Prosecutor Barbara Whaley and Detective Scott Smith used creative editing to show gaps in Kit’s security footage where Kit had ample time to commit multiple crimes. See the post a detective’s sleight of hand. In the screenshot below, you can see Kit on his back porch. The timestamp shows 00.43.25. The actual time with the time change was 11:43 PM.
I was curious about what he would be doing on his back porch at that time of night. The defense tried unsuccessfully to say that this footage proved Kit’s innocence because Mr. Homic’s security footage caught smoke coming into the frame at about the same time. Kit couldn’t be in two places at the same time, right? However, the problem with that theory is that what the defense claimed was smoke was ground fog. They should have realized that Kit was on his porch at 11:43 PM because his dogs were going crazy, and he didn’t want them waking up the whole neighborhood.
This past Wednesday, as I walked from the old elementary school parking lot to Kit’s house, I caught the attention of every dog in the neighborhood. They started barking from the moment they saw me until I passed. This next picture shows the gate behind Kit’s house where he kept his dogs.
The following picture shows the dogs’ view of Calvin’s house and South Main from the gate.
The garbage bin in the picture is where the murderers placed Pam and Ed’s bodies into Pam’s car. The dogs also would have had a clear view of the perpetrators as they walked along South Main Street from the parking lot. The dogs saw everything.
One last note: Before I went onto Kit’s property to take these pictures, I had a chance to speak with the new owner Rhoda Sensenig. Rhoda was not only kind enough to let me take pictures of the house, but she also invited me in to get a few pictures inside. Rhoda, her husband, and their nine children bought the house from Kit in 2016. Thanks, Rhoda, for your cooperation.
Rhoda, if you’re reading this, please contact me at [email protected]. I forgot to ask you an important question.
Update:
I asked Kit about the 11:43 pm visit to the back porch. He confirmed that it was because his two dogs were barking and causing a ruckus. But he added a detail that I had wrong. The dogs were not in the backyard but in the side yard. Kit had an area on the side of the house that was fenced in. He put the dogs in the side yard early that evening.
So at this time, I’m not sure how much of what was going on across the street the dogs could see. It may be that they were barking at people talking and car doors slamming. Had I known this on my visit, I would have checked out this POV, but I only learned about this after my return.
The car was set on fire at approximately 2:00 am. They would have arrived on the scene perhaps as much as a half hour before that. That means they would have left Calvin’s house between 1:00 am and 1:30 am. It makes sense that there was some commotion going on at Calvin’s at 11:43 pm.
One other note: On my visit, I had a hard time finding the gravel road off of Rosetown road. The turnoff is right after a bend in the road and it is partially obstructed by trees as you make the turn. I actually passed it up and had to back up. I’m not sure that someone could have randomly chosen that turnoff at night at 1:30 am with ground fog in the area. It seems more likely that the person driving Pam’s car knew about that turnoff.
Update 2
Kit’s private investigator, Mary Martins, happened to take some photos of Kit’s house not long after he left for North Carolina. The photos are dated August 18, 2016. It shows the house and side yard as it was on the night of the murders. Kit said that the sideyard fence extended almost to Billy Watkins’s house. I don’t have a photo showing the POV the dogs had from the sideyard, but it appears they had a direct line of sight similar to the backyard but at a different angle. You decide.
