The murder of Pamela Pitts

There was no forensic breakthrough in this case. It was solved by a suspect who stayed in view, by patient re-investigation, and finally by a plea in which she described what she had done. Harmon was suspected from 1988, but detectives could not build a case, and the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death. In 1993 she was sentenced for killing her boyfriend, Raymond Clerx. Lt. Victor Dartt of the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office got the Pitts file in 2011 and told the Associated Press that Harmon was the only suspect he could keep corroborating. Oxygen's Snapped reported that he interviewed her in prison, hoping she would talk about the murder on a recorded pay phone. As her sentence was ending, police monitored her calls and collected about 20 hours of recordings. Prosecutors said one call, in which she answered her father by saying "I had a moment," was an admission; her attorney said it might refer to the Clerx killing. In 2017, the Sheriff's Office said, a detective supervisor and cold case unit members spent hundreds of hours rebuilding the timeline, reviewing evidence and re-interviewing people, and a murder warrant followed. She was arrested in Nevada in early June 2017 and booked into the Camp Verde jail on July 11. Before trial the court barred evidence of Clerx's death and ruled that no one could suggest the autopsy proved a homicide; witnesses had died or forgotten, and records were incomplete. Dennis McGrane of the Yavapai County Attorney's Office said the choice was between guaranteeing an outcome and taking a chance at trial. In March 2021 Harmon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and described the fight to the court. Authorities had thought someone else might have witnessed it; she said she was alone. She received 20 years with credit for time served. Pitts's brother called it a golden ticket.