Kenny Boone put his suspect, Chris Woodson, into a car, and drove him the 90 miles from Florence, S. C. , to Columbia, where a polygrapher was waiting at the headquarters of the state police, or sled as they are called.

Less than a week after the murder, Boone felt sure he had his man.

And then, the test result.

Sheriff Boone: But at the time  the polygraph examination came back inconclusive which coulda went either way.  You know that was a red flag and we just weren’t sure.

Boone says Chris Woodson claimed that the morning of the murder, he’d been paying college fees and played racquetball, too, before going to engineering class.

Was he telling the truth?

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: Still suspicious but not enough to take him in?

Sheriff Boone: Right.

But the Morgan family was convinced that Kenny Boone had, in fact, found the murderer.  Chris Woodson.

Morrison: When you heard that it was a murder, did your mind go to suspicions?

Kerry Morgan: Yes.

Jim Morgan: My mind went right to who did it.

Why Woodson?  A whole list of suspicions... for one thing, his obsessive phone calls, almost like a stalker, they felt. And they believed Jennifer must have been attacked by someone she knew.

Tom Morgan: She was 5’10” and 130 pounds.  She was not a small girl.  She would’ve fought back if it was someone who came to her trailer that she didn’t know.  She’d of fought back.

And their suspicion grew. One of the weirdest things happened the day after the incident in the trailer park.  This boy, Chris, and one of his fraternity brothers came over to the Morgan house.  And, out of the blue, unsolicited — offered a bizarre theory as to how Jennifer may have been killed before the fire got to her.

Tom Morgan: That what probably a lamp fell over and probably ignited the carpet, the chemicals in the carpets made the fumes and these fumes probably killed Jennifer before the fire ever got to her.

The thing that made the story suspicious, said the Morgans, was that when Chris told it, just one day after Jennifer’s death - no one knew she was dead before the fire.

Tom Morgan: We all looked at each other like how odd is that?  This person who was so in love with her would come and instead of shedding one tear or even saying I’m so sorry.  He sat there with a fraternity brother and described what probably happened that day.

In fact, Kenny Boone didn’t tell them somebody killed Jennifer and tried to hide the crime with a fire until the day after Chris offered his explanation. Later that same week, the Morgans saw Chris again at the funeral.

Morrison: Did you watch him?

Tom Morgan: Chris’ reaction was very stoic, really expressionless, and as I would speak to my relatives he would walk over to where we were all standing and get close to where we were almost trying to overhear conversation.

That struck me immediately.

Morrison: What did it seem  like he was doing?

Kerry Morgan: Wanted to know if anybody thought he did it.  Does anybody suspect me? Is anybody saying anything?

And even when Detective Kenny Boone decided not to arrest Chris Woodson, the Morgans remained deeply suspicious.

Partly because the odd things didn’t stop, even after Jennifer was buried and the months began to turn into years.

Tom Morgan: Around her birthday or the date of her death we would come out and find flowers that were laid here. And we would always ask the people who were close friends of hers, oh did you lay the flowers, and we could never account for who had put them there over and over again.

And it wasn’t just flowers the family found but couldn’t explain.

Jim Morgan: We found a bracelet at Jennie’s grave.

Kerry Morgan: String bracelet, made with beads laying on her.

Morrison: Right on the stone?

Kerry Morgan: Yes. I had gone to the caretaker and I said has anyone come and inquired about Jennifer’s grave? And he said yes, and he described Chris.

Surely this was significant, thought the Morgans, and perhaps would trigger law enforcement to take a second look at Chris.

Morrison: When you called them, what was the response?

Tom Morgan: I had called the lead investigator at the time and  he would always assure me we were working on this, not a day goes by that I don’t think about the case.

Years went by, and Tom Morgan and his family heard less and less from investigators, growing more and more pessimistic that anybody would ever be charged.

Mind you, Jennifer’s father had been feeling that way since two days after the fire when he came here to the trailer park to pick up her car.

Jim Morgan: I could tell at the time that in my mind that there was not an accidental death.  I’ll just say that.

Morrison: Was there a guard around the place?

Jim Morgan: No, I was told they would be guarding and watching the property, but there was no one around. The premise was destroyed.  I figured that there would absolutely be no resolve.

Morrison: So that the investigation was what?

Jim Morgan: It was botched.

What of the evidence investigators did have? At least they had that watch—the old boyfriend’s gift—found in Jennifer’s hand. Tom thought the killer might have put it there as a message of some sort.

Tom Morgan: Now that’s strange to me that that watch would be in her hand.  And both the guys were there on Monday night.  Both knew who gave her that watch.

It seemed to Tom that the watch must be important evidence. Did the wanna-be boyfriend, Chris, plant the watch in her hand just to make boyfriend Scott look guilty? Surely an interesting question. And yet  authorities simply sent the watch to Jennifer’s mother.

Tom Morgan: That’s not evidence, apparently. So if that’s the way that evidence, potential evidence was treated, I’m sure there’s not much.

Now, nearly a year after Jennifer’s death, Tom felt frantic about evidence that might have been missed and opportunities lost.  The wait, he said, was driving him crazy.

Tom Morgan: I went to the church.  I went to this seminar on forgiveness and on all these things and how do I not stay angry?  How do I not feel like this? I just didn’t want to feel like that anymore.

But even as Tom says he tried to dampen the anger that was eating him up, he kept finding what looked like evidence.

Jennifer’s grave itself seemed to be throwing up strange, tantalizing clues.

Kerry Morgan: Almost as if she was down there tossing it to us.

Nine years after Jennifer’s death, her father, Jim, was tending her grave, clearing away weeds.

Tom Morgan: He was edging around the back of the headstone and was down here with just a little edger to clear the grass away and he popped out a fraternity ring.

Odd that after that long a period of time that someone would come and obviously felt this tremendous remorse, or whatever their feelings were, would have to come back to the gravesite and put this under their headstone.  So we took pictures of it and we sent it to Florence County.

But not before they searched the Internet to identify the fraternity that issued such a distinctive ring.

And soon they had their answer: “Tau Kappa Epsilon,” a new and small fraternity then at Francis Marion.

And one of its founders on Marion Campus—number 26 here on the roster of members—was Chris Woodson.

MORE FROM SCENES FROM A MURDER

Scenes from a Murder Section Front

Transcript: 'Scenes from a Murder' Images: Jennifer Morgan Images: Crime scene photos Blog: Dueling movie versions of a crime Scenes from a Murder Section Front   Add Scenes from a Murder headlines to your news reader: