The House that Roared | S1 E3 | Forensic Files | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

[Music] on a hot summer evening in 1992 neighbors heard the familiar sound of an argument coming from the compano
residence what I'm I promise according to Christopher compano his wife left the house shortly after
their argument to calm down Karen campano was never seen again [Music] [Music] Karen keano 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 she come back from
New York and she went to talking about moving back because of her family and uh she's upset Chris and
Karen 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 Karen'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 Karen was the main wage earner working as a bill collector for this
credit adjustment company in town on the evening of July 1st 1992 Chris and Karen had one of their
frequent arguments this time over his use of drugs and I was into drugs and and uh she was you know nagging at me
and trying to get me in drug programs and you know just trying to help it was loud enough for the neighbors to hear I
could hear a Karen screaming and no please please and don't do that and couldn't make out a lot of what was
being said just a lot of screaming according to Chris after the argument Karen 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 Karen'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 if a person is going to run away or 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 to her especially when you're
dealing with a woman things of you know toiletries makeup and that kind of thing
and of course we found all those things intact in the bedroom in the bathroom and it was if she just disappeared off
the face of the Earth without taking anything with her while the police were there Chris mentioned that the house had
been burglarized 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 and he agreed to do so and 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 the first thing I recall
seeing is is the bed was against the South wall and right next to the bed was a large white trash bag and underneath
that trash bag I could see a very large brownish colored stain of course the next thing we did was uh went and got
some Hema sticks which we carried in our vehicle a Hema stick is a chemical strip
that can immediately tell whether or not blood is present take the dry Hema stick and with your finger just lightly
smear it on the suspect stain to where some of it's transferred on the Hem stick take a drop of distilled
water put it on the heem stick flick off the excess water and you have a dark green which is a positive presumptive
test for the presence of blood 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 u i put on a pair of gloves and that spot on that carpet was still moist this piece
of carpet and the padding was completely soaked with blood it was such a massive
amount of blood that there was still actual moisture involved there it was not completely dried the carpet was
removed and delivered to the Oklahoma City Police Department's forensic chemistry lab I went on to do a um
octone test is a spey determination test to determine as to whether or not that blood came from a human or an animal
Source it was human blood that was enough to convince me that we weren't dealing with a routine missing person's
case the police needed more to go on and felt the answers lay inside the compano
house when police discovered human blood inside the compano bedroom they suspected the blood stain might belong
to Karen compano they also suspected that Chris knew more about her disappearance than he was admitting she
left at 7:30 what did you do then 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 compano on the night of July 1 and police discovered that Chris had pawned some of Karen'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 blood stain they found in the bedroom we saw a
typical little frame house for central Oklahoma City that uh as you went inside looked quite clean quite neat things had
been cleaned out of it walls looked clean ceiling clean the floor looked clean so there wasn't much to see at all
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 luminol is a fluorescence type chemical spray it on a
substance that contain that may contain blood it reacts with the heem group in the blood itself the iron portions uh
will uh lumines or flues to do the luminol test investigators needed complete darkness so they waited until
Nightfall they began their chemical dragn net 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 the
luminol told a horrific tale blood had been everywhere on the walls the ceiling on the doors it looked like a blood bath
had occurred there something from a horror movie 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 uh two Trails what we refer to as castoff Trails so if if
you had an object for example in your hand uh 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
[Music] ceiling there are two distinct trails and uh you can tell that uh there's at
least two Swings with a blood covered object luminol was then applied to the rest of the house and even to the
outside steps and walkways at one point there's a swipe of blood that was on the
kitchen door leading into the util 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 the body was laid down on the ground and then drug from the utility room down the back steps and you could
see pulled luminescence on each step and then drag marks that were luminescent all the way down the walkway until you
got to the point that you were at the driveway and at that point they disappeared
very very dramatic presentation 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 Karen
campanos police still couldn't prove a murder had been committed although the police knew
someone was violently attacked inside the compano residence they couldn't be sure a homicide had been committed was
there enough blood in the compano house to prove that someone was dead and was that someone Caren campano the
investigators uh at a later time decided that we'd go back and try to do a measurement test to see how much blood
had to been let out on that carpet to make that size of a stain 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 in
the same size stain they originally discovered statistically one could say that between 1300 and 1400 cc's of blood
would create that would create that stain that's more more than 40% of the blood volume of a woman Karen Ceno'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 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 Karen compano police didn't have a sample of Karen Cano's blood to compare to the blood stain if Karen's
mother and father were still living it would have been a simple matter to examine their DNA since Karen would have
received half of her DNA from her mother and half from her father but Karen'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 Karen campano the police obtained blood samples from
Karen's mother her two sisters her three children and one of her ex-husbands and
so in this particular case the object of the examination was to see if this DNA from the blood stain of Unknown Origin
was matching at least half of the DNA was matching to the relatives from Karen 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 Karen cmo's mother and next to it on either side are two of her daughters Karen cmo's sisters both
daughters share half of their DNA with their mother this Lane shows a DNA sample from one of Karen compano
ex-husbands the next Lane shows a sample from his son whose mother was was Karen
compano 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 Karen's mother the next Auto rad compares the family member's DNA to
the unknown blood stain found in the compano home the top marker matches the genetic profile from the first of Karen
compano children and the markers from the blood stain also matched the bands from Karen compan two other children
from another marriage results were were fairly straightforward um they were totally
consistent with the blood coming from Karen compano 8 months after The Disappearance of Karen compano police
concluded that Christopher compano murdered his wife and was arrested all of the evidence pointed towards Chris
compano the forensic evidence the argument neighbors heard on the night of Karen'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 Karen
campano never left her house for a walk as her husband had suggested neighbors heard Karen and
Chris arguing that night and the forensic evidence suggests that the argument moved to their
bedroom where it escalated and turned violent [Music] as Chris stood near the window he struck
Karen in the head with a blunt object at least three times possibly more producing the castoff blood Trails on
the ceiling and walls Karen fell to the floor her head striking the bed post where her blood
was also found as Karen 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 Karen's body when he returned home he wrapped
Karen's body in a sheet with a telephone wire and carried her through the house luminol test 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 Karen
campano and the medical examiner would testify that Karen compano 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 well I thought it was very likely we might never find the body of the victim but just as the
preliminary hearing was set to get underway everything changed the police found Karen
campano 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 uh 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 the body lay in a remote area off a major
interstate highway until some youngsters on dirt bikes stumbled across it 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 Karen but
we didn't know 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 $83.33 Karen campano was from New York
and her family had a part interest in a gas station there this was the first definitive piece that we
had that we knew at that point there was a great possibility that it was caring and of course we wouldn't know for sure
until they made identification through dental records and DNA Dr Tom glass heads the forensic odontology department
at the University of Oklahoma with the help of Karen Ceno's dental records and an almost complete set of teeth found in
the skull of the body Dr glass's task was fairly easy what I do in making the comparison then is simply go frame by
frame by frame of the patients an morm Dental x-ray the x-rays made by the dentist
with the frames of the same areas made on the skeleton eyes remains she had a very thorough dentist who documented
what he had done and that documentation allowed the identification in Kieran Capo's case to be very profound and a
DNA analysis of the bone marrow confirmed it the last doubts had been removed personally I'm glad she was
eventually found because of the family back in New York I talked to him at length over the
phone later on during the investigation I met them U they're really great people
and I 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 and Christopher compano confessed the remarkable thing about it
the autopsy confirmed the prosecution's theory of how Karen 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 that's been run over by a car or somebody who's at a train wreck or 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 police and forensic science had solved a difficult puzzle it all told 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 you know 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 was like that was the very last piece that that just fit in there in January
of 1994 a year and a half after Karen was killed Christopher compano 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 uh then my task became easier it was a matter then of of
looking at the psychological aspects of the case rather than the hard forensics 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 been
none in the house probably the homicide would have occurred elsewhere if it had been a coldblooded killing the jury
bought at least part of the argument it found compano guilty of manslaughter not
the first-degree murder charge the state was seeking I feel sorry for it feel sorry for what I did to her can't bring
her back you know I just got to pay for what I've done Christopher compano was sentenced to 1,000 years in prison
[Music] oh [Music]

A woman disappeared and her husband became the prime suspect.

Brief Summary

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

Key points

The Disappearance of Karen Campano. Karen Campano vanished after a heated argument with her husband, Chris. Neighbors heard her screams.
Blood Evidence Found. Investigators discovered a large blood stain in the Compano home, indicating foul play.
DNA Confirms Identity. DNA analysis confirmed the blood found in the home belonged to Karen Campano, leading to Chris's arrest.
Trial and Sentencing. Christopher Compano was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 1,000 years in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She just disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Describing Karen Campano's sudden disappearance after an argument.

3:52WatchMar 3, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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