IAPE Evidence Blog

Worces­ter Telegram & Gazette Corp., telegram.com
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Web­ster, MA

WEBSTER —  A man who allegedly left behind a cig­a­rette dur­ing a June 2010 bur­glary has been arrested after DNA from the dis­carded butt was matched to him.

Joshua Piehl, 24, of 34 Worces­ter St., Charl­ton, on a war­rant Wednes­day and charged with break­ing and enter­ing in the day­time with intent to com­mit a felony and two counts of wan­ton destruc­tion of prop­erty. He was arraigned in Dud­ley Dis­trict Court and released on per­sonal recognizance.

Police were called to the home of an elderly woman on Gore Road on June 27, 2010, after she reported hear­ing strange voices in her base­ment. Offi­cers found the home had been bro­ken into and dis­cov­ered the cig­a­rette butt, which was sent to the state police crime laboratory.

Police were recently noti­fied that the DNA matched Mr. Piehl and they got a war­rant for his arrest.

Web­ster police Detec­tive Gor­don D. Went­worth Jr. wrote in a news release that Mr. Piehl con­fessed to the break-in in Web­ster and to a sim­i­lar inci­dent in Douglas. 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

DigitalJournal.com, digitaljournal.com
BYLINE: Kevin Fitzger­ald
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Maine

kjetil_r

DNA left on a dis­carded cig­a­rette butt was the smok­ing gun that finally led author­i­ties in Maine to make an arrest in a mur­der case dat­ing back to 1980.

Court doc­u­ments just released show that author­i­ties used DNA left on a cig­a­rette butt to arrest Jay Mercier back in Sep­tem­ber, accord­ing to the Asso­ci­ated Press (via Boston.com). He has now been charged with the bru­tal slay­ing of 20-year-old Rita St. Peter.

St. Peter had been killed after she left a bar to walk home on the night of July 4, 1980. It is also believe that she may have hitched a ride. The young victim’s body was found par­tially nude along the side of a road the next day. She had been blud­geoned and run over by a vehi­cle. She had also been sex­u­ally assaulted.

Mercier was orig­i­nally a per­son of inter­est in the crime when wit­nesses had reported see­ing him sit­ting alone in a truck around the time St. Peter left the bar, although author­i­ties could not find suf­fi­cient evi­dence at the time to arrest him after an investigation.

Detec­tives still had inter­est in the case sev­eral years later. Accord­ing to Reuters, they inter­viewed Mercier out­side his house in Jan. 2010, where Mercier was smok­ing a cig­a­rette. After dis­card­ing the cig­a­rette butt, author­i­ties col­lected it to be sub­mit­ted into evi­dence. Author­i­ties were later able to obtain an oral swab from Mercier when a search war­rant was served.

After sev­eral months, results finally showed a DNA match between Mercier’s saliva and semen sam­ples col­lected from St. Peter’s body.

Mercier, now 56, entered a plea of not guilty while in court on Mon­day. He has con­sis­tently denied guilt through­out the years. A judge has denied him bail.

His trial is set to begin some­time in the mid­dle of next year.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

The Mer­cury, a Jour­nal Reg­is­ter Prop­erty, pottsmerc.com
BYLINE: Carl Hessler Jr., chessler@journalregister.com
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Mont­gomery County, PA

NORRISTOWN – A cig­a­rette butt left behind by a Lim­er­ick bur­glar was the smok­ing gun that led to a Philadel­phia man’s con­vic­tion for the crime.

James Fran­cis DePaul, 26, of Lawn­dale Avenue, was con­victed Wednes­day by a Mont­gomery County jury of charges of bur­glary, crim­i­nal tres­pass and theft by unlaw­ful tak­ing in con­nec­tion with the Dec. 17, 2008, break-in at a home on Metka Road in Limerick.

The jury reached the ver­dict after hear­ing tes­ti­mony that DePaul’s DNA was dis­cov­ered on a cig­a­rette butt that Lim­er­ick police found at the scene of the bur­glary, appar­ently left behind by DePaul.

At the time of the bur­glary, which net­ted DePaul $200 in cash, DePaul was actu­ally resid­ing in a halfway house in Philadel­phia under pre-release sta­tus in con­nec­tion with a pre­vi­ous state prison sen­tence he was serv­ing for a 2004 Abing­ton con­ve­nience store rob­bery dur­ing which he stole cigarettes.

“I think it’s safe to say that smok­ing has taken years off Mr. DePaul’s life, espe­cially when he con­tin­ues to com­mit crimes in Mont­gomery County,” said Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney John Walko, who vowed to seek prison time against DePaul for the Lim­er­ick crime.

“I’m happy with the jury’s ver­dict. I believe they reached the right result, no ifs, ands, or buts, well maybe one but, a cig­a­rette butt,” Walko added.

As jurors were polled indi­vid­u­ally by court clerk Kevin Frankel, sev­eral mem­bers of DePaul’s fam­ily wept with each “guilty” ver­dict that was announced.

Judge Steven T. O’Neill, who presided over the two-day trial, imme­di­ately revoked DePaul’s bail, while empha­siz­ing that DePaul com­mit­ted the bur­glary while in a state Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions’ pre-release pro­gram for his 2004 rob­bery conviction.

“This defen­dant also has a his­tory of vio­lent crimes. Fur­ther release would be a risk,” said O’Neill as sheriff’s deputies slapped hand­cuffs on DePaul’s wrists for the trip to jail.

DePaul, who was rep­re­sented by defense lawyer Andres Jalon, faces a pos­si­ble max­i­mum sen­tence of 14 ½ to 29 years in prison on the charges.

An inves­ti­ga­tion of DePaul began on Dec. 17, 2008, when the Metka Road home­owner returned home to find that his home had been bur­glar­ized. The res­i­dent dis­cov­ered $200 in cash was taken.

Author­i­ties dis­cov­ered a cig­a­rette butt on the liv­ing room floor, near a lap­top com­puter that had been moved by the bur­glar, accord­ing to the arrest affi­davit filed by Lim­er­ick Detec­tive Ernie Mor­ris. The inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that no one who resided in the home smoked.

“The cig­a­rette butt was col­lected and sub­mit­ted for evi­dence,” Mor­ris wrote in the crim­i­nal com­plaint, explain­ing state police foren­sic sci­en­tists were able to extract DNA from the cigarette.

Trial tes­ti­mony revealed a DNA mix­ture from two peo­ple was obtained from the cig­a­rette. Walko, rely­ing on tests con­ducted by foren­sic sci­en­tists, argued DePaul was the major con­trib­u­tor to that DNA mix­ture profile.

“It’s hard to argue with DNA evi­dence and it was only the DNA evi­dence that was really link­ing him to this crime. But again, it was very strong, com­pelling evi­dence,” Walko said. “Essen­tially, there was more of the defendant’s DNA on the cigarette.”

Defense lawyers unsuc­cess­fully implied to the jury that the uniden­ti­fied sec­ond per­son whose DNA was dis­cov­ered in the mix­ture on the cig­a­rette was actu­ally the burglar.

DePaul did not tes­tify dur­ing the trial; how­ever, his lawyers implied that DePaul had left the halfway house to attend a class at a Philadel­phia tech­ni­cal school and could not have com­mit­ted the burglary.

In Decem­ber 2004, DePaul was sen­tenced to 4 ½ to nine years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to a rob­bery charge in con­nec­tion with an April 13, 2004, holdup at the Sunoco A-Plus Mini Mart on Town­ship Line Road in Abing­ton. DePaul pointed a knife at the cashier and demanded money from the cash reg­is­ter, police said.

DePaul made off with about $79 in cash and a cou­ple packs of cig­a­rettes dur­ing the rob­bery, court doc­u­ments indicate.

Fol­low Carl Hessler Jr. on Twit­ter @MontcoCourtNews

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org