Pay attention to the man slumped at the table. [music] His name is Kenneth Harwood, a 61-year-old circuit court judge whose career was built on delivering harsh sentences. [music] Now, turn your attention to the woman sitting in the corner. She is not an ordinary customer. She is here on a mission. After a moment, she rises from her seat and walks toward the judge's table. With a single fluid motion, she extends her hand over his glass, introducing a fatal substance into his bourbon. Then, as quickly as she appeared, she [music] is gone. vanishing from the establishment. An hour passes before the bartender approaches him. It appears to be a normal gesture, but her true purpose is to prompt him to finish the now poisoned [music] drink. She too is part of the plan. Harwood, disoriented, lifts the glass and drains the remaining liquid. He will never leave [music] this table alive. [music] The motive for the act committed in the crescent room was not born from a sudden impulse. It was forged 2 years earlier in September 2006 [music] inside the Mobile County courthouse. The defendant was Raymond P, [music] a 24year-old man facing charges for the armed robbery of a convenience store. He had no prior violent convictions. His defense attorney argued for leniency, [music] stating that the firearm used was unloaded and that no one was physically harmed during the incident. Presiding over the case was Judge Kenneth Harwood. He listened to the defense's request for a reduced sentence and denied it without comment. He then imposed the maximum term allowed by state guidelines, 12 years in a state correctional facility. Sitting in the front row of the courtroom every day of the trial was Denise P, Raymon's 39-year-old aunt. She had raised him since he was 11 following the death of his mother. When Judge Harwood delivered the sentence, she shouted at him from her seat. Court baiffs immediately intervened, escorting her from the courtroom. While her behavior was officially noted, no charges were filed against her. For the legal system, the incident was over. [music] For Denise Pool, it was the beginning. The judge's ruling had planted a seed, and now it had 2 years to grow in silence. For 2 years following her nephew's sentencing, Denise Presented a calm and unremarkable exterior. She continued her job as a medical records clerk, paid her bills on time, and visited Raymond at St. Clair Correctional Facility once a month. To the outside world, she was a woman coping quietly with a difficult family situation. But internally, a methodical plan was taking shape. Friends would later report to investigators that she became withdrawn and less social. In early 2008, she stopped attending the church services she had been a part of for years. At work, she began asking colleagues [music] specific questions about courthouse operations and employee schedules, masking her interest by claiming she was considering applying for a job there. Her focus was singular, her patients absolute. The most significant evidence of her premeditation was being recorded silently on her home computer's hard drive. Between February and March of 2008, her internet search history documented a descent into lethal research. The queries were direct and unambiguous. How much cyanide is lethal? Where to buy potassium cyanide, cyanide detection [music] time, and undetectable poisons? With each keystroke, Denise was building her plan, unaware that she was also creating a digital trail that would lead directly back to her. Denise Pool knew Judge Harwood's routine. But to execute her plan, she needed an inside asset. She found one in Sharon Vickers, the 33-year-old bartender at the Crescent Room. In late February 2008, 3 weeks before the incident, P approached Vickers outside the bar after her shift. She identified herself as Raymond Pool's aunt and made a direct proposition. According to Vicker's later testimony, P offered her $2,500 in cash to put something to make him sick into Judge Harwood's drink. Vickers refused, but did not report the conversation to the police. P was persistent, returning twice more in increasing her offer to $5,000. While she claimed she again refused to administer any substance herself, she did agree to a different arrangement. The final deal was simple. Vickers would not poison the judge, but she would act as a lookout. For a fee, she agreed to send Denise a text message when Judge Harwood was at his usual table and the bar was empty enough for her to act without being noticed by other patrons. Vickers would later tell investigators she never believed P would follow through with any real harm and that she feared retaliation if she went to the authorities. Whether she was a reluctant participant or a willing accomplice, her agreement set the final stage for the events to come. On the morning of Tuesday, March 18th, 2008, the plan was activated. Bartender Sharon Vickers sent a text message to Denise Pool. It read, "He's here. Two other customers left. Just me and Kitchen." Within 20 minutes, Pool arrived at the crescent room. She chose a corner table near the hallway to the restrooms, ordered a coffee, and began to wait. Security footage documented the next 40 minutes. Judge Harwood sat alone, consuming three glasses of bourbon. His movements grew noticeably sluggish. At 10:35 a.m., he lowered his head onto his folded arms, appearing to doze off at the table. This was the signal Pool had been waiting for. [music] At 10:42 a.m., the camera caught her rising from her seat and walking to Harwood's table. The footage shows her standing there for approximately 30 seconds, her hand briefly moving over his glass. Her actions were deliberate and unhurried. After she was done, she returned to her own table, and at 10:48 a.m., she left the bar. During this critical interval, Sharon Vickers was not visible on the main floor. The stage was now set, but the final fatal act depended entirely on the judge. He remained motionless at the table, a poisoned glass of bourbon just inches from his hand. For more than an hour, Judge Harwood remained slumped at his table. At 12:37 p.m., Sharon Vickers walked over to his table. She shook him and called his name, but he was unresponsive. After checking for breath and finding none, she dialed 911 at 12:39 p.m. Emergency responders arrived 7 minutes later. The scene they encountered did not immediately suggest foul play. The victim was a known regular with a history of heavy drinking, found unconscious in a bar. Paramedics pronounced him dead at 12:52 p.m. The initial assessment pointed toward cardiac arrest, likely complicated by acute alcohol intoxication. However, there were details that did not fit that simple conclusion. First responders on the scene noted unusual physical signs. The judge's lips and fingernails had a distinct bluish tint, a condition known as cyanosis, and there was a small amount of froth around his mouth. His skin was cool to the touch. These were not typical indicators of a heart attack. [music] The Mobile Police Department secured the scene and Vickers provided her initial statement. She claimed Harwood had been drinking alone all morning and that she had not seen anyone approach him. The half empty glass of bourbon on his table was collected as standard procedure and the security footage was taken into evidence, its critical contents not yet [music] known. The case transformed from a suspected medical event into a homicide investigation 2 weeks after Judge Harwood's death. The official report from the Mobile County Medical Examiner's autopsy arrived, and its contents were definitive. Toxicology tests had identified a fatal concentration of sodium cyanide in the judge's bloodstream. The same poison was found in the residue of the bourbon glass recovered from his table. This revelation gave investigators a new lens through which to view the evidence. Detectives immediately reviewed the security footage from the crescent room. The grainy video provided their first and most critical lead. A clear image of a woman later identified as Denise Pool approaching Harwood's table and manipulating his glass. Her identity was confirmed when exterior cameras captured her vehicle parked one block away with a license plate registered in her name. With a primary suspect identified, the focus turned to the bartender. Sharon Vickers was brought in for a second interview on March 22nd. [music] This time, detectives presented her with phone records that documented multiple calls and text messages exchanged between her and Pool in the weeks leading up to the incident. Confronted with this evidence, Vickers abandoned her original story. She admitted to the arrangement, confirming that P had paid her to know when the judge would be alone. She maintained, however, that she had no knowledge of a plan to use poison, and believed P only intended to verbally confront him. Investigators now had a motive, a suspect on video, and a cooperating witness who placed the suspect at the scene with intent. Denise Pool was arrested at her home on March 25th, 2008 and charged with capital murder. She invoked her right to silence and did not speak to investigators. The case against her, which went to trial in November 2008, was built entirely on a chain of circumstantial evidence. The prosecution presented a clear and compelling narrative to the jury. They established motive by detailing Judge Harwood's maximum sentencing of P's nephew, Raymond. They presented her internet search history as a digital footprint of premeditation, [music] showing a deliberate effort to find a lethal and undetectable poison. The security footage from the Crescent Room was the visual centerpiece of their case, placing P at the victim's table at the critical moment. Finally, the testimony of Sharon Vickers, granted immunity in exchange for her cooperation, corroborated the timeline, and confirmed that P had engineered the entire encounter. In response, Pool's courtappointed defense attorney, Charles Brandt, argued that a strong narrative was not the same as hard proof. He emphasized the prosecution's primary weakness. No physical evidence directly linked her client to the sodium cyanide. Investigators had found no trace of the poison in her home, her car, or among her personal effects. He argued that her internet searches were the product of grief and [music] anger, not a murderer's blueprint. He maintained that the security footage was ambiguous and did not definitively show her putting anything into the glass. The defense's position was simple. Without the murder weapon, the case was based on inference, not fact. The jury deliberated for 6 hours. The defense's case rested on a single point of doubt. The absence of physical proof [music] connecting Denise Pool to the sodium cyanide. But for the 12 jurors, the chain of circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution was unbreakable. The motive was clear. The digital trail of her research was damning. The security footage was incriminating. And the accomplice's testimony sealed the timeline. On November 19th, 2008, [music] they returned their verdict. Guilty of capital murder. The conviction carried the potential for the state's most severe punishment. Prosecutors argued that the premeditated and calculated nature of the crime warranted the death penalty. The defense countered, citing Pool's lack of a prior criminal history and her role as a caretaker for her nephew, pleading for life imprisonment without parole. On January 14th, 2009, the judge imposed the sentence death. The consequences for the other figures in the case were less [music] severe. for her testimony. Sharon Vickers accepted a plea agreement for lesser charges and received a suspended sentence with 3 years of probation. [music] She relocated from Mobile soon after. Rayman Pool's sentence was unaffected by his aunt's actions. He remained incarcerated. The case's notoriety also claimed one final victim. The Crescent Room, unable to escape its new reputation, saw its business decline until it closed permanently in 2010. Denise Pool's appeals were systematically denied, but one question from the trial was never answered. Where did she get the cyanide? The murder of Judge Kenneth Harwood did not result in sweeping legal or legislative changes, but its impact rippled through the Mobile community within the judiciary. The case forced an uncomfortable internal review. Harwood's long documented alcohol dependency, previously an open secret, was now a matter of public record. While new policies regarding judicial conduct were drafted, they were never fully implemented. A few defense attorneys questioned whether the judge's impairment had affected his past rulings, but no convictions were ever overturned. For the public, the case was a chilling story of methodical, patient revenge. Denise Pool was not a hardened criminal, but a medical records clerk with no history of violence. Her 2-year transformation into a calculated killer became a local true crime legend. The media portrayed her as a quiet but deadly figure, a woman whose devotion had twisted into a fatal obsession. This narrative also brought an end to the Crescent Room, which became inextricably linked to the murder and closed its doors for good. The case remains officially closed, but its central mystery endures. Denise P was convicted and sentenced to death where she remains. Her nephew, Raymond P, was eventually released from prison, but has never spoken publicly about the case. To this day, investigators have never definitively determined how or where Denise Pool obtained the industrial-grade sodium cyanide she used to kill Judge Harwood.