UPDATE:(Afternoon session) Finding Jodi Sanderholm’s body under a pile of limbs and debris at the Kaw Wildlife area quickly turned a search for a missing person into a criminal investigation, KBI investigator Dave Falletti told jurors Monday.
Falletti was on the stand for much of the afternoon as the state presented evidence collected from the area where Sanderholm’s body was found in January 2007.
Sanderholm’s family looked away and sometimes embraced one another as crime scene photos of Sanderholm’s battered body were shown in open court. Falletti said investigators were working against the clock on Jan. 9, 2007 because they believed the woman had been dead for some time before it was found. Possibly up to four days.
Sexual assault evidence can detiorate after 72 hours, he said.
Investigators testified that some trace evidence was located on Sanderholm’s body using an alternate light source. The trace evidence was collected with a swab.
DNA samples were also taken from Thurber but there has yet to be testimony as to whether evidence from the scene matched the Thurber sample.
Monday’s afternoon session was fairly brief and wrapped up after about two hours of testimony. Prosecutors indicated the state could rest its case by noon Wednesday.
Testimony will continue Tuesday at 9 a.m.
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Shoe prints discovered at the Kaw Wildlife Area near the location of Jodi Sanderholm’s body matched those of Adidas tennis shoes believed worn by the man accused of kidnapping, raping and murdering the Arkansas City teen in 2007.
Prints of shoes worn by both Justin Thurber and Sanderholm were found side-by-side; then at one point Sanderholm’s prints disappear but Thurber’s continue.
The testimony describing some of the search phase of Thurber’s capital murder trial came during the fifth day of his trial and was presented primarily by Ark City police and Kansas Bureau of Investigation scientists.
Much of the testimony detailed how the officers and scientists do their jobs and preserve and protect the evidence.
Investigators believe Thurber, 25, kidnapped the 19-year-old college student and college dance team member between a row of mailboxes at her home after she completed a dance rehearsal on Jan. 5, 2007. Sanderholm was in the habit of picking up the family’s mail and leaving it on a counter in the kitchen.
She apparently picked the mail up and some or all of it was found in a septic system in the bathrooms at Cowley County State Lake along with clothing she had been wearing. One of the cards retrieved carried Sanderholm’s fingerprint.
Technical analysis suggests that all of the shoe prints at the Kaw Wildlife Area matched either Thurber’s Adidas or Jodi Sanderholms’ flip flop, testified KBI forensic scientist Steve Koch.
He also photographed tire tracks at the Cowley County State Fishing Lake, where Sanderholm’s car was found. Two other KBI specialists reviewed all the reports Koch submitted.
The tennis shoes were taken into evidence when Thurber’s parents’ home was searched the day after Sanderholm disappeared. Thurber had just moved back with his parents. He called his dad the night Sanderholm vanished to pick him up near the Kaw Wildlife Area. He was with friends when their vehicle got stuck, he told his father. Thurber wanted a ride home.
His dad said the shoes were wet because Thurber had been walking in the rain and the two cleaned them. The clothes Thurber was wearing had already been laundered when police searched the house.
A computer forensics examiner testified about information found on a computer in the family home. A former jail administrator discussed how telephone conversations from the jail can be downloaded.
Monday afernoon’s testimony is expected to deal with the discovery and recovery of Sanderholm’s battered body.
