Daniel Wade Moore case shattered Decatur, Ala more than any other event. The ordeal Moore's been through has left him yearning for life's most simple pleasures, like going for a walk to the nearest shopping mall or sitting on his front porch,
Daniel's life is back to normal but he went through h**l. Nearly six years ago, Daniel was convicted of the murder of Karen Tipton and sent to death row. In 2005, the conviction was overturned, but he now faces another trial, and once again the death penalty.
"Time and time again you get a little bit of hope only to have the carpet jerked right out from under you. You can only take that so many times before you learn to quit hoping," he tells correspondent Erin Moriarty.
In April 1999, when Decatur, Ala. police arrested Daniel, all they thought they had was a petty thief and drug addict. "'I'd been on drugs for awhile, I'd pretty much just given up on life," Daniel told Moriarty, acknowledging he had been using crack cocaine and marijuana.
But in two days' time, Daniel's case would quickly change from a shoplifting charge to murder. It all started when, out on bail, Daniel went for a ride with his uncle, Sparky Moore.
"He said 'You know the Tipton murder? The doctor's wife that was murdered on Chapel Hill road?' And I said 'Yeah.' And he says 'Well, I was there.' He said 'Me and two other guys broke into a home and the guy that was with me had stabbed her and killed her,'" Sparky remembered.
Sparky couldn't believe what he was hearing, but wanting to do the right thing, he got word to police, who found Daniel in a motel room littered with drug paraphernalia. They brought him in and were questioning him, when suddenly during a break Daniel pulled out his penknife and stabbed himself 16 times.
Daniel admits to Moriarty he was trying to kill himself.
While he recovered from his wounds, police decided they had the perfect suspect. They believed Daniel was driven by guilt over Karen's murder. The case seemed to get stronger when police searched the apartment Daniel rented and found an alarm company toolbox. Investigators discovered that Daniel had previously met David and Karen Tipton.
As it turns out, he had serviced the alarm system at the Tiptons' house just six months before Karen's murder.
Asked how he thinks it happened, David tells Moriarty, "He came and knocked on the door and said, 'Hello, I work for the alarm company.' He had been there just a few months before. He lied his way in the house."
Police believe the attack began downstairs. "The first injury was being cut or stabbed on the back left aspect of her neck. Her shirt was forced off of her. And then she was forced upstairs with a blood trail going the whole way," David says.
The attack - David says - continued upstairs in the bedroom, where police found Karen's clothing on the floor and blood on the bed. "I think it's very likely that after that prolonged period of sexual and physical torture she managed to actually escape from that and got to the top of the stairs before she was finally killed there - somewhere in the range of 28 stab wounds. Probably last thing cut was her throat," David says.
To David, it was an unimaginable nightmare, an open and shut case of a drug addict killing for money. "Daniel Wade Moore confessed to involvement Daniel Wade Moore is an absolutely 100 percent profiled match for somebody who would do a crime just like this. That's what crack heads do," he said.
But by October 2001, when Daniel was charged with capital murder, he had changed his story: he denied having anything to do with the murder, and considering the brutality of the crime, there was very little evidence against him.
Daniel says his fingerprints weren't found in the home, and that none of Karen's blood or other hairs and fibers were found on him or his clothing.
But there were two hairs found at the scene of the murder. Their poor condition would make precise DNA testing problematic. All that could be confirmed was that they could have been Daniel's.
Daniel's attorney Sherman Powell, a second generation country lawyer, got set for the toughest case of his 32-year career. It was November 2002, three and a half years after the murder, when Daniel went on trial for the first time.
As one of the biggest trials the county had ever seen got underway, those who loved Daniel continued to believe he was incapable of murder.
Assistant State Attorney General Don Valeska thought he had the case against Daniel sewn up.
But defense attorney Sherman Powell believed this was a crime of passion. Powell suggested that the wrong man was on trial, and that the killer might even be Dr. Tipton himself. The motive? The oldest one on earth: jealousy. "There is some indication of extramarital affairs that were ongoing at this point in time," Powell said.
On the stand, David admitted that just weeks before the murder, his best friend Mike Ezell had e-mailed Karen suggesting they swap spouses. "I was offended by that. I was offended not only by Mike but by Karen as well," David admitted. "That she had carried on a silly conversation with a friend of mine."
And Karen may have had her own reasons to be angry at her husband: at trial, a defense expert testified that authorities had found pornography on the home computer. Karen had been using that computer the day she died.
"The majority of the stuff in there was g*y men interacting, and I have never seen a lady yet that would sit down and look at that kind of stuff," Daniel's attorney Sherman Powell said.
Powell speculated that Karen could have discovered the p**n and confronted her husband, sparking the fight that ended her life.
But David says, "Am I capable of killing somebody? Yup. Am I capable of killing a loved one? No. Am I capable of torturing my wife to death? That’s crazy."
And there is Daniel's confession to Uncle Sparky that led police to him in the first place. At trial, Daniel tells the jury that he made up that story. He says he was desperate to get back to his drugs, so he wanted his family to leave him alone.
Daniel’s confession notwithstanding, even with the two questionable hairs found at the scene, Powell believed the brutality of Karen's murder pointed to one man, and it wasn't Daniel. "Somebody got very angry and started out slapping her around, beating her and it just exploded from there to torture and murder," Powell said.
The jury deliberated for two days. On Jan. 23, 2003 and finally came up with a verdict that shocked everyone..................read the rest of the story at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/13/48hours/main4599176_page3.shtml
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