07x29 - A Bag of Evidence

[bunniefuu]

in 1981 police found a partial print

near a doorknob at a crime scene but

without a suspect police had no way to

compare the print to the 1 million

prints on file



changed that breathing new life into

what was a very old crying

you

Charles Whittlesea was one of this

country's outstanding architects in the

early 1900's he was the first to design

poured concrete structures he designed

and built all the train stations clear

across the United States Albuquerque is

one of his most famous and the next most

famous I would guess would be El Tovar

at the rim of the Grand Canyon which he

built 1902 Charles had four children but

his oldest daughter Enid identified with

her father's free spirit and creativity

more than the others

Enid shunned family pressure to attend

college and instead headed to vaudeville

at age 17 she began her career as a

Marion Morgan dancer she was also a

singer performing with the San Francisco

Opera Enid never married but she loved

children as she grew older she

eventually found work as the governess

but by the 1950s she retired and moved

into a family home on Cimarron Street in

Los Angeles she never owned a car but

was a fixture in the neighborhood riding

on her bicycle stopping to talk and

sometimes play with the neighborhood

children

she would relate to them a lot more so

than she would to adults she had kind of

a almost a childlike quality about her

the neighbors all call her the bicycle

lady and everybody spoke highly aware

she was pleasant she would talked to

people even into her 80s she still rode

her bicycle through the neighborhood but

as she grew older something changed she

was quite concerned about intruders

breaking into her house to the point

where she had built kind of a

jerry-rigged alarm system out of wires

and threads and cans to alert her if

anybody try to come in at window or a

door on march 13th 1981 one of the

neighbors noticed in its front door was

open inside the doorway

was blood

paramedics found 86 year-old Enid

Whittlesea in her upstairs bedroom dead

from multiple s*ab wounds Frank Bolden

was the first detective on the scene

glady being of a small frame that just

no way I could believe that she offered

much resistance there was no need for

the amount of injuries you know this

woman was subjected to the bedroom was

ransacked the motive appeared to be

robbery

several the drawers were open a lot of

the items were pulled out there was

blood on various items in and out of

drawers Bolden also noticed blood drops

leading down the left-hand side of the

stairs person leaving these blood drops

was in fact leaving the area of the body

going downstairs and going to the front

door at the front door was a blood smear

and print leading to the doorknob of the

door investigators hoped that the

fingerprints and the blood drops would

lead to the k*ller

the entire neighborhood including the

children were shocked and saddened by

the m*rder of 86 year old Enid

Whittlesea despite her cheerful

disposition her friends knew she was

particularly fearful of crime whether

the a premonition whether just a

coincidence

but there was something that that did

trouble her a lot she had always lived a

very kind life that had never bothered

anybody this was just not fair that

someone so dear and sweet would have to

end her days this way it was just was

not fair I mean to be mutilated like she

was inside the home was a wealth of

forensic evidence which told the story

of what happened during its last moments

alive we believe that the person had

come up on the front porch opened a

window on the front porch had crawled in

the open window except on the dusty

piano and left the footprint a knife

surface at some point we worked our way

upstairs where she was in the bedroom it

was just it's always very sad victim was

severely cut and stabbed in different

parts of her body she had defensive

wound on the outside of her right wrist

which to me showed that when the

defendant was trying to s*ab her she's

playing up armor defense he got her

wrist and at some point the suspect was

also injured it's not uncommon when a

knife is used that the attacker slides

because the blood is slippery they'll

slide over the blade and cut themselves

it appeared the suspect walked back down

the stairs bleeding from his left hand

the forensic evidence revealed that the

k*ller left through the front door and

stole in its beloved bicycle from the

front porch to make his getaway Michele

Kessler was assigned to collect the

blood drops from the home she started

with the grand piano because it was dry

and flaky

I used a clean disposable scalpel and

just collected it into a clean piece of

white paper and made it into a bindle

and closed it so I could breathe and put

it in a coin envelope Kessler used a

different technique on the bloodstains

on the front door well in those days we

used cloth squares dampened with water

and disposable tweezers or claimed the

tweezers in between with alcohol

fingerprint specialist lifted three

partial prints from a window

a fourth print was discovered on an

archway leading to the front door they

thought it might be a partial of a palm

print

investigators photographed the

footprints using oblique lighting it's

when you take a flashlight and you shine

it on an angle on an oblique angle it's

kind of like at home when you can't see

handprints on your furniture but you

turn on the light you're looking

sideways hence there's the fingerprint

the forensic evidence told police how

the crime was committed but the evidence

couldn't identify the k*ller

this was 1981 five years before DNA was

first used in a criminal case

police could find no witnesses to the

crime none of the neighbors had seen

anything suspicious detectives then

looked to other areas for leads

I was conversing with other detectives

and we were comparing notes we were

comparing prints but as far as a

specific suspect we had none comparing

the fingerprints and Enid Whittle sees

home two others arrested for similar

crimes in the area wasn't difficult but

comparing them to everyone in the file

was impossible he would have to search

just over a million cards if there was a

known suspect we can easily pull a card

and then do the comparison but without a

known suspect it would be very difficult

without a full pattern type and without

a fingerprint match the case remained

unsolved all investigators knew was that

the k*ller had type-b blood and was

left-handed

it would take another 16 years before a

new technology gave police their first

solid lead

all homicide cops would like to solve

their crimes kind of take it personal

you know and they usually have put a lot

of time and effort into it

Enid Whittle sees m*rder case was one of

several unsolved cases that languished

in Frank Bolin's cold-case file I

remember him telling me that during his

30-year career there was a handful of

cases maybe three cases that haunted him

that he wanted to solve before he

retired and this was one of them he had

the k*ller's blood from the crime scene

and some of his fingerprints but little

else but in the years since Enid's

m*rder in 1981 there had been more

technological advances in forensic

science than at any other time in

history in this age of personal

computers it's hard to remember that in

the 1980s very few people had even seen

a computer let alone used one large

expensive mainframe computers were the

standard

with an eye to the future the FBI and

the Lockheed Martin company experimented

with using computers to analyze and

compare fingerprints when scanners were

developed to capture the prints and the

files could be compressed and formatted

the AFIS was born a fist is actually an

acronym for automated fingerprint

identification system and it's a

computer system and what it does is it

photographs a latent print it scans it

and then it'll give us a candidate list

usually of ten people who have similar

characteristics to the one that we

entered into the system this new

technology revolutionized fingerprint

analysis not only for new cases but for

old ones I occasionally visit a lot of

my old cases then ask for a recheck of

the prints

so detective Bolan sent the four prints

found and eat at wittle C's home back to

the forensics lab AFIS found no match

for the three prints taken from the

window but the AFIS had better luck with

the partial palm print the partial print

was such a small area that you weren't

sure if it was actually from a

fingerprint or if it was from a palm

area of the hand in this case the AFIS

determined that the print was a partial

fingerprint and not a palm print and the

computer identified ten individuals

whose prints needed to be examined

further we're then able to pull the

cards of those candidates and do a

comparison and we do a side-by-side

comparison using a special magnifying

glass the latent print examination

identified the owner of the print Carl

Stewart I immediately began a background

search we found him to live within a

half mile of the victim he had a lengthy

record within the Worcester Division I

having been arrested several times for

theft and things of that nature

ironically Carl Stewart was sitting in a

Los Angeles jail following an arrest on

domestic abuse charges I went and found

the spouse that could file the charges

on him I sat down and I interviewed her

through her I have learned that he was a

person that didn't really care for

elderly people that he had been a burger

she also told police that Stewart

targeted seniors in Beverly Hills Culver

City and Wilshire near his home and she

said one more thing that Stewart was

left-handed on December 26 1996

detective Bolin and two others

interviewed Carl Stewart and this lady

was hurt to the point where she died

okay honey I didn't do that all right I

didn't do this you know no at first Carl

Stewart claimed he knew nothing about

the robbery or enid Whittlesea then he

changed his story

I seen her in the neighborhood as my

partner and I would release some

information on bits and pieces of

evidence he would rethink his statement

and make it work around the evidence

that was obtained and how it got there

when told his fingerprint was near

Enid's front door Stewart said he had

once been inside her home briefly but

had nothing to do with her m*rder

District Attorney hatin Zaki would make

the decision on whether to take this

case to trial crime happened on March



school and I thought to myself boy this

is an old case you know how are we still

can have witnesses available for

instance did we preserve all the

evidence properly all of the evidence

had been in the police property room for

the 16 years since the m*rder but one

important piece was not the coroner's

reference sample of Enid's blood was

missing it would take another forensic

breakthrough not available in 1981 to

solve that problem and bring Carl

Stewart to justice

investigators wanted to make sure that

it was Carl Stewart's blood inside inna

twiddle C's home to do that scientists

needed a sample of Stewart's blood as

well as inna twiddle C's but the swatch

of Enid's blood taken at her autopsy was

missing from the evidence file so what

we did in lieu of the coroner's blood

swatch we use Enid widdle C's uh pajama

top that was what we were hoping would

serve as her reference blood sample

because there was heavily blood-stained

small dried samples of that pajama top

were placed in sterile water water

dissolves sustained and it also causes

any cells that are present for example

white blood cells which contain DNA to

life they break open spilling up their

contents including the DNA out into the

water the next step was to clean the DNA

I had to pass through something called a

Sentricon tube it's basically a filter

and what it does is it accomplishes two

things it cleans the DNA and it also

concentrates it to a smaller volume of

water

the DNA is then replicated multiple

times into a workable sample through a

polymerase chain reaction or PCR six

genetic markers were typed and

illuminated by a blue color attached in

the PCR process I had one stain that

actually matched the genetic profile

being Whittlesea on the remaining items

I believe there were eight other

bloodstains from throughout the

residence that matched Carl Stuart's

genetic profile the evidence finally

proved that Carl Stewart left the blood

trail inside Enid wittle C's home Carl

Franklin Stewart left his blood at that

crime scene it's his blood what's the

defense gonna do on May 17 1999

hey do zakir presented the forensic

evidence of inna twiddle seized m*rder*d

to a jury Zakir believes that Carl

Stewart first noticed Enid during one of

her bicycle rides through the

neighborhood

later Stewart broken two in its home

through her front window leaving his

footprint on the dusty piano underneath

the motive was robbery

upstairs Enid confronted Stewart a fight

ensued causing the defensive wounds to

Enid's arms and hands during the

encounter Stewart cut his left hand

which left the trail of blood down the

left-hand side of the steps Stewart left

his partial print near the front door as

he left the scene

a print originally thought to be a palm

print but later identified as a partial

fingerprint by the automated fingerprint

identification system we knew he got our

man

we knew that Carl Franklin Stewart was

in that house because he left a

fingerprint and left blood so that's how

we knew we had our man it took the jury

just two hours to find Carl Stewart

guilty of first-degree m*rder he was

sentenced to life in prison with no

chance of parole

this was the first homicide

investigation assigned to Frank Boleyn

despite taking 17 years he refused to

give up

he will give 110 percent to every

investigation that he participates in

sometimes he's a little bit of a pain

but you know it's all for a good cause

and I enjoy working with him I can't say

it's a happy thing but I did take a

person off the street that was

responsible for horrendous vicious crime

and I would say that the world elderly

people females whoever in general is a

little bit safer today because his

person is behind bars so many

disappointments so many cases have gone

unsolved that you couldn't do you

couldn't do anything with and then along

comes new technology I think it is so

wonderful to think that after all these

years that they would go back when they

got better equipment and new

technological things and try to solve

these unsolved crimes and put these

people where they belong

it's marvelous

you