Published: February 16, 2006 03:26 pm            

Expert: Camm’s story matches evidence

BOONVILLE — A forensics expert testified Wednesday that blood and tissue found on David Camm’s shirt got there when the shirt brushed against the biological matter at the crime scene, a claim the former state trooper has maintained since his arrest for triple murder.

The blood evidence, detectives have testified, was largely responsible for Camm’s arrest three days after the murders.

Following his 2002 conviction — which was reversed in 2004 — jurors said their verdict was based on expert testimony that the blood on Camm’s shirt was high-velocity blood spatter.

High-velocity blood spatter is a mist of blood caused by an energy force — such as shooting or beating — that sprays onto items within 4 feet of the area at the time of impact. Prosecutors maintain the blood stains on Camm’s shirt are high-velocity blood spatter, proving he was standing near his family when they were shot to death.

Camm is on trial for fatally shooting his 36-year-old wife Kim and children, Brad, 7, and Jill, 5, at their Georgetown home 5 1/2 years ago.

Defense witness Paul Kish — a blood stain pattern analyst who co-authored a textbook on the subject — told the jury Wednesday the blood and tissue were both deposited on Camm’s shirt through transfer, or contact, not by being airborne following a gunshot as the state’s experts have alleged.

The defense witness said the stains were such perfect examples of how transfer blood stains are supposed to look that he intends to include photos of them in his next textbook.

Camm told police his daughter’s blood must have gotten on him when he reached across her to pull his son, whom he thought could still be alive, from the family’s vehicle. That account would be consistent with the blood and tissue evidence found on Camm’s shirt, Kish said. The witness said the blood on Camm’s shoe also appeared to be caused by a transfer stain.

Neither, he said, were high-velocity blood spatter as five of the prosecution’s experts have testified. Kish also disagreed with the state experts’ testimony that the tissue was embedded into the fabric of the T-shirt.

After examining the area through a microscope, Kish said he determined the tissue and blood were both laying on top of the weave of the fabric, indicating it had been transferred there by contact.

Prosecutors will get their chance to discredit Kish’s testimony when they cross-examine him today.

Also Wednesday, a genetics expert for Orchid Cellmark testified that DNA from an unknown female was found in the Ford Bronco where the Camm children were shot. The DNA profile did not match that of any of the Camm family members, or of Charles Boney or Mala Singh Mattingly, said Rick Staub.

Boney’s sweatshirt and palm print were found at the murder scene in 2000, but not linked to him until March 2005, at which time he was arrested.

The sweatshirt contained the DNA of Boney and Mattingly, his ex-girlfriend.

Their DNA wasn’t found anywhere else at the crime scene, prosecutors noted.

Boney told police — in his latest version of events — that he provided Camm with an untraceable weapon, wrapped in the sweatshirt. He said when he delivered the gun to Camm at the family’s house, he stood outside the garage and listened as Camm argued with his wife and then shot her and the children.

The defense says Camm never met Boney, and that the felon — who had been released from jail just three months before the shootings — committed the murders on his own because of his violent foot fetish.

If the attack was sexually motivated and committed by Boney or someone else, Floyd County Deputy Prosecutor Steve Owen asked, why was it only Kim and Dave’s DNA, and a DNA mixture of either Kim, Jill or Brad’s, that was found in Kim’s underwear.

Defense attorney Stacy Uliana said not all sexual offenses are motivated by rape.

The trial continues today in Warrick County, where it was moved due to publicity.



Reporter’s Notebook

Just who is that mustached man?

For those courtroom observers who are wondering about the man in the suit sitting quietly at David Camm’s defense table, he is private investigator and former FBI special agent Gary Dunn.

Dunn — who now operates Professionally Dunn Investigations in Bloomington — is a G-man with a master’s degree.

If he looks familiar that may be because he was a lead investigator in another of Indiana’s high-profile cases — that of Jill Behrman, the Indiana University student who disappeared during a bike ride in Bloomington in 2000. During a court break Wednesday, Dunn told me that he still considered the unsolved case the failure of his 27-year career.

Dunn was also a lead investigator in a high-level public corruption case in Chicago and New York City, in which dozens of public officials were convicted.

Though some folks may find it difficult to understand why a former FBI agent would be working on behalf of a man charged with murder, Dunn told me early on that his involvement was easy to explain.

“I believe, 100 percent, Dave Camm is innocent. If I didn’t, I would not be here,” Dunn said.

•••

The company that analyzed DNA evidence for David Camm’s defense, is the company that first brought DNA to the public forefront during the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial.

In fact, Orchid Cellmark’s analysis of the Simpson DNA evidence is now in the Smithsonian’s National Museum in Washington, D.C.

As a company press release put it, “The O.J. Simpson murder trial was a watershed event for the use of DNA evidence in the criminal justice system.

The tremendous public interest and the pivotal role of DNA evidence in the trial helped to educate a generation of Americans to the potential of modern DNA forensic analysis.”

The company analyzed the evidence for the prosecution in the Simpson trial. The company’s lab director at the time testified that there was only a 1 in 170 million chance that drops of blood found near the bodies would match someone other than Simpson.

— Lisa Hurt Kozarovich



Box:

Blood Stain Pattern Analysis

• Blood stain pattern analysis is the analysis of the shape, size and configuration of blood stains at a crime scene or on a piece of physical evidence.

Depending on the type of stain and the circumstances, a number of different conclusions can be reached, such as the cause of the stain — for example, a transfer or high-velocity impact — its point of origin, and the direction in which the blood droplets were going at impact.

        

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