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Investigative and forensic experts dominated the witness stand Tuesday in the second day of the trial for Donald Nash, a former Salem resident who was charged with capital murder in the 1982 slaying of 21-year-old Judy Lynn Spencer, of Salem.
Nash was arrested 26 years after Spencer was slain when a Missouri State Highway Patrol investigator reopened the cold case in 2007 and sent her fingernail clippings to the department’s Crime Laboratory. The DNA profile returned with a match for Nash.
Spencer’s body was found one day after she went missing. Hidden in a three-foot-deep foundation of an old outhouse, it was determined Spencer was strangled with her own shoestring and shot in the neck after she was dead.
With the state still presenting its case, Prosecutor Theodore Bruce called MSHP investigators, criminalists, and a DNA analyst to the stand.
Ruth Montgomery, a MSHP DNA analyst, after having extracted, quantified, amplified and genetically analyzed the DNA sample found under Spencer’s fingernails, said a statistical analysis of Nash’s identified DNA profile revealed a 1-in-16 million chance of someone else having the same DNA as Nash.
Nash’s defense attorney, Frank Carlson, queried Montgomery extensively about protocols of physical evidence and how a sample might become contaminated or cross-contaminated with someone else’s DNA.
Although Montgomery admitted one sample proved to be contaminated, it was never tested. Other swabs collected from Spencer showed only Spencer’s DNA on the ligature (shoestring) around her neck.
When asked what effect hairwashing would have on the DNA sample taken from Spencer’s fingernails, Montgomery said, “I would expect that the movements associated with washing your hair would remove (another person’s) DNA from under fingernails.”
The last person to see Spencer alive, Janet Jones Edwards, testified Monday she saw Spencer wash her hair just before she left her apartment.
Investigative and forensic experts dominated the witness stand Tuesday in the second day of the trial for Donald Nash, a former Salem resident who was charged with capital murder in the 1982 slaying of 21-year-old Judy Lynn Spencer, of Salem.
Nash was arrested 26 years after Spencer was slain when a Missouri State Highway Patrol investigator reopened the cold case in 2007 and sent her fingernail clippings to the department’s Crime Laboratory. The DNA profile returned with a match for Nash.
Spencer’s body was found one day after she went missing. Hidden in a three-foot-deep foundation of an old outhouse, it was determined Spencer was strangled with her own shoestring and shot in the neck after she was dead.
With the state still presenting its case, Prosecutor Theodore Bruce called MSHP investigators, criminalists, and a DNA analyst to the stand.
Ruth Montgomery, a MSHP DNA analyst, after having extracted, quantified, amplified and genetically analyzed the DNA sample found under Spencer’s fingernails, said a statistical analysis of Nash’s identified DNA profile revealed a 1-in-16 million chance of someone else having the same DNA as Nash.
Nash’s defense attorney, Frank Carlson, queried Montgomery extensively about protocols of physical evidence and how a sample might become contaminated or cross-contaminated with someone else’s DNA.
Although Montgomery admitted one sample proved to be contaminated, it was never tested. Other swabs collected from Spencer showed only Spencer’s DNA on the ligature (shoestring) around her neck.
When asked what effect hairwashing would have on the DNA sample taken from Spencer’s fingernails, Montgomery said, “I would expect that the movements associated with washing your hair would remove (another person’s) DNA from under fingernails.”
The last person to see Spencer alive, Janet Jones Edwards, testified Monday she saw Spencer wash her hair just before she left her apartment.
