This episode of Nightmare Next Door examines the rape and murder of aspiring artist Denise Collins by Darious Kimbrough.
Orlando, Fla., in October 1991, and 28-year-old Collins was found naked and bloody in the bathroom of her second-floor apartment, she was still alive but later died in hospital.
The sliding door to her balcony was open and police also found semen and pubic hairs in her bed and on a towel, they quickly began interviewing neighbors and gathering evidence.
One neighbor spotted a man near Collins’ apartment in proximity to a ladder. Later in a police lineup the neighbor identified the then 19-year-old Kimbrough as the man acting suspiciously. He was also separately identified by a maintenance worker who said that Kimbrough had watched him storing a ladder he was using.
Kimbrough was later charged with first-degree murder, sexual assault and burglary. During his 1994 trial his DNA was matched to the semen and other evidence found at the crime scene.
Detectives believe that he entered the apartment some time between midnight and 4 a.m., where he sexually assaulted Collins and then beat her to death.
He was found guilty and sentenced to death, though it was 22 years before Kimbrough was finally put to death by lethal injection in 2013 at the age of 40.
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