Episode Transcript
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Now onto the episode.
0:33
Carol Hutto turned six in nineteen
0:35
seventy six. She lived in
0:37
Largo, Florida with her parents and her brother,
0:39
Jerry. Carol was considered
0:41
a friendly person by most everyone who knew
0:43
her.
0:45
On December thirteenth, she told her
0:47
mother that she would be back in couple of hours
0:49
and headed to a friend's house.
0:53
Carol didn't stay with her friend-in-law, claiming
0:56
she was headed to a nearby drugstore. Carol
0:58
asked her friend to tell her parents should be
1:00
back in ten minutes if they happen to call.
1:04
She wasn't back in ten minutes, and
1:06
she didn't return home in a couple of hours.
1:10
Carol Hutto never came home
1:12
again because the sixteen year
1:14
old girl had been murdered.
1:20
From a and e, this is
1:22
cold case vials. When
1:28
Carol didn't come home, her mother
1:30
Norma was understandably worried.
1:34
I knew when Carol didn't come home
1:37
in a couple hours like she said,
1:39
I'll be back. I won't be going long.
1:42
I knew that something was wrong.
1:46
Her brother, Jerry, had been out on the
1:48
same evening and was surprised to find
1:50
his parents away and worried about Carol
1:53
when he got home. He was way
1:55
past curfew and was surprised he wasn't in trouble.
1:57
This is Carol's brother, Jerry,
2:00
She never not that
2:02
I can really remember ever got in trouble for
2:05
not coming home. Or calling
2:07
in when she was not gonna be there
2:09
when she was supposed to be.
2:11
Norma and Jerry went out to search for Carol.
2:14
They talked with their friends and visited the places
2:16
she liked to hang out, but they
2:18
didn't find her. Carol's
2:20
mother, Norma, then called the police,
2:23
She said there's nothing we can do. Girls
2:25
run away all the time. I
2:27
tried to tell her that Carol
2:30
didn't run away. She had
2:32
nothing to run away
2:33
from. She was
2:35
happy. She didn't have any problems.
2:39
When Carol still wasn't home the next morning,
2:42
Jerry walked down their street, hoping
2:44
to find some kind of clue. He
2:47
walked all the way to the end where there was a house
2:49
under construction with a big lake behind
2:51
it.
2:53
And I just kinda glanced out at the lake
2:56
and I saw some clothes and
2:58
a raincoat, and then
3:00
I believe one shoe, it
3:03
was over in this area right here. They
3:06
were floating in the water. So
3:08
I turned and I started
3:10
looking closer and I looked
3:12
down and that's when I I saw her
3:15
face down in the water with the
3:18
cement blocks on top of her. Jerry
3:22
ran back home, shocked by what he had seen.
3:25
He didn't quite know what to do or say.
3:28
How do you tell your parents that
3:30
their baby daughters in the lake
3:32
face down? You just can't do it.
3:36
Norma Patel, Jerry was upset. And
3:39
I said Jerry, what's wrong? And he
3:41
just stared. And
3:44
I gotta hope to him and I
3:45
said, Jerry, what's wrong? And he said,
3:48
we gotta go, daddy. We gotta kill her.
3:53
Jerry's parents called the police and then
3:56
followed him to the lake. Seventeen
3:58
year old Jerry showed the police where he had
4:00
found his sister's
4:01
body. We
4:03
went down there and I showed the officer, and
4:07
that's when my world come crashing
4:09
down. I mean, just totally come
4:12
crashing down. The
4:14
police immediately considered Jerry suspects.
4:17
He had a few prior run ins with the law, besides
4:19
being the person who found Carol's
4:20
body. I wasn't a
4:23
goodie, goodie kid. I mean, I did things
4:25
wrong. You know, all kids do
4:27
stupid things.
4:28
So I think maybe that's, you know, why they
4:31
looked at me. Jerry
4:33
told the police he had been with his girlfriend
4:35
until really late. When he
4:37
came home, he had gone past the lake where Carol's
4:39
body had been discovered. For
4:41
Jerry, it was a tragic coincidence,
4:44
but the police considered it a red flag.
4:47
Jerry became their number one suspect. They
4:50
came right out and told me I did it. They know I
4:52
did it. And It's like any
4:54
interrogation. They
4:57
they try to wear you down. They try to make
4:59
you go ahead and confess. And I
5:01
didn't do
5:01
this. I wasn't going to
5:04
confess to something like that
5:06
I didn't do. Jerry
5:09
was taken in for questioning. And Carol's
5:11
body was sent to the coroner for an autopsy.
5:14
The coroner determined that Carol had been
5:16
strangled. She passed out
5:18
but didn't die.
5:19
She also had a large burn on her thigh.
5:22
And the most sickening discovery was
5:24
that Carol was still alive when she was put in
5:26
the
5:26
water. The coroner
5:29
collected four hairs that didn't match the
5:31
victim. The hairs were compared to
5:33
Jerry, but the results were
5:35
considered
5:35
inconclusive. Jerry
5:37
was free to go. A
5:39
lot of my friends quit talking to me
5:42
and I made new friends and honestly
5:44
I did, but a lot of the people that I
5:46
knew
5:48
they wanted nothing to do with
5:50
me. Norma
5:52
Hutto didn't believe Jerry had killed Carol.
5:55
But she wasn't getting any help or
5:57
answers from the
5:57
investigators. I wanted
6:01
answers. I needed answers. The
6:03
whole family needed answers, but
6:05
we weren't getting any. Every
6:07
time that you
6:09
asked something or you started something,
6:12
it fell right back to Jerry.
6:16
And just like that, Carol's case
6:18
went cold. Overlooked for
6:20
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In March of nineteen ninety four, almost
7:55
twenty years after Carol had been murdered.
7:58
Officer Brad Hoyse was injured in a work
8:00
accident. He was assigned a desk
8:02
job that felt like he was just pushing paper
8:04
around. So he asked permission to
8:06
review the cold case files. The
8:08
oldest of those files was the murder of
8:10
Carol Hutto. So Hoye's
8:12
read through the original file and started
8:14
to ask
8:15
questions. This is officer Hoye's.
8:18
For what I could tell the the entire focus of
8:20
the investigation, was the
8:22
half brother that that found
8:25
Carol's body. And
8:28
I really couldn't find a reason
8:30
why at the time.
8:32
It's called tunnel vision, when
8:34
investigators focus on a single
8:36
suspect and ignore all other possible
8:38
leads. While
8:39
looking at the file, Huawei found
8:41
one of those leads he believed was
8:43
overlooked. Carol's diary.
8:46
So I opened it up and it it
8:48
begins about a month before her
8:50
death.
8:51
And I'm thinking, there's gotta
8:53
be something in here that tells us at
8:56
least leads us to a suspect because
8:58
this this is more than likely a crime
9:00
that that was committed by someone she
9:02
knows and was relatively
9:04
comfortable
9:04
with. A few
9:07
pages into the diary, Hoyes
9:09
read about Carol's secret boyfriend, Jimmy
9:12
Kim, her classmates. Carol
9:14
also wrote that they often met by the lake
9:16
where her body was discovered.
9:19
I finally got to a point where
9:22
it said I met Jimmy at the
9:24
lake, and
9:26
it just was too close to home. You know
9:28
what I mean? That's where her body was founded and
9:30
was right next to the
9:31
house. So we believe it know, the crime occurred
9:33
in. Boys
9:35
called his fellow detective Mike Short
9:37
and told him about the diary entries.
9:39
This is detective
9:40
Short. So it was a
9:43
surprise to actually find
9:45
out that she is speaking
9:47
about an individual in a
9:49
manner that established they had a relationship.
9:53
And her desire to be with him
9:55
and the fact that he treated
9:57
her oftentimes not very well
9:59
and how she felt about that,
10:01
places they would go. How they would
10:03
meet, sneaking out, avoiding a
10:05
fact that anybody knows knew they were meeting.
10:07
The
10:08
detectives believed that Carol had identified
10:10
her killer. But they didn't have
10:12
any physical evidence. They
10:14
dug further into the original investigation and
10:17
found an interview of Jimmy
10:19
King done in nineteen seventy
10:20
six. Was identified as
10:22
a friend of
10:23
Carol's. Ken
10:24
denied seeing or speaking to the victim
10:27
on the night she was
10:28
murdered. Eighteen
10:29
years later though, the cold case
10:31
detectives uncovered a discrepancy
10:33
between Kim's statement and the
10:35
family statement to the police. When
10:38
the investigator interviewed the Hutto
10:41
family, they informed the investigator
10:43
that on the night care went missing.
10:45
She received a phone call from Jimmy
10:47
Kim. When Jimmy Kim was
10:49
asked about that in nineteen seventy six
10:51
during his interview,
10:53
he denied ever calling Carol on
10:55
the night she went missing.
10:58
Despite the fact that Jimmy had denied having
11:00
contact with Carol on the night she was
11:02
murdered, Norma, Carol's
11:04
mother, distinctly remember talking with
11:06
him. I answered
11:08
the phone and he said,
11:11
missus Hutto, this is Jim. Can I
11:13
speak to Carol? And I
11:15
said, yes. Just a minute. And they talked for
11:17
a little bit. And then
11:19
they hung up in shortly,
11:23
maybe fifteen minutes. He called again,
11:25
and she told him she was
11:27
leaving. The
11:28
detectives wanted to speak with Jimmy King.
11:31
The only issue was, finding
11:34
him.
11:36
In July
11:38
of nineteen ninety four, the detectives
11:41
found Jimmy King on a naval base
11:43
in Connecticut working as a petty officer on
11:45
a navy submarine. Investigator
11:47
Mike Short, travel to the base to
11:49
interview Ken. Here's some audio
11:51
from that interview.
11:52
But she wasn't dating anybody that
11:54
you knew have been or, you know, seeing somebody
11:57
or having any interest like, I don't know if
11:59
she's seen anybody really steady or anything with
12:01
that. You know? We used to hang around a lot,
12:03
but don't think I remember. Can you tell me anything
12:05
at all about her? I mean,
12:07
I don't remember why. I don't
12:10
remember the area. The
12:12
detective showed Kim the excerpts from
12:14
Carol's diary that mentioned him and
12:16
the lake.
12:17
The fact that she had a diary
12:20
surprised him and then to read
12:22
excerpts, Carol's words, things that
12:24
she wrote about him and the
12:26
way he treated her obviously
12:28
affected him.
12:30
Then they asked if maybe he wanted to rethink
12:33
his story. I
12:35
don't honestly know what
12:37
happened to her.
12:38
What I
12:39
wanna know is with two of you together and
12:41
I
12:41
And was she okay when you left? That's
12:44
what I
12:44
wanna know. Yes.
12:48
He admitted that he had been with Carol
12:50
on the night she went missing.
12:52
That was a significant
12:54
admission. And we knew at that
12:56
time we had our suspect Detective
13:01
Short believed that Jimmy Kim had killed
13:03
Carol, but he needed physical
13:05
evidence to connect him to the crime
13:06
scene. He went back through the
13:08
original evidence and discovered the
13:10
unidentified hairs. Even though
13:12
DNA testing had developed immensely from
13:14
the time of the original investigation, a
13:17
DNA profile wouldn't be useful without a sample
13:19
of the suspect's DNA for comparison.
13:23
Detective Shore asked the naval criminal investigative
13:25
service better known as
13:27
NCIS, for help executing a
13:29
warrant for Kim's
13:29
DNA. He wanted to make the most of
13:32
the time they had him in custody.
13:33
If we're going to service
13:36
Earthworm on Jimmy Kent,
13:38
then use that opportunity for
13:40
an interrogation as
13:42
well.
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On July fifteenth, nineteen ninety
15:30
eight, after issuing a warrant and
15:32
collecting a blood sample, detective
15:34
Short was asked to wait outside an interrogation
15:35
room. While NTIS
15:38
investigators, Tanna Simos and
15:40
Dave Early, interrogated petty
15:42
officer Jim
15:42
King. A
15:43
SIMOS IN EARLY STARTED WITH THE HARD
15:46
QUESTIONS DURING THEIR INTERGATION. JEM,
15:49
NOT ONLY ME, BUT REALLY THE CONSENSUS
15:52
AS EVERYONE IS REALLY WITHOUT doubt
15:54
you're responsible for what happened to
15:56
Carol. We can place
15:58
you at spots. Okay?
16:01
And, unfortunately, for you, the spots we
16:03
can place you at, there's no
16:05
other conclusion you can come to,
16:07
and you were there when certain events
16:08
occurred. To be honest with you. For
16:10
half an hour, Kinsat quietly as
16:12
the investigators narrowed down his options.
16:14
Admit that the murder was an accident
16:17
or by
16:18
silence, admit that he had intentionally killed
16:20
Carol. What I'm trying to tell is, you're
16:22
focused on the wrong thing. Okay.
16:25
You're focused on the wrong thing. You're sitting out in
16:27
your yard. And you this tree
16:29
growing, and it looks like it's dying. And and
16:31
you're saying, man, it's helping to
16:33
wake up one day and that tree falls in the
16:35
house. And I'm telling you, look
16:37
behind you because there's a freaking
16:39
rottweiler. Okay? And it's about the bite in the
16:41
ass.
16:43
Alright? You need to focus. You're
16:45
you're ready to put this behind you? It's
16:48
time. It's
16:48
time for everybody. It's simple, Jim. You're
16:51
sorry, or you didn't intentionally? That's all
16:53
I'm asking. I don't need
16:54
Tim. Are you sorry you killed Carol?
16:57
That's all I'm asking Tim. You're sorry,
16:59
aren't
16:59
you? I
17:01
can
17:01
say, you're sorry, Jim. That's all it's gonna
17:03
take. We know that you didn't need to
17:05
do this to happen. Did you? You didn't do it
17:07
intentionally. Did you? It was a mistake.
17:10
Right? You didn't plan
17:11
it? Jim? It's
17:14
a mistake. Wasn't it Jim? It's
17:17
an accident. That's what
17:19
we need to explain for us
17:21
to just try to get it out.
17:25
Despite the lack of physical evidence, The
17:28
agents were able to convince Kim
17:30
to confess.
17:31
He wiped
17:32
away his tears and explained how
17:34
he had killed Carol.
17:36
And it was an
17:36
accident. You know, the
17:39
reason I
17:39
went to the lake was to try to
17:41
cover it up. I understand something else.
17:44
We don't understand, Jim. We don't understand
17:46
that. How did she get hurt in the house?
17:49
We were playing
17:52
around and or
17:55
chasing each other. She tripped itself.
17:58
Okay. What happened there?
18:01
She's unconscious.
18:03
I didn't hear a heartbeat or
18:06
anything. Okay. covered
18:10
up, like, it was something else or somebody
18:12
else. What did you do
18:13
then? I
18:17
wanna
18:17
took her clothes off. K.
18:19
To grow above the length. What'd
18:21
you do if
18:22
you're down by the light? To
18:27
put her in the water, but I just put
18:29
with the rocks on top of her and I took
18:32
off.
18:32
Okay. Despite
18:36
Jimmy Kim's
18:40
tears, the detectives still believed he
18:42
was lying. The autopsy pointed to
18:44
injuries consistent with blunt force
18:46
trauma and
18:46
strangulation, not an accidental
18:49
fall.
18:49
Ken was
18:50
charged with and convicted.
18:53
On case number ninety 812339I
18:56
do adjudicate mister Ken guilty. I send
18:58
some life in prison without the possibility
19:00
of parole for twenty five
19:03
years.
19:05
Norma Hutto doesn't think any amount of
19:08
time served a satisfactory.
19:10
It won't bring her daughter back.
19:12
Now I don't
19:14
think he should ever get out of prison. He
19:16
didn't give
19:16
her the chance to get
19:19
out of the lake. So I don't think he should
19:21
ever get out. He
19:24
took my baby
19:26
he took my only daughter.
19:30
And for
19:30
that, I
19:31
think he should stay where he is. For the
19:34
rest of his life.
19:36
Cold case
19:41
files the podcast is hosted by
19:43
Brook Giddings, produced by McKinney Lynn and
19:45
Steve Delomator. Our associate
19:47
producer is Julie McGruder. Our executive
19:49
producer is Ted Butler. Our music
19:51
was created by Blake Maples. This
19:53
podcast is distributed by podcast
19:55
one. The Cold Case Files TV series
19:57
was produced by Curtis Productions and is
19:59
hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me at Giddings
20:01
on Twitter and at Brooke the podcaster
20:03
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