IAPE Evidence Blog

CBSNEWS, cbsnews.com

Port­land, ME

(AP) PORTLAND, Maine — A 55-year-old Maine man was arrested Wednes­day and charged with mur­der­ing a woman 31 years ago some­time after she left a bar in a neigh­bor­ing town.

Jay Mercier was arrested at his home in the small west­ern Maine town of Indus­try and charged with mur­der in the death of Rita St. Peter, who was 20 when she was found dead along the side of a road in Anson on July 5, 1980.

Offi­cials are not releas­ing details sur­round­ing St. Peter’s death or what specif­i­cally led them to Mercier. Offi­cials wouldn’t release the cause of death in 1980 either, but a 1990 Ban­gor Daily News story on the case said she had a frac­tured skull, was severely beaten and was run over by a vehicle.

The pre­vi­ous old­est cold case in Maine that resulted in an arrest occurred in 1983, when Judith Flagg was mur­dered in Fayette. Thomas Mitchell Jr., of South Port­land, was arrested 23 years after her death and later con­victed and sen­tenced to life in prison.

“The length of time of this case illus­trates that unsolved homi­cides never close,” said Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland.

Mercier has been employed as a laborer for most of his life, was divorced and was liv­ing with his girl­friend when he was arrested, police said. He has sev­eral crim­i­nal con­vic­tions on his record, includ­ing some for dri­ving under the influ­ence, said Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral Andrew Ben­son, who is pros­e­cut­ing the case.

Mercier will likely make his ini­tial court appear­ance in Som­er­set County Supe­rior Court next week. A pub­lic defender will be appointed to rep­re­sent him, Ben­son said. Pros­e­cu­tors will ask that Mercier be held with­out bail.

St. Peter had been drink­ing in a bar in Madi­son on July 4, 1980, and was last seen some­time after mid­night cross­ing a bridge over the Ken­nebec River from Madi­son to Anson, a town of about 2,500 95 miles north of Port­land, accord­ing to a Maine State Police state­ment. At the time, she was stay­ing with friends in Anson and work­ing at Ken’s Fam­ily Drive-In, a restau­rant in Skowhegan.

She was found the next morn­ing on the side of a nearby coun­try road.

St. Peter is sur­vived by a daugh­ter, who was 3 at the time of her death, and a half-sister, police said.

A grand jury indicted Mercier ear­lier this month, but McCaus­land declined to spec­ify what sort of evi­dence pointed toward Mercier or whether he was iden­ti­fied through DNA.

“We aren’t get­ting into specifics other than we used tech­nol­ogy at the crime lab,” he said.

At the Anson town offices, Town Clerk Carol Ryan said peo­ple in town were shocked when St. Peter was killed. Her fam­ily was well-known in town, and Ryan’s own daugh­ter was just a cou­ple of years behind St. Peter in school.

Towns­peo­ple were talk­ing fol­low­ing Mercier’s arrest, she said.

“It’s got every­body curi­ous on how do they solve some­thing that was that long ago,” Ryan said.

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

jacksonsun.com
BYLINE: Lau­ren Foreman

Jack­son, TN

A Chicago native has been con­victed of rap­ing a Jack­son woman in a 1997 case that took author­i­ties 13 years to put together using DNA analy­sis and a cre­ative strat­egy for prosecutors.

Last month, Madi­son County Judge Don Allen sen­tenced Joseph Davi­son to 24 years in prison for the crime. Allen required that Davi­son serve 85 per­cent of the sen­tence, accord­ing to a news release from Jack­son Police Chief Gill Kendrick.

Jack­son police have called the rape con­vic­tion an unprece­dented cross-state case in which they charged a DNA pro­file of an unknown rape sus­pect to get things mov­ing before the statute of lim­i­ta­tions per­ma­nently closed the case.

“At the time the assault occurred in 1997, DNA pro­fil­ing was still an up and com­ing sci­ence here,” Kendrick stated in the news release. The 1997 case was the first of its kind in Madi­son County.

On June 27, 1997, an intruder who had qui­etly entered a Jack­son woman’s Arling­ton Avenue home “threat­ened her, cov­ered her face with pil­lows and raped her,” accord­ing to the news release.

Jack­son offi­cials could not find the man but entered DNA gath­ered from the crime scene into an index sys­tem that did not come up with a match until 2010.

“By ini­ti­at­ing a pros­e­cu­tion against the principal’s genetic iden­tity (even though we did not know his name at the time), we stopped the statute of lim­i­ta­tions from run­ning out, ” Kendrick said in the release.

Work­ers at a Ten­nessee Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion lab in Nashville noti­fied the Jack­son Police Depart­ment of a match with Joseph Davi­son in August 2010.

Davi­son had left Jack­son for Chicago in 2006 after being con­victed of aggra­vated bur­glary and attempted rape charges, charges that occurred before a 1998 Ten­nessee law requir­ing con­victed felons to pro­vide DNA samples.

The Chicago Police Depart­ment arrested Davi­son on Nov. 26, 2010. And a change in Illi­nois law had strength­ened that state’s author­ity to col­lect sam­ples from cer­tain offenders.

“DNA has changed the whole out­look on cases like this,” Jack­son Police Capt. Mike Holt said. “Had we not done some­thing, we wouldn’t have been able to prosecute.”

Since the 1997 case, Jack­son police have issued about four of the ‘John Doe’ war­rants a year.

“And they are not all sex­ual assault cases,” Holt said. He said some war­rants con­cern burglaries.

Holt said he hoped local imple­men­ta­tion of “John Doe war­rants” would set a prece­dent for other cities and inspire leg­isla­tive changes regard­ing statutes of lim­i­ta­tion and DNA evidence.

“I think it reaf­firms the impor­tance to us in law enforce­ment that even when we don’t know who the sus­pect is, we have to do every­thing right to keep those cases viable,” Holt said. “In hopes that there will be jus­tice some day.”

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

NBC Bay Area, nbcbayarea.com
BYLINE: Lori Preuitt
Link to Article

Santa Clara, CA

A 1979 homi­cide case was left open until now.

DNA hits link Rich­mond man to 1979 homi­cide in San Jose. Getty Images

The Santa Clara County Dis­trict Attorney’s office announced the arrest of a man they say is respon­si­ble for the death of a San Jose woman 31 years ago.

Rachel Mon­crief was killed in July, 1979. Her body was found at a mobile home deal­er­ship in Santa Clara.

Now, inves­ti­ga­tors say a DNA hit from blood on her pants links 61-year-old David Dixon to the crime.

Dixon was arrested Wednes­day and will be charged with one count of mur­der, accord­ing to the DA’s office.

Inves­ti­ga­tors said they say a sec­ond DNA hit that linked both Dixon and Moncrief’s DNA to a mar­i­juana cig­a­rette found near her body.

Inves­ti­ga­tors credit the Santa Clara Police Depart­ment and the Dis­trict Attorney’s Cold Case Unit for solv­ing the case.

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