where her blood was also found. As Caren lay bleeding from her massive head injuries,
Chris left and went to a local bar. He needed to wait until the neighbors were asleep before removing Caren's body.
When he returned home, he wrapped Caren's body in a sheet with a telephone wire and carried her
through the house. Luminol tests showed that Karen's head brushed against the door, leaving a blood smear
later cleaned with detergent. Chris then dropped the body onto the floor and dragged it through the side door and out towards the car.
He probably disposed of her body late that night in a deserted location. After returning home, Chris removed all visible traces
of blood both inside and out. The DNA analysis showed the blood found on the carpet
belonged to Caren Campano. And the medical examiner would testify that Caren Campano
suffered horrendous head injuries during the attack which no one could survive. Prosecutors were confident of a conviction,
even though they didn't have a body or a murder weapon. I thought it was very likely we might never
find the body of the victim. NARRATOR: But just as the preliminary hearing was set to get underway, everything changed.
The police found Caren Campano. DETECTIVE: This part right here wasn't quite so grown up
with all this ivy, and she was laying right down there by that large cottonwood tree,
north to south. And there were some blankets around her. There was no greenery at that time.
If there had been greenery at that time, you'd never know she was there. NARRATOR: The body lay in a remote area
off a major interstate highway until some youngsters on dirt bikes stumbled across it.
DETECTIVE: All we knew was that we had a female's body out there. We had no idea who it was.
Of course, we were hoping it was Caren, but we didn't know. NARRATOR: There was another important find.
Police discovered a piece of a check underneath the body. Although they couldn't determine to whom the check was issued,
it was from the Shell Oil Company and mailed to someone in New York. The check was for $83.34.
Caren Campano was from New York, and her family had a part interest in a gas station there.
JOHNNY KUHLMAN: This was the first definitive piece that we had that we knew at that point
there was a great possibility that it was Karen. And, of course, we wouldn't know for sure
until they made identification through dental records and DNA. NARRATOR: Dr. Tom Glass heads the Forensic
Odontology Department at the University of Oklahoma. With the help of Caren Campano's dental records
and an almost complete set of teeth found in the skull of the body, Dr. Glass's task
was fairly easy. DR. TOM GLASS: What I do in making the comparison then is simply go frame by frame by frame of the patient's
antimortem dental x-rays, the x-rays made by the dentist, with the frames of the same areas made
on the skeletonized remains. She had a very thorough dentist who documented what he had done, and that documentation allowed
the identification in Caren Campano's case to be very profound. NARRATOR: And the DNA analysis of the bone marrow
confirmed it. The last doubts had been removed. JOHNNY KUHLMAN: Personally I'm glad
she was eventually found because of the family back in New York. I talked to them at length over the phone.
Later on during the investigation I met them. They're really great people, and I really had strong feelings
for them hoping one day she would be found so they could put their own fears to rest
and give her a decent burial. NARRATOR: And Christopher Campano confessed. The remarkable thing about it, the autopsy
confirmed the prosecution's theory of how Caren died. And that theory, remember, was based only
on the luminol, the blood spatter analysis, and the blood volume tests. The maxilla were fractured, the mandibles were fractured,
the nose was fractured, the sinuses were fractured, the skull was extensively fractured.
Yet the cervical spine was intact, and there were only three fractures in the ribs.
So this is not the hallmark of somebody who's been run over by a car or somebody who's at a train
wreck or something like that. This is the hallmark of someone who has sustained a severe beating about the head and face.
So it was obvious that this was an assault. NARRATOR: Police and forensic science
had solved a difficult puzzle. JOY NEILSON: It all what a story. It was just more of the pieces of the puzzle coming together,
even all the way to the end when the body was actually found. It's like we've got most of the puzzle there.
You know what it is even with some missing pieces, you know what it is. But then what that body found it was like that
was the very last piece, then. That just fit in there. NARRATOR: In January of 1994, a year and a half
after Caren was killed, Christopher Campano went on trial for his life. His defense attorney couldn't refute the forensic findings.
They were just too strong. Once I had decided to make that leap and embrace the evidence, then my task became easier.
It was a matter then of looking at the psychological aspects of the case rather than the hard forensics of the case.
I suggested to the judge and jury, if it was going to be deliberately planned out
and methodical, that kind of blood wouldn't be there. There would be none in the house, probably.
The homicide would have occurred elsewhere if it had been a cold blooded killing.
NARRATOR: The jury bought at least part of the argument. It found Campano guilty of manslaughter,
not the first degree murder charge the state was seeking. CHRIS CAMPANO: I feel sorry her.
I feel sorry for what I did to her. I can't bring her back. I just gotta pay for what I've done.
NARRATOR: Christopher Campano was sentenced to 1,000 years in prison. [door locking]

A woman disappeared and her husband became the prime suspect -- especially after police found a huge bloodstain on the carpet of their bedroom. When they sprayed the bedroom with Luminol, they discovered it was awash with blood spatter. Complex DNA testing proved it was the wife’s blood. Now all they had to do was find her body.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Caren Campano disappeared in 1992; forensic evidence led to her husband's conviction for manslaughter after her body was found.

Key points

Caren Campano Disappears. Caren Campano vanished after an argument with her husband, Chris, on July 1, 1992.
Blood Evidence Found. Investigators discovered a significant bloodstain in the Campano home, indicating foul play.
Chris Campano Convicted. After extensive forensic evidence, Chris Campano was found guilty of manslaughter in his wife's death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She was never seen again.

Caren Campano's disappearance after an argument with her husband.

0:38WatchMay 20, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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