Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
A violent home invasion in Jacksonville ends in tragedy when a woman is brutally murdered in her own bedroom. A chilling 911 call, forensic evidence, and surveillance footage reveal the shocking truth behind the crime. Investigators race to uncover the killer before he escapes justice.
every day in nirth america ,dozens od peopl are murdered ,the key to solving the touhghest of these homicides lies in the final 24 hours of the victim’s life.
to crack the case detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline.
the minutes and hours containing evidence that can help unlock the mystery and catch the killer
the gated communities of jacksonville, florida are a heaven of tranquility and affluence.
the area is absolutely gorgeous ,you have half million dollar homes,it has a small town ,feel a lot people know one another .
it’s a very nice neighborhood viewed as very safe, there’s not a lot of crime there.
but on quiet sunday morning , all that is sharred
firefighter derek dorsey has just returned home from work to discover his wife kim’s motionless body.
he performed CPR on her,his been a firefighter for this departement for almost 20 years at this point, he knows what to do in an emergency ,however now the emergency is right in his bedroom.
you can actually hear kind of the waves of emotion was obvious that all that training and experience just kind of went out of the door.
after performing CPR for several minutes derek realizes it’s too late.
lead investigator larry kuczkowski and his team along with assistant state’s attorney london kite arrive at the scene.
the call itself was called in as a possible suicide .
but the violence that was evident in the room,one person couldn’t do this to themself.
there’s a large amount of blood on the floor, on the walls,there’s was blood on the seiling, you just knew ,whatever happened here was very very violent.
just the scene of itself was like absoluely not a suicide.
when the husband found his wife ,he put the comforter over her body ,so all you could see was her foot and her arm and when the medical examiner got there that’s when they removed the comforter and expose the brutality of what happened to her.
it’s a tragic end to 38 year old kim dorsey’s life.
kim dorsey own a buisness in the area,very well respected,she seemed like a wonderful person and it seemed like she had an ideal marriage.
people seem to have nothing but good things to say about her.
why would anybody ever do something like this?
investigators turned to her husband derek to reconstruct the last 24 hours of kim’s life.
derek told he had gone to work the previous morning, the firedepartement works 24 hour shifts when he comes home sunday morning shortly after 8:OO he walks in the bedroom expecting fo tind his wife in bed.
they had blackout curtains so it was very dark in there.
hef inds her on the floor at the foot of the bed,he goes calls 911, but by that poinmt kim is already dead.
and the team believed she had been for nearly 24 hours
not far from kim’s body are the first clues to what happened.
there were plastic wire ties around kim’s ankle and wrists,somebody tried to bind her up,detectives figured there’s probably a sexual assault here,based on you know what what they saw .
there was a broken pool queue on the floor
a gun was on the floorl.
there was a knife on the floor, all in the vicinity of her body.
and there’s bullet strikes in the wall and in the door frame in the bedroom, so somebody was in the bedroom shooting out.
did they know who shot , not yet.
so there were a lot of things tha needed to be explained
investigators found out to examine the rest of the dorsey’s home.
someone had gone through ranssacking the kicthen,open drawers throwing stuff out of the drawers, definitely someone looking for something.
in the kitchen sink, there’s three or four remotes in there and a keyboard that’s part of the surround sound system, which is very odd.
there was no damage to the front door that indicated that the door was forced open in any way.
but investigators nothice something that was out of place, there was a ceramic dog statue by the front door and it was tipped over.
they quickly come to their first conclusion,the idea that some stranger would break into the house,tie someone up with zip ties, stab them and beat with a pool queue, that’s just not the way it goes.
kim dorsey probably knew her attacker or the attacker knew how to get into the home.
the simple fact is that you’re much likely to be killed by someone you know than by a stranger and the police understand that.
they need to drill down into derek dorsey’s story.
anytime a wife is murdered the husband is a suspect, that’s just a fact.
derek at this point had been taken from the scene down to the detective division in downtown jacksonville.
he told detectives on friday night ,kim had left the house that evening for a couple of hours to go do some shoping,they had stayed home friday night,watch a movie, derek was up early saturday morning and he left for work at about his usual time around 7:OO saturday morning.
derek finished the shift on sunday morning at 8:OO so when he’s gone for that 24 hour period his wife was home by herself.
he had tried to call her on saturday several times via a cell phone.
derek worked at a fire station that was about as far north as you could go in the county, cell phone coverage out there wasn’t always the greatest and the call wouldn’t go through, he said that it was not unusual for him not to those calls answered.
so far everything derek is telling them adds up ,with one exception.
here’s a guy that’s trained professional and detectives walk in and see the scene this is no suicide ,how did he not see that ,is derek involved .
derek dorsey was so transparent,him and kim basically had just a different kind of relationship ,it was somewhat of a swinging lifestyle , so it went from not really knowing to okey they have maybe some other factors going on here.
detectives wasn”t expecting that , but derek then added on that he said that kim had stopped doing it because her mother had died 3 or 4 years earlier.
part of her way of coping with her mother’s death,she sought out professional medical help and she was on some mediciation that caused her to put on some weight and maybe not feel quite as attractive as she maybe had at one time.
that was one of the reasons derek thought that when he first came home she had committed suicide.
with kim having stopped the swinging lifestyle they need to find out if derek had to…..
when investigators leans that the partner of the deceased had been cheating on each other in the relationship , that creates different mindset for the investigators .
in domestic type murders,infidelity is often part of the motive of someone’s death,the admisssion of infidelity has made derek dorsy the first suspect in his wife’s murder.
now,added some more motive maybe,maybe he wants out of this marriage,they seek to determine what he would have gained with kim gone.
is there a finacial benefit to this person’s death,about whether he had any kind of insurance policy and he didn’t.
it put him in a worse position to have kim dorsey die before him because she was the main bread winner.
but that doesn’t mean derek wasn’t responsible.
the time frame,like how much time he would have to drive back and forth from the fire station to the house.
the distance between the locations is 15 miles and would take almost an hour round trip.
the fire station where he worked was small , they pretty much could account for every single minutes of his day.
all the firefighters were like ,if he left that place ,then we would definitely know the detectives verified with all the firefighters,they determined that he had like a lock solid alibi.
even though derek dorsey initially was a suspect ,detective just couldn’t find any kind of crack in his account.
investigators then consider the other angle…..
you have this girlfriend that he’s talked about,maybe whoever his girlfriend lover whatever you want to call that person wants the current wife out of the picture.
obviously detectives now want to talk to her.
someone being jilted can be a very strong factor for murder.
detectives were also looking into the girlfriend to see if she had any additional information that derek dorsey didn’t tell detectives and also to see if he had ever admitted anything to her.
detective kaczkowski must determine if derek’s girlfriend shows up anywhere in the last 24 hours of the victims life.
she was very forthcoming ,she spilled her guts about the lifestyle what everybody was into and all that.
detectives was able to determine that she was west of the city of jacksonville where she resides and was able to rule her out.
hoping to uncover clues about kim’s attacker…
…investigators returned to the crime scene.
forensic experts established that the first point of attack is next to the nightstand.
we have a lot of blood cast off on that left side of the bed,she was severely injured and she s tayed there for a significant period of time.
but the evidence then suggests kim comes too and fights back.
she was able to get to where she kept her gun,it was a five shot revolver they wanted to know if it would be probative or helpful to have them string, it means to show th actual bullet trajectory.
kim dorsey had to be down and low near her nightstand,she fired off five shots.
shooting at somebody that maybe is standing in the doorway or coming back to the doorway, the string reveal that despite firing all five rounds,kim misses her attacker.
trying to explaine five bullet holes therefore five misses ,there’s a number of reasons fear is the number one problem , people freeze, we don’t know how we are going to react in a state of emergency until we’re into it and it’s not suprising that your aim is the last thing you’re able to control.
and then that’s when he goes back into the room to finish her off, he continue to beat her with a pool queue to a point in which it broke.
detectives actually had the pool queue given to an engineer and it took a tremendous amount force to break a pool queue like that and that was broken on kim’s body.
to finish things off, he made sure that he stabbed her in the neck.
the detailed analysis provides all knew insights into the crime and the potential perpetrator.
the most telling weapon would have been that pool queue which all of them were kept upstairs and that’s not a natural weapon for someone to say yeah i’m want to kill this person so i’m grab a pool queue.
the detectives were able to figure out thtat the wire ties that were found on kim’s wrists and ankles looked like they came from the office upstairs.
and the knife was from a set that were inside the kitchen,these were all things that suggest whoever committed this crime was familiar with the house….
a brutal killer who knew kim well enough to gain entry into her home and where to find weapons.
for investigators,it suggests someone close to the family.
kim’s autopsy had already been perfomed, detective’s knew she had been sexually assaulted, a foreign male DNA profile,they knew they were looking for a man.
based on what derek dorsey said with other people in the house with the swinging lifestyle who knos who’s been here.
is this somebody that had been there berore that came back knowing derek wasn’t home and wanted to maybe seek kim again,hwo knows.
detective were looking at all those different individual to make sure that they either rule them in or rule them out.
detective kuczkowski looks to derek to provide potential names,derek is a general contractor on the side, some of the guys that derek used in his contracting buisness actually lived in the dorsey’s house at one time.
lance kirkpatrick, had a drug problem,he had been friends with the dorsey’s ,he was just one of those people who you invite into your house for a weekend and three months later you’d be trying to gety him out of there.
and so he eventually got thrown out f their house,but according to derek that weekend lance is on a shrimp boat out in the atlantic.
second ndividual that derek had talked about was a guy by the name of joshua veil, derek had befriended josh and gave him some work and trying to help him out,he’s a young kid ,derek and kim allowed joshua to reside in their home
but they had a falling out and eventually joshua moved out but derek says he was still hiring josh for odd jobs and had been due to see him in the morning he discovered kim’s body.
sunday morning ,when he got off,derek was going to pick up joshua veal,they had agreed to meet at a convenience store up on the north side of jacksonville basically have to do some work for him.
joshua never showed up , why wouldn’t he show up for this meeting if he’s going to get money and get payed.
he’s familiar with the house ,he’s done some work in the past for the dorsey’s so joshua was number one at that point.
police discover veal has a criminal record,mostly for drug related offenses ,and he had actaully just been arrested earlier in that week leading up to the weekend kim was murdered .
josh claims he’d been partying all weekend at his house including the time detectives believe kim was killed.
joshua veal’s infactuation with kim dorsey has put him front and center in her murder investigation.
kusczkowski finally said well did you hear what happened to her,he’s like no what are you talking about , and detective kuczkowski said : she’s dead.
there’s just a flow of emotions,you would think that it was in fact his mom that was murdered and he just couldn’t deal with it.
it was very authentic and so it kind of exed him off the list .
but still ,they went through and they got his DNA to make sure that he was not in fact involved in the crime.
it was negative , he was exluded as a contributor to the DNA.
Derek provides police with additional names of people familiar of his home.
everybody they talk to gave them the sample and everyone kept coming back negative so detecive kaczkowski takes a new aproach.
a walk through of the house.
with derek and let him point out anything that maybe detectives they missed, ask some questions about some things that we found before they turn the house back over to him , once they’re done ,they’re done.
when they initially walked the scene in the kitchen they found three or four remotes in the sink,which is very odd, somebody had run water over the remotes
detective kuczkowski’s partner asked derek show them to to turn on the TV in the living room so derek was ablte to turn the TV on and right away a pornographic movie starts to play and derek loses it.
he’s like , that’s not mine,whoever did this they watch that , that is not my movie.
detective kuczkowski’s belief was that whoever committed the murder at some point sat down and watched this movie.
the discovery points to another man derek says had recently been to the house,they were having problems,with the remote or something with their TV system.
friday in the afternoon they had a gentleman come over from company that made some adjustments to the surround sound of his entertainment system.
the service call occurred approximately 12 hours before kim was killed.
so the sound guy was in detective’s corsshairs,he’s the guy that knows how to run the system ,he worked on the system and why are all these things in the sink.
he’s thinking on his mind he puts it in the sink and runs water over it does it wash any DNA or anything like that .
they didn’t know if something happened between him and kim where he maybe became infatuated with her or came back to the house.
detectives quickly track him down.
he said he went out on friday night to work on the system,he said it wasn’t unusual ,he said derek’s had him at this house before he had another house that he used to go to and handle his affairs there with the sound system.
detectives noticed when they were sitting there the sound guy had some cuts on his hands, so they keyed in on those,were they the results of scratches inflicted in a struggle with another person.
they actually asked about it,and he’ said i’m working with wires all the time,so yeah ,my hands always cut up .
the technician is adamant he never returned to the house.
detectives told him what happened ,he wasn’t even aware of it and this was 2 or 23 days after the kim’s body was found.
so he had’t even seen anything on the news,of course detective asked him if he would volunteer a DNA sample
The DNA test confirms this instinct,the unsolved crime now begins to weight heavily on the team .
then they get the break,they’ve been looking for , there was a crime analyst that caught like a common everyday type of police report on a temporary unauthoritized use of a vehicle,its’ kind of a fancy way of saying the was was stolen,but you let the person take it.
the theft took place just 17 hours before the murder,so the girl that reported the car stolen made the police report,they took all her information and of course the information of the person who she let use the car who never return the car…
…which was lance kirkpatrick.
lance kirkpatrick’s name came up early on in the investigation when derek dorsey was basically going through and kind of who was in and out of the house.
during the initial interview with derek dorsey he calls him LJ.
lance is still supposed to be on the shrimp boat nothing’s adding up.
that basically put kirkpatrick back on the map.
a stolen car report forces a familiar name back into focus,lance kirkpatrick.
detectives must determine if the car ever came close to the dorsey home.
when the police respond to the scene part of patrol’s responsibility was a neighborhood canvas
so in the initial canvas one of the patrol officers had talked to a neighbor of the dorsey that said he had seen a blue small SUV out there that day.
these fits the description of the car kirpatricks stole, fast forward a few days detectives got the information about this truck, one of the other mental notes was that there was a surveillance camera at the gate to the community.
the footage places the SUV directly on the timeline at 6:30 a.m.the morning of the murder.
as soon as the police saw that surveillance video lance kirkpatrick became the number one suspect.
to locate him they turned to the woman whose car he stole.
she didn’t know where lance was but she knew where his friend was ,his name is brian kiefer.
investigators learned that brian was at the same house party when the SUV disappeared.
what brian then reveals is completely unexpected.
he just said it was a beating, he didn’t describe it as detectives know it to be which was absolutely horrific and violent.
lance told him that he kept waiting for the six shot and it never came but it was a five shot revolver.
it is also through brian kiefer that detectives get kim dorsey’s last words.
he said the lady was saying ‘stop, you’re killing me.’
the detail brian provides about his friends action is abnormal specific and it was information that only somebody that was there would have known.
so brian immersed himself in the middle of a homicide potentially based on all this information,he ‘s saying lance did it.
brian kiefer claims he knows who killed kim dorsey.
but there’s only one way to confirm if he’s telling the truth,find lance kirkpatrick.
brian tells detectives ,last he saw lance was at brian’s apartment on the south of jacksonville., so law enforcement go over there and pay that apartment a visit and they found lance hiding in the attic.
the man once thought to be at sea,finally sits down with detective koczkowski again , carfeul not to mention kim’s murder .
florida georgia is sort of the secular holiday of jacksonville ,everything shuts down for that weekend,the game was on saturday, the day of the murder.
lance has been around long enough with derek worked around derek long enough ,he knows the schedule too.
derek is gone for that 24 -hour period,his wife was home by herself.
the next follow -up question he invoked and he asked for an attorney and at that point detectives had to stopped the interview.
with kirpatrick refusing to cooperate investigators must find another way to prove he was inside the house that day.
the fact that they had really significant DNA and the fact that he denied going in there was a critical lie ,detectives were able to say yeah we got our man.
this not only confirms kirkpatrick as the killer ,but also clears the one remaining suspect brian kiefer.
for detectives kirkpatrick’s movement’s in the hours before the murder suggest he had a sinister plan in mind.
lance had gone out that friday night with somebody elses’ car to buy drugs and didn’t come back with what he was supposed to come back with.
he left to try to go to make things right, the one thing he knows, how to get into that community, he knows how to get into the house.
lance has been around long enough with derek worked around derek long enough, he know the schedule, derek’s gone for that 24 hours period ,his wife is home by herself, lance knows that, he sat across the street waited for derek to leave to go to work that morning
shortly thereafter he went over the house initially looked under that dog for the key,let himself in with the key.
that’s probably when kim dorsey heard him, he basically lit into her physically and it just went downhill from there.
the turmoil that she was going through just a desperate picture of a women trying to escape.
despite overhelming evidence lance kirkpatrick pleads not guilty.
lance’s version was that he and kim dorsey were lovers and that he had gone to her house to have sex with her and after they had sex kim dorsey started getting mad at him because he had helped set her husband up with other women
and that enraged kim dorsey and she picked up a gun and started firing at him in a rage and that everything that happened afterwards was him basically trying to fight back in self-defense.
the jury finds him guilty of firstdegree murder and rape, he’s sentence to life without parole.
he remains eligible for appeal .
life without pparoles is a long time to sit there, ultimately it’s about kim.