Thursday afternoon, Nashville
“General Collier, anything on redirect?” Judge Forsythe asked.
Collier stood and faced the judge. “Nothing at this time, Your Honor, but we reserve the option to recall.”
“So noted. The witness is excused,” Forsythe instructed as Master Patrol Officer Deborah Greenwood stood up from the witness chair after describing how she had come to find the bloody clothes in a Dumpster on Charlotte Avenue.
“General Collier, call your next witness.”
“Your Honor, the state calls Detective Gary Gilley.”
Taylor raised her hand to her forehead, then lowered her head a bit and rubbed her temples. She’d hoped the judge would call a recess, but he seemed relentless. He pressed the attorneys to move ahead with each witness, and if he thought they were dawdling, he jumped right in and got them refo-cused. If they rephrased a question or tried to ask the same question more than once, Forsythe was on them like a guard dog. He kept rigid control of his courtroom and the proceedings in it, and as a result, the trial had moved forward much faster than anyone had expected.
But it was still exhausting. Taylor felt more drained than she ever had before.
Detective Gilley, wearing a blue suit and a red power tie, his white shirt starched and his hair combed back neatly, took the witness stand and was sworn in. After the preliminaries, Jane Sparks stood and walked to the podium. Her voice was high and clear, with only a trace of the aristo-cratic accent commonly seen in educated Southern women of means.
“Detective Gilley, would you tell us your current assignment with the Metro Police Department, please.”
“Yes, ma’am, I hold the rank of detective with the department and I’m currently assigned as a senior investigator with the Murder Squad.”
“How long have you been with the police department?”
“Sixteen years.”
“And how long with the Murder Squad?”
“Seven years. Before that I worked Vice for two years, was in Burglary for a year or so, and before that worked patrol.”
“Were you called to Exotica Tans on Church Street the night of February fifth of last year?”
“Yes, ma’am, I was.”
“And what function did you serve in the ensuing investigation of the two homicides?”
“I was the lead investigator.”
“So you were in charge of the investigation.”
“Yes, ma’am, reporting directly to Lieutenant Bransford.”
“Detective Gilley,” Sparks continued, “I want to draw your attention to a specific component of the investigation that occurred in the aftermath of the murders of Sarah and Allison. Did you at some point in this investigation endeavor to find the rental car that was-”
Talmadge shot up. “Objection, Your Honor, leading.”
Forsythe nodded. “Sustained. Rephrase your question, General Sparks.”
“Yes, Your Honor. Detective Gilley, in the investigation of the defendant’s whereabouts while he was in Nashville during the times established by previous testimony, were you able to ascertain what mode of transportation the defendant employed?”
Gilley cracked a faint smile on the stand. “Yes, ma’am, we were.”
“And what did you discover?”
“The defendant rented a car.”
“Were you able to determine where he rented that car?”
“Yes ma’am, he rented the car from Hertz and he picked it up at the airport rental counter.”
“And what kind of car did he rent?”
“A Lincoln Town Car.”
Sparks nodded. “Okay, Detective Gilley. In the course of your investigation, were you able to determine the whereabouts of the Lincoln Town Car rented by the defendant.”
“Yes, ma’am, we were. We requested that the Hertz people track the car down.”
“And they found it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And where was it located, Detective?”
“It was located in the rental lot at the New Orleans International Airport.”
“And what did you do then?”
“We requested that the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department impound the vehicle, which they did, and then they turned it over to the New Orleans Police Department, who held it for us until we could go down there and retrieve it.”
“Did you ask the New Orleans Police Department to examine the car?”
“Well,” Gilley hesitated. “We didn’t exactly ask them to, but they gave the car a cursory examination anyway.”
“And what were their findings?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Talmadge said, standing up.
“Hearsay and calls for a conclusion.”
Forsythe thought for a moment. “I’m going to allow some latitude on this one, Counselor. Overruled.”
Talmadge sat back down.
“Answer the question,” Forsythe ordered.
“In the trunk of the car, forensic examiners found what they believed to be a stain of some kind. They took a Hemident swab, which showed positive.”
“And tell us, please, what a Hemident swab is.”
“A Hemident swab is a simple test. It’s a preliminary test for the presence of blood.”
“In your expert opinion as a senior homicide investigator, is this a reliable test?”
Gilley nodded. “Yes, ma’am, for its limited purposes. It’s a test designed to be used in the field in an on-site initial investigation. But it only detects the presence of blood. It doesn’t tell you anything else. It doesn’t even differentiate between human and animal blood.”
“So the Hemident test doesn’t type or identify blood.”
“That’s correct. But it did establish that blood of some kind was present in the trunk of the car.”
“Subsequent to this test, what did you do?”
Gilley shifted his weight from one side of the chair to the other. “We requested that the New Orleans Police Department seal and impound the car, and the next day I went down to New Orleans and took it into my possession.”
“You drove the car back?”
“Oh no, ma’am,” Gilley said. “Not at all. I had it trailered back.”
“And what happened after you got the car back to Nashville?”
“We turned it over to our forensic examiners, who performed a standard, routine investigation of the car. They found no other evidence other than the stain in the trunk, which again proved conclusively to be blood. We turned the sample over to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for further testing.”
“And how did you do that, Detective Gilley?”
“We literally cut the piece of carpet with the stain on it out of the car, sealed it in an evidence bag, and forwarded it to TBI.”
“Thank you, Detective Gilley. No further questions at this time.”
Taylor watched as Talmadge stood quickly and walked to the podium, with his pressed Armani suit, his hundred-dollar haircut, and his crisp silk shirt, the very picture of a rich, successful lawyer. Everything within her was still, but in the back of her mind, a bubble was forming. Michael must have known that this testimony would be coming, but he hadn’t told her, hadn’t said a word to her about it. But Taylor knew, and she recognized this for exactly what it was-the first real evidence that could tie Michael to the murder scene.
“Detective Gilley, how much time elapsed between the time the defendant rented that car and the time it was discovered in the lot of the New Orleans airport?”
“Just a day or two short of seven weeks,” Gilley replied.
“And how many people had rented that car in the seven weeks that elapsed before the car was discovered.”
“According to the rental car company’s records,” Gilley answered, “forty-two people.”
Talmadge shifted at the podium and turned toward the jury. “So forty-two people rented this car between the time Mr. Schiftmann drove it in Nashville and the time you found it.” Gilley nodded. “That’s correct.”?
“How many people drove the car, Detective Gilley?”?
Gilley’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t know the answer to that. ?
There’s no way to tell.”
“And how many people actually rode in the car?”
“Again,” Gilley answered, his voice tightening, “We have no way of knowing that.”
“How many people who rented, drove, or rode in this car opened the trunk?”
“What?”
“How many people opened the trunk and used it?” Talmadge demanded.
“How should I-” Gilley stopped, frustrated. He took a breath and paused for a moment. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Talmadge smiled. “Did you obtain a list of the forty-two people who rented this particular Lincoln Town Car over the seven-week period.”
“Yes, we did.”?
“And did you question each of these forty-two people?”?
“No, we didn’t.”?
“Did you do background checks on these forty-two peo-?
ple?”
“We did run their names through the NCIC computers,”
Gilley answered.
“And?”
“Six of the forty-two had prior arrest records. Two others had outstanding warrants.”
“So eight of the forty-two people who rented this car over a seven-week period had previous scrapes with the law. Did you interview those eight people? Did you question them?”
“None of them were from Nashville.”
“I didn’t ask where they were from, Detective Gilley. I asked if you tracked them down and questioned them.”
“No, sir, we did not.”
“So eight people out of the forty-two people who rented that car over a period of seven weeks had arrest records or outstanding warrants, and you decide somehow that the defendant, who has never had a run-in with the law in his life, was the person responsible for the bloodstain in the trunk of that-”
Collier jumped to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor! This is totally inappropriate!”
Forsythe cleared his throat, angry. “I agree, General Collier. Objection sustained.”
Talmadge turned back to the defense table. “Question withdrawn, Your Honor. Nothing further for this witness.”
Collier walked to the podium. “One question on redirect, Your Honor. Detective Gilley, of the forty-three people, counting the defendant, who rented that Lincoln Town Car during this seven-week period, who rented it on the night of the murders at Exotica Tans?”
Gilley turned toward the defense table and nodded in their direction. “The defendant, sir. Michael Schiftmann.”
In the gallery, in the row directly behind the defense table, Taylor felt her blood turn cold.
Thankfully, Forsythe declared the afternoon recess. Taylor got up and walked straight out of the courtroom without waiting for Michael and the lawyers. She walked quickly down the hallway, her heels clicking loudly on the marble floor. She went into the ladies’ room and locked herself inside a stall. She held her hand up in front of her and noticed it was shaking. She stared at it a moment, as if it were someone else’s.
Her mind went blank as she stared at the scratched paint covering the metal door in front of her. Then, almost unconsciously, her brain kicked back into gear and she began thinking. There had to be some explanation besides the obvious. This was too easy for the police, too convenient.
She walked out the stall, past a couple of women from the courtroom who looked up in surprise when they saw her.
She rinsed off her hands and wanted to throw water in her face, but then she’d have to repair her makeup. She didn’t want to go back out there looking like she’d been crying.
She ran a brush through her hair, then squared her shoulders and walked back out into the hallway. Michael was a few feet farther down the hall, leaning against the wall, talking to Mark Hoffman, the youngest of the three lawyers.
“Where were you?” Michael asked, his voice low. “You disappeared. I was worried about you.”
“Sorry,” Taylor said, forcing herself to smile. “Call of nature. I sure wish the judge wouldn’t go so long between breaks.”
Hoffman smiled back at her. She hadn’t talked to him much over the course of the trial, but he seemed a little more relaxed, laid-back, than the other two attorneys. “Yeah, he’s intense. A real slave driver.”
“This seems to be moving forward a lot more quickly than everyone thought,” Taylor said, wanting to make small talk about anything so she wouldn’t have to discuss the testimony they’d just heard.
“It’ll start slowing down from here on out,” Hoffman said.
“We’re getting into the really contentious stuff.”
“I gathered,” Taylor said.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked.
Taylor looked up at him and smiled again. “Of course, I’m fine.”
Hoffman looked at his watch. “We better go,” he said.
“When Forsythe says ten minutes, he generally means ten minutes.”
Inside the courtroom, the gallery was rustling with spectators trying to get settled into seats before Forsythe entered.
The court officer had just begun his announcement when Forsythe swept past him, took his seat at the bench, and rapped his gavel twice.
“General Collier, let’s go. Call your next witness.”
Collier stood quickly. “The state calls Ms. Patricia Hooper.”
Taylor watched as a woman about thirty, if that, walked into the courtroom and took the witness stand. She was thin and pale, as if she rarely got outside. She wore narrow wire-rimmed glasses and little makeup. She seemed nervous as the court officer swore her in.
“Ms. Hooper, tell us please your place of employment,”
Collier instructed.
“I’m employed at the Nashville Crime Laboratory of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.”
“And what is your job description there?”
“My job title is special agent, forensic science supervisor. Basically, I’m a biotechnician attached to the Serology/
DNA Unit.”
“And what does the Serology/DNA Unit of the TBI do?”
“Our job is to perform identification and characterization of blood and other bodily fluids like semen or saliva. We also perform DNA profiling to determine if the DNA of a person suspected of committing a crime is present at a crime scene.”
“And, Ms. Hooper, what are your educational qualifica-tions as a forensic science supervisor?”
“I hold a bachelor of arts degree from Vanderbilt University with honors in chemistry, and a master’s degree in bio-chemistry from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.”
“How long have you been employed with the TBI?”
“Four years.”
Taylor felt her backside going numb as she sat there listening to this dry testimony. The woman’s voice was monotone, professional, and profoundly boring. The courtroom was quiet, still, almost stifling. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly and wished that this was all over.
“Ms. Hooper,” Collier continued, “can you explain to us, in layperson’s terms, what forensic DNA analysis is, how it works, and what it means in the process of investigating a homicide.”
“Certainly. In its simplest terms, DNA is material in our bodies that governs inheritance of eye color, hair color, stat-ure, bone density, and a long list of other human traits. DNA is a long but narrow stringlike object so tiny that a one-foot-long string of DNA is packed into a space roughly equal to a cube that measures one-millionth of an inch on its side …”
Taylor listened as the woman droned on for another ten minutes. She described the way DNA strands were named and characterized in strange combinations of letters and terms that seemed complicated beyond comprehension.
“… the locus on chromosome four, GYPA, is particularly useful for forensic DNA testing because it’s polymorphic, which means it takes different forms in different chromosomes. Each of the forms is called an allele …”
Even the jury was starting to glaze over. Taylor looked over at the defense table. Michael sat there, expressionless, staring. Not much color in his face, Taylor thought.
How long can this go on? She felt her head swim. She looked down at her watch: barely three-thirty. Two more hours of this.
The young woman on the witness stand droned on, mo-notonously, tediously. Taylor found it incomprehensible that something so dry could be so crucial, yet she knew it was.
“Now, Ms. Hooper,” Collier said after the primer on DNA was complete, “tell us what kind of tests you use to identify and characterize the samples you receive.”
“We use the latest technology to profile DNA samples, which is the PCR/STR process. PCR is an acronym for polymerase chain reaction, and STR is an acronym standing for short tandem repeat.”
“Ms. Hooper, without going into too much technical detail here, what does the PCR/STR process allow a forensic investigator to do?”
“The technological advances of PCR/STR give us the ability to identify and profile a sample based on much less material and material that might not be analyzable under older tests because of degradation issues.”
“So it takes much less of a sample to provide an identification.”
“That’s correct. In that sense, it’s much more reliable. And it’s much more discriminating. The FBI has established its accuracy down to one in two hundred and sixty billion.”
“In other words, a match using this test is pretty well absolute.”
Talmadge shot up. “Objection, Your Honor. Calls for a conclusion.”
Collier turned and glared at Talmadge. “Your Honor, the court has already accepted Ms. Hooper as an expert witness.
She’s qualified and entitled to draw these kinds of conclusions.”
“Objection overruled. Continue, Ms. Hooper.”
Patricia Hooper nodded. “Yes, I would characterize a positive identification as absolute.”
“Very well. In February of last year, did you receive a series of forensic evidence packets from the scene of a double homicide at an establishment here in Nashville called Exotica Tans?”
“Yes, I did.”
“In your expert opinion, were proper procedures followed in the protection of this evidence, to avoid contamination and degradation?”
“Well, I wasn’t at the crime scene, but when the evidence was presented to me, it appeared to have been properly preserved.”
“And what did the evidence primarily consist of?”
“There were approximately eighty separate packets of evidence, the bulk of which were blood and tissue samples.
There were also some hair samples found as well. And some skin tissue.”
“Were you able to type these samples, to determine from whom they came?”
“Yes, we were.”
“And what were your conclusions?”
“Virtually all the samples contained DNA resident in the bodies of the two victims, Ms. Burnham and Ms. Matthews.”
“Were you able to identify any other DNA that was ex-cluded from that belonging to the two victims?”
“Well,” she said, hesitating, “you have to consider the circumstances of the crime scene. The homicides were committed at an establishment where, to put it delicately, one was likely to find traces of other bodily fluids. We were provided with hair samples and semen samples that we were able to profile, but not to match with anyone else.”
“On or about April thirtieth of last year,” Collier asked,
“were you provided a sample of hair and saliva that were obtained from the defendant as a result of a search warrant?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Were you able to type and identify those samples?”
“I was.”
“And were you able to match any of the samples at the Exotica Tans crime scene with the sample derived from the defendant?”
“No, sir, none of the samples matched.”
“So you have no samples from the Exotica Tans homicide scene that positively place the defendant there?”
“That’s correct,” Ms. Hooper said.
Taylor thought it odd that Collier would bring up a point in favor of the defense. Then, after a moment, she was hit with how smart that was. Of course, when you’ve got a weakness and you admit to it, somehow it’s less weak than when someone else points it out.
“With your permission, Your Honor,” Collier said, turning to the judge, “we’d like to bring into the courtroom a portable bulletin board with a series of photographs and graphs that we’ll be introducing into evidence.”
Forsythe turned. “Any objections, Mr. Talmadge?”
“None at this time, Your Honor.” Talmadge’s voice sounded firm, unshaken.
Jane Sparks stood up as the door in the back of the courtroom opened and a large portable bulletin board was wheeled into the room. She took the board, wheeled it past the prosecution table and into the center of the courtroom in front of the judge and jury. The logistics were a little tough to negotiate, but she managed to get the board where everyone who had to be able to see it could.
Taylor craned her neck. There was a line of blown-up photographs that seemed filled with dark, blurry vertical lines and several charts.
“Ms. Hooper,” Collier instructed, “if you need to leave the stand in order to indicate which of these exhibits you’re referring to, I think that’ll be okay.”
Forsythe nodded.
“Now first, Ms. Hooper, tell us in its simplest terms how PCR works.”
“As I said earlier, PCR is an acronym for polymerase chain reaction. And in and of itself, it’s not really an actual identification. PCR is a method by which we can take a sample of DNA too small to profile and cause it to reproduce itself. This gives us a much larger sample. Now when we have enough DNA material to type, we can create a profile. Every DNA strand contains both constant and variable elements.
The constant elements are areas that all human beings share.
Interspersed with these areas are the variable elements, or the elements which are unique to each individual.”
“Very good, Ms. Hooper. Now, in February last year, you were given, as you said, some eighty packets of evidence from the Exotica Tans crime scene. Can you give us the results of this examination of the evidence?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, getting up from the witness stand and walking over to the bulletin board. She pulled a wooden pointer up off the rail and pointed to a photograph on the far left of the board. “As this label indicates, this is the DNA imprint of Allison May Matthews. And this second photograph is a blowup of the microscopic sample of Sarah Burnham. As you can see here, here, and here, on these loci, the samples are different.”
“All right, Ms. Hooper. Now, on or about February tenth of last year, were you provided with evidence that had been obtained by Metro Police from a Dumpster behind a convenience market on Charlotte Avenue?”
“Yes, I was. And we obtained numerous samples from the material and were able to type them.”
“Could you explain your results to us, please.”
Ms. Hooper raised her pointer and tapped several photographs in a row on the board. “These photographs are representative samples of the material we obtained from the Dumpster. As you can see, here, here, and here, the loci match the target sample definitely identified as belonging to Ms. Matthews. And over here, at these six loci, we established that this sample definitely matched the sample derived from Ms. Burnham.”
Taylor stared hard at the board, craning her neck to see the photographs as well as possible. She felt a tightening in her chest, as if she needed to loosen her clothes. Her face felt flushed. Patricia Hooper had been on the stand for well over an hour now.
“So in your expert opinion,” Collier said, his voice rising just a bit. “The blood found on the clothing in the Dumpster on Charlotte Avenue definitely came from Allison May Matthews and Sarah Denise Burnham.”
Ms. Hooper nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”
“And on or about March twenty-fourth of last year, were you provided with a sample of carpet removed from the trunk of a 2004 Lincoln Town Car?”
“Yes, it was delivered to me directly at the Nashville Crime Lab.”
“And were you able to perform a PCR/STR analysis of this sample?”
“Yes, sir, I was.”
“Would you tell us the results, please?”
Ms. Hooper stepped to the side of the board and pointed to a series of photographs and charts. “As this graph explains, we look for certain pointers, or loci, which are areas on the actual DNA string that are unique to each individual. As you can see here, the material we obtained from the carpet matches both the samples discovered at the Charlotte Avenue Dumpster site and at the crime scene itself. The pointers match here-”
She tapped on the board.
“-and here-”
Again. The tapping echoed throughout the silent courtroom.
“-here and here and here.”
“So,” Collier said, his voice rising even higher, “in your expert opinion, the samples obtained at the crime scene, at the Dumpster, and on the defendant’s rental car all share the same DNA and therefore could only have come from Sarah Denise Burnham and Allison May Matthews!”
“Yes,” Ms. Hooper said, nodding her head. “That’s correct.”
My God, Taylor thought. Merciful God in heaven! He did it!