DNA Expert Questions Evidence In Rape, Murder Cold Case Trial
by Steve Tawa
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The defense opened its case in the rape and double-murder cold case trial of a South Jersey man by disputing DNA evidence first collected 27 years ago in North Philadelphia.
Prosecutors allege 54-year-old Rudolph Churchill's DNA was on a paper towel found in the back seat of an abandoned car where 19-year-old Ruby Ellis' body was found in March of 1989, and on 33-year-old victim Cheryl Hanible's sneaker a month later.
But forensic biologist Katherine Cross, hired by the defense, challenged the statistical calculations by analysts who reported to the Philadelphia Police Department's DNA lab.
She verbally sparred with Assistant DA Andrew Notaristefano over how the evidence was collected and analyzed.
They went back and forth parsing the meaning of words like "match" or "identical," and jurors and the judge even got a kick out of Notaristefano holding up two blue pens. He hinted that they were a match. She only conceded they were "consistent with one another."
She also told jurors that "the oldest forms of DNA testing" dawned in 1989, the same year the victims were murdered.
The case went cold until late 2013, when a federal grant allowed investigators to compare local DNA profiles against materials in an FBI database. That's how prosecutors say they got a "hit" on Churchill.
