Homicide: Hours To Kill - Inside the Bernadette Myers case - How a pawn shop transaction solved a shocking murder

Homicide: Hours to Kill, Season 1, Episode titled Stranger Danger delves into a shocking 2003 murder case of Bernadette Myers in Florida. Myers was found strangled with zip ties in her St. Petersburg home. Initially, the investigators were left confused since there were no signs of forced entry or physical evidence. As the investigators dug deeper, they found multiple suspects, including a predator, a man found carrying zip ties, a local burglar, and a hitchhiker in Arkansas who told strangers how he murdered a woman in Florida.

However, upon further investigation, the detectives found out that the murderer, Charles Halm, was seen in Bernadette's parking lot hours before her murder. A pawn shop transaction helped them track the murderer. According to the Tampa Bay Times, detectives discovered that Halm had pawned Myers' jewelry the day her body was found. They further learned that he had given some jewelry to his friends, which included Myers' silver watch that she wore a day before at a family gathering.

Here's more about the Bernadette Myers case as seen in Homicide: Hours to Kill.

Homicide: Hours to Kill- How was the Bernadette Myers murder case solved?

Homicide: Hours to Kill, Episode titled Stranger Danger follows the murder case of Bernadette Myers. On March 4, 2003, when Myers failed to show up for work at Honeywell International, one of her co-workers drove to her home and, upon finding possible blood stains on the kitchen floor, informed the cops.

According to Homicide: Hours to Kill, the detectives found her body in her St. Petersburg home. Myers was brutally murdered. She was strangled with two large zip ties, and her hands were duct taped. Her cause of death was ligature strangulation, and the blunt force trauma to her head was secondary. Thus, the zip ties were used as the primary murder weapon.

As the investigation began, the detectives sorted through multiple suspects based on Myers' location on and before the day of her murder. The detectives started to rule out each suspect until they found out about Charles Halm, who was seen outside Myers' home on the day of the murder. It turns out, three years before Myers' murder, Charles painted her house.

Charles told the detectives that he did paint Myers' house and admitted they were on friendly terms. He admitted to being in the van near Myers' parking lot. As the interrogation continued, the detectives struggled to find more evidence. The detectives then put a surveillance team to follow Charles. As they began to follow up on Charles, they found out that Charles was a frequent pawner.

The detectives found out that after Myers' murder, Charles pawned some women's jewelry. When the items were sent to the lab for a DNA test, they eventually found the evidence on Myer's pink coral ring. It turns out, they were pawned before the detectives found Myers' body. Through Charles' phone records, they contacted Gary. Gary revealed that Charles gave him some jewelry and a watch. The watch belonged to Bernadette Myers, proving it was Charles Halm who killed her.

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According to the Tampa Bay Times, the jury convicted Charles Halm of first-degree murder in November 2005. The authorities confirmed he attacked Myers, strangled her to death with cable ties, and stole her jewelry. The jury sentenced Charles Halm to life in prison with no chance of parole.

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