TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (52 page)

Next, the police officers who investigated the
Guffie assault testified to arresting Kibbe and finding his crime kit. They itemized its contents, including the two pieces of
white cordage. Then, the Sacramento police fingerprint expert who testified at the Guffie trial told of finding Kibbe’s right-ring-finger print on the handcuffs.

Drossel was pleased with the Guffie
testimony. Guffie herself, obviously upset and at times crying, had been an effective witness. She had held up well.

With the physical evidence of murder still to come, he considered Guffie icing on the cake. But she was a human connection for the jury, allowing him to argue later that Debra Guffie had been an intended murder victim, one who had gotten away from Roger Kibbe.

Something none of the other women had been able to do.

C
RIMINALIST
Faye Springer took the stand on the afternoon of the third day.

After going over her education and experience, the prosecutor asked her to define
trace evidence.

“Trace evidence refers to a category of physical evidence that’s usually small in size,” Springer explained, “and it normally would include fiber, hair, paint, and polymer evidence. Also, particle identifications such as pollens or wood or plant material. Usually it’s small items that require a microscope for characterization.”

Bob Drossel asked about
fiber evidence.

“Fibers are the basic beginning component that goes into making up a fabric,” said Springer, clearly in her element. “Individual fibers are the single units that are used to make up a thread, then the threads are woven into some kind of fabric.”

“Why is fiber evidence significant?”

“It’s significant in that it’s easily transferred between two objects, particularly if those two objects are made of some kind of fabric.”

“Are fibers delicate?”

“Fibers are fairly tenacious, not like
blood or
semen evidence that will
break down at a fairly predictable rate depending on how they’re stored. Manmade fibers can last years and years.”

Springer described the procedure she followed for removing fibers from tape lifts—“I will just sit there at the microscope for sometimes hours pulling off individual fibers”—and mounting them for microscopic examination.

Getting down to specifics of the Darcie
Frackenpohl case, Drossel asked about two fibers used as exemplars.

They came from the carpet mat of Roger
Kibbe’s white Hyundai, Springer explained. “I ended up sending them to
McCrone Associates in Chicago.”

“Why did you send the fibers there?” asked Drossel.

“I had some additional work I wanted them to do.”

Springer had known just who to send the fibers to when she had been stymied by the tiny particles on the fibers. McCrone had the expertise and equipment, she knew, to handle such minute trace evidence.

The first in a series of large color photographs, blown up and mounted on posterboard so jurors could see the microscopic evidence with their own eyes, was placed into evidence.

With pointer in hand, Springer stood in front of the photographs, pinpointing the dark particles.

Then, two other exhibits were introduced: blowups of the two fibers Springer had removed from Frackenpohl’s dress. She pointed out where one of the fibers had the dark particles and a speck of what she thought was paint, and showed that the other one did not.

“I wanted McCrone to characterize the dark particles and the speck and tell me what they were,” she explained.

What Springer did not say was that she had been afraid to let the fibers out of her sight, so she had personally taken them to Chicago—in her beat-up briefcase that went everywhere with her—and stayed around to help out with the examinations.

Drossel asked what she’d done in her own lab.

Springer said she used equipment such as a Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer and gas chromatograph mass spectrometer to analyze the fibers from the dress and the sample fibers from the Hyundai. They were the same color, shape, size, and made out of the same polymer. “I compared the dyes used in the fibers, too, and found them to be the same.”

“Your conclusions?”

“All four fibers are the same kind of fiber that was used for
car mats in the make and model Hyundai that Mr. Kibbe drove,” Springer said.

Drossel paused to allow it to sink in for the jury.

They then moved on to the
hair evidence.

Regarding the human hair found on Darcie’s dress, Springer said it was similar in all respects to several hairs that had been removed from
Kibbe’s inner thigh area under the authority of a search warrant after his arrest for murder.

As for the animal hair found on Darcie’s dress, investigators, including Springer, had managed to get samples from the Kibbes’ two cats when they served the search warrant on the Placerville cabin. “One cat was very cooperative,” she added, “and one was not.”

“First, how do you tell the difference between dog and cat hair?” Drossel asked.

“Under a microscope, cat hairs look almost as if they don’t have a root. A dog hair has a spade-like root that’s very obvious. Other animal hairs have similar distinctions.”

“Did you compare the hairs from the cats with the animal hairs off the dress?” Drossel asked.

“Yes. One cat was brown and the other was white. There were hairs off the dress that looked similar to both. So, I compared a brown hair off the dress with hair from the brown cat, and the same for the white cat. Although you can’t classify cat hair as unique to an individual—any more than you can human hair—I can say that brown and white cat hairs were on the victim’s dress, and that they looked similar to the hairs off the two cats.”

Then it was time for the cordage.

Springer testified as to her analysis of the seven pieces of cordage from the three locations—the three pieces recovered at the
Frackenpohl crime scene, the cord used to make the garrote and the extra 6-foot-long cord from the crime kit, and the two pieces found in storage space 427 at Tupelo.

“What was the purpose of your examination?”

“I could see that the cordage was similar, but I was looking for some uniqueness. That’s when I noticed certain particles that seemed to be reoccurring on the various pieces of cordage.”

Photos of the cordage shot with a 35mm camera through a microscope at 400 magnification were displayed. Springer pointed out the specks of red paint and also what she called “black, rubber-like particles.”

“As to the black particles, were you able to ascertain what that substance was?” Drossel asked.

“No. But I was able to determine that they all had the same physical appearance and elemental makeup.”

“Did you analyze the red paint?”

“Yes. The
red paint on all seven pieces of cordage was similar in everything I was able to analyze. Color and appearance, but also in organic and elemental composition.”

Springer explained that the amount of red paint on each piece of cord varied, from “only a few red particles” on the crime-kit cord strung between the two dowels to “large smears of red particles” on a piece of cordage from Tupelo.

“Do you have an opinion as to how the red paint got on the cordage?” Drossel asked.

“It got there while the paint was wet, and it was applied in some manner that made very small particles, such as spraying.”

“Are you indicating that the different pieces of cordage were in the same environment at one point?”

“Everything I was able to see indicates that there is a common source for the paint,” Springer said. “I believe you can make a strong association that these seven pieces of cordage at some time were exposed to a similar environment.”

Drossel was finished with his direct examination of Springer, and his timing couldn’t have been better. At the end of the day, he would be sending the jurors home for the night with a very clear picture of the same red paint on all the cordage.

“I have no further questions at this time.”

The next morning, Springer was back on the stand.

Defense attorney
Tom Kolpacoff stepped forward.

“Miss Springer, what does ‘tunnel vision’ mean?”

“In terms of
crime scenes, it has to do with overfocusing in a case on a theory you may have early on.”

“Did you keep an open mind in this case?”

“Yes,” said Springer.

She told of having authored a published scientific article, “Crime Scene: Avoiding Tunnel Vision.”

The defense attorney’s question had been rather like asking Billy Graham if he was a true believer.

“Does the fact that you have been an employee since 1972 of the Department of Justice, the state’s top law enforcement agency, affect your ability to make a judgment that may be beneficial to a defendant?”

“No, I don’t think so. I have made judgments that have been beneficial to defendants.”

“Regarding your testimony as to the car mat fibers all being from a 1986 Hyundai, did you do any checking with the manufacturer as to the number of vehicles they produced that year with a blue interior?”

“I tried. I called Hyundai, the distributor out of Los Angeles, and he wasn’t able to tell me how many. He gave me the names of the manufacturers of the carpeting, which was made in Korea, so I wrote a letter but never got a reply.”

“You don’t know how many
cars they made in 1986?”

“No.”

“Do you know whether they used the same type of carpeting in a 1985 Hyundai or 1987 Hyundai?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“Would it be fair to say, then, from the investigation you conducted, you were not able to determine the number of car manufacturers that used the same carpeting that was in the Hyundai?”

“In this particular case I did not. However, if you take a blue carpet from a Hyundai versus a blue carpet from a Ford, I would be very surprised if I could not tell them apart, even though they might look physically similar.”

Under questioning, Springer stated that she never did find the source of the
red paint on the
cordage as a result of police searches of Tupelo and other residences of
Kibbe’s, although nine miscellaneous items painted red had been brought to her for a comparison. She also said that the red paint spill on the car mat did not match the paint from the cordage, which was some kind of acrylic. “I have run a lot of acrylic-based paints and not found the right one,” she said. “It may be some kind of blend of acrylic.”

Asked why she thought her colleague, Jim Streeter, hadn’t been able to see the red paint on the cordage before she found it, Springer shrugged. “He told me that he had examined them for their general features like construction, length, how many pieces of yarn went into weaving. But other than that, you’ll have to ask him.”

“In this case,” Kolpacoff said, “we have very few fibers on the Frackenpohl dress. Five in all?”

“Right. I found five—two matched the fibers from the car mat. In my experience, I would say that I would be very happy with recovering five fibers in all of my cases.”

Drossel withheld a smile. His key scientific witness was doing just fine.

The defense attorney tried to dispense with the
hair evidence in a few choice questions.

“Would you agree,” Kolpacoff said, “that human hair evidence is an extremely less valuable form of identification than fingerprints?”

“Yes. We don’t identify individuals by hair. It is most useful for the exclusion of individuals.”

“Is there a term that is sometimes used regarding hair evidence?”

“Well, we tend to call it corroborative evidence.”

“When a body has been outside for a period of time, it’s not uncommon to find animal hairs, is that correct?”

“That’s true, yes.”

“Did you compare the animal hairs you removed from the Frackenpohl dress with coyote hair?”

“No.”

“Raccoon?”

“No.”

“Squirrel?”

“No, but I’ve looked at those animals before.”

“Miss Springer, you cannot identify the animal hairs obtained on the Frackenpohl dress as being identical to the white or brown cat from the Kibbe residence, can you?”

“No, I cannot say that.”

Kolpacoff was nearing the end.

“Miss Springer, you submitted the fibers with the football-like properties on them to
McCrone Associates.”

“Yes.”

“And you received a report back from them dated May 4, 1990.”

“That sounds about right,” said Springer, remembering that was about when she had learned that the dark particles were some kind of
fungal spores.

“Since that time, have you done any investigation to determine whether or not fungus is common to floors of automobiles?”

“Well, only that it’s common to the floor in my personal GMC that has french fries growing out of it with lots of fungus at this moment.”

The jurors and courtroom spectators laughed.

So did Kolpacoff. “That’s a good test. No further questions.”

Before Springer had left the courtroom, Judge Finney, who was given to moving trials along at near breakneck speed, said, “Next witness.”

Knowing Finney, Drossel tried to keep a line of witnesses in the hallway. Woe to any attorney in this court who didn’t have someone ready to climb onto the stand.

“
Skip Palenik,” Drossel announced.

Once sworn in, the tall, round-shouldered Palenik, who defined his profession as “analytical microscopist,” said he had been interested in microscopes since he was eight years of age. It wasn’t difficult imagining him as a youth tinkering with his chemistry set while other boys were out playing ball. He recited his educational background (B.A., chemistry, University of Illinois) and work experience.

“In layman’s terms, what do you do?”

The prosecutor understood the importance of making sure all these scientific terms and pieces of
evidence being bandied around were understandable. Jurors hopelessly confused by the prosecution’s experts, he knew, were inclined to acquit.

“We use microscopes of various types and microchemical methods to solve problems involving either small amounts of material or small particles. We have skills in manipulating these very small particles and being able to do an analysis of them. These can be anything from pigments in paintings whose authenticity are questioned to identifying particles floating in a pharmaceutical solution. We work for
fiber companies, doing patent infringement work. In short, we try to correlate what something is or where it could have come from by its identity and characteristics.”