Topic author: shy
Subject: Technology Turns Up Heat on Cold Case Files
Posted on: 14 March 2003 8:40:21 PM
Message:

New methods catch up with old criminals. The challenge is making past come alive for juries.
By Jean Guccione
Times Staff Writer

March 12, 2003

As improved technology allows police to solve more long-dormant cases, prosecutors say they increasingly face the difficult task of persuading juries that aging defendants should be held accountable for the crimes of their youth.

Many prosecutors say the advantages of scientific and technological crime detection can be outweighed by the damage done by the passage of time: dead or forgetful witnesses, aging and sympathetic defendants, lost evidence.

The first big problem is trying people for heinous crimes who for decades have lived and raised families in peaceful anonymity.

The task in the courtroom is to acknowledge that the defendant has led an exemplary life since the alleged crime, but to insist that makes him or her no less culpable, said Lara Giese, a jury consultant.

She said prosecutors have a more difficult job trying cold cases because they must not only bring the victim to life but, in the oldest cases, re-create the atmosphere in which the crime was committed.

As time passes, the crime "does not have the same impact as when it first happened," Giese said. "I think there is initial skepticism [from jurors] about why it took so long" to bring the case to trial.

Local examples of old crimes revisited include the recent prosecution of former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson on charges of trying to bomb two police cars, and the trial of Vernon Mathis Robinson for the murder of Thora Rose, who was found dead in her apartment in Hollywood 30 years ago.

Robinson was convicted of murder. The Rose murder was one of the first Los Angeles cases to be solved with a computer-generated fingerprint match.

And in January, two 45-year-old partial fingerprints led to the arrest of Gerald F. Mason, a man from South Carolina charged with killing two El Segundo police officers in 1957.

The prints linking Mason to the murder scene were critical, but prosecutors also welcomed the testimony of an eyewitness, a police officer who identified the defendant last month from an array of half-century-old photos.

Link to 1957 Crime

Mason, 69, allegedly shot El Segundo Police Officers Milton Curtis and Richard Phillips during a traffic stop in 1957. Mason is also accused of robbing four teenagers at gunpoint in Hawthorne and raping one of them.

Authorities say the rape kit -- with its DNA evidence -- was lost. But police held onto the two partial fingerprints found on the patrol car. Deputies working for Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca eventually sent the print to a national FBI database, where the match was found.

Lisa Kahn, who heads the forensic sciences section of the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, said missing evidence is not unusual in cold cases. "Some of the physical evidence has been lost, misplaced and disposed of," she said. "But what seems to have been kept is the fingerprint card."

For most cold cases today, police and prosecutors usually begin with well-established scientific evidence -- fingerprints, DNA -- to identify suspects. That task has become simpler as more fingerprints and DNA samples have been entered into databases and technological advances have reduced the time it takes to complete a search. The digitized federal database covering 30 states and containing 44 million fingerprints allows local authorities to search for matching prints in just two hours.

"We are solving cases through forensics [techniques] that did not exist at the times these crimes were committed," Kahn said.

Her four-lawyer office, created by Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley in 2001, has six pending murder or sexual assault cases -- all of them involving DNA evidence, she said.

In one of those cases, Los Angeles police last month arrested Edmond Jay Marr in the 1983 slaying of a Sherman Oaks nurse. Authorities cited evidence from tests of blood collected from a knife found in Marr's possession a month after Elaine Graham vanished near Cal State Northridge in 1983.

Increased reliance on hard-to-dispute forensic evidence enhances the prosecution's case, leaving defense attorneys to try to discredit expert witnesses and police procedures for handling the evidence. Armed with reliable science, prosecutors can depend less on the testimony of aging eyewitnesses.

Difficulty for Defense

"When you have scientific evidence, it does create difficulties for defense attorneys to attack effectively," criminal defense lawyer James E. Blatt said.

On the other hand, aging defendants may appear sympathetic to jurors, especially if they have led exemplary lives except for a single crime -- even murder -- in their youth.

That was a big worry for Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul W. Turley, who prosecuted Robinson for the murder of Thora Rose. Turley knew that the 36 fingerprints found at the crime scene provided compelling evidence against the defendant. "My biggest concern was that they were going to see this 48-year-old man in a suit and tie ... and articulate," Turley said. "And jurors would ask, 'What has he been doing for the past 30 years?' "

Robinson was a maintenance supervisor at a Minnesota college earning $40,000 a year. He was handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and tortoise-shell glasses. He gave the appearance of a devoted family man, with his three adult sons by his side.

Turley, now retired, told jurors in his closing argument, "I'm very happy to stand in opposition to the principle that you are entitled to one free murder every 30 years."

Another complication of the age of the case was Robinson's criminal record. He testified in the trial, and normally his record would have been admitted into evidence to attack his credibility. But a judge ruled the record too old to be admissible.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Michael Latin and Eleanor Hunter faced similar circumstances when they prosecuted Olson, the Minnesota homemaker who pleaded guilty last year to the attempted bombings of two Los Angeles police cars in the early 1970s.

They were ready to counter any potential defense argument about the insufficiency of evidence due to the death of an eyewitness and loss of physical evidence. "It's her fault," Latin said. "Not ours."

That evidence would have been available to prosecutors, he argued, if Olson had not hid from authorities for two decades.

Time Can Help

In rare cases, the passage of time can help, even with non-forensic evidence. William Terry Bradford, 69, a veteran and retired engineer living on a $1-million pension, was convicted last year of killing his ex-wife, Joan Bradford Lockwood, 14 years earlier.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lewin arranged for an FBI reconstruction of the crime scene, which ruled out burglary, robbery and sexual assault as motives.

Once the charges were filed, Bradford's girlfriend gave police a statement incriminating him.

"When you're dealing with cold cases, situations change," Lewin said. "People get divorced. They remarry. They find religion. They move. And allegiances can change. People they were scared of 20 years ago they aren't scared of anymore."

Shy
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Replies:

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Reply author: Alex McQuaid
Replied on: 03 January 2004 12:27:35 PM
Message:

In the 1940's, Thora Rose, her husband Bill and daughter Donna Marie lived in the City of Toronto Ontario Canada. My mother and I lived above their dry goods store while my father was overseas. Donna and I were both about the same age, and were childhood friends. The family moved to Hollywood in the late 1940's. I can recall that in the mid-1950's, the Rose family visited Canada and we shared some time together. That was the last time we saw each other. While I was still a young child, I can recall hearing mom and dad talking about Thora's murder. A few years ago, while reading the Toronto Star newspaper, I came across a brief entry that spoke about the murder and that the murderer had finally been captured. Because of my connection to this family, I'd really appreciate receiving any additional information that you could supply about the case, and also, information about Bill and Donna.

Thanks, and keep up the good work!!!!



Alex McQuaid

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Reply author: shy
Replied on: 08 January 2004 01:51:03 AM
Message:

quote:

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Originally posted by Alex McQuaid

I'd really appreciate receiving any additional information that you could supply about the case, and also, information about Bill and Donna. Thanks, and keep up the good work!!!!Alex McQuaid

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Thanks for your post Alex, love the challenge of digging around in all my books and the web to find people more information about particular cases...

Unfortunately, for a case that received such national attention and being such an old case there isn't much information... though I did find out that the case was tried in 1993 and that there was CBS program '60 Minutes' that features information on the prosecution of this trial. Not sure how you would go about finding a copy of this program though, but might be a good place to start.

I also found information on Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul W. Turley who prosecuted Robinson for the Rose murder, in the original information posted on the Crypt it states that Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul W. Turley is now retired though on the CRC website it states that Mr Turley is presently serving as the Deputy in Charge of the Beverly Hills court for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, so not sure which of this information is accurate. The CRC website might be another place to start.

visit the CRC website

Though this is all I can find at the moment, I will keep looking for you and post updates with any new information I find. Please keep me up to date with your search efforts and any progress that you make. Sorry that I couldn't offer any more assistant Alex...



Shy
---------------------------------------------------------
Friends will help you move. Real friends will help you move bodies!
shy@shyscyberchamber.com
ICQ : 41364914
---------------------------------------------------------

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Reply author: Tiffs
Replied on: 12 February 2004 10:22:40 AM
Message:

Did you find anything else out Alex?

Tiffs XXX
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Like... wow!

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Reply author: Alex McQuaid
Replied on: 14 February 2004 11:25:20 AM
Message:

Dear Tiffs..
Thanks for your interest....

I have since come across three leads while surfing the web....
The first is from an article that I came across at the following website http://pages.ivillage.com/aacrimecenter/aacrime/id2.html
that was written by Norma Meyer of Copley News Service on the day of the sentancing of the murderer, Vernon Robinson. This article provides some information about the crime, the victim, the murderer, and the emotions expressed and demonstrated by the daughter, Donna Marie and her two sons. I have since written to Norma Meyer and requested that she take a look in her files to see if there is any information about Donna Marie's place of residence at that time, with the hope that she would be kind enough to pass my address on to Donna Marie, letting her know that I would like to hear from her. I have not had any response from Copley News Service or from Norma Meyer.

Secondly, I wrote to the author of a murder mystery entitled "The Black Dahlia Murders"....The author is a retired police inspector who included Thora Marie Rose's murder in his book which is about a series of murders that took place in Hollywood. His father, who was a well known doctor was suspected of committing the murder of several young women in the Hollywood area. I have written to the author a couple of times in an attempt to get additional information, but without success.

Lastly, I have communicated with a private investigator who was involved with Robinson's legal representation, hoping that he might be able to provide me with some information.

While I have not had any success locating Donna Marie to date, I continue to research for leads with the hope that someday I will be able to communicate with my childhood friend.

Alex McQuaid
amcquaid@cogeco.ca

Alex McQuaid

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Reply author: Alex McQuaid
Replied on: 12 November 2005 11:23:21 PM
Message:

I've continued to research the Thora Marie Rose murder case over the past couple of years, and in doing so, have come across a couple of very interesting individuals and writeups about the case. Here's one that I'd like to share with readers... The Case Of The Fateful Fingerprints... http://skonline.org/courses/sci/sg313217000/readings/Fateful_Fingerprints.pdf

Still no luck in tracking down the whereabouts of my childhood playmate and first love, but hopefully some day I will.

Alex McQuaid
afmcquaid@hotmail.com

Alex McQuaid

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