A criminalist testifying Monday in the Marvin Ray Markle Jr. murder case said she was able to extract DNA from fingernail clippings from the victim’s left hand, then told the prosecutor it revealed “a match” to Markle.
Responding to questions from Chief Deputy District Attorney Paul Sequeira, Stephanie Carpenter, an expert in DNA analysis with the state Department of Justice in Sacramento, said there were male chromosomes in a second sample of the clippings, which she identified as Markle’s.
As she testified, Markle, seated at the defense table in Department 2 of Solano County Superior Court, whispered to his attorney, Thomas A. Barrett, chief deputy of Alternate Defender Office, on Day 4 of the trial in the Justice Building in Vallejo.
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Markle, previously convicted of a 2001 murder in Butte County, is charged with the Nov. 15, 1982, strangulation and bludgeoning death of De Anna Lynn Johnson, 14, a student at Will C. Wood Junior High in Vacaville, leaving her body along railroad tracks near Elmira Road in Vacaville. Over the weeks and few years after Johnson’s death, which occurred after a party near her home on Royal Oaks Drive, investigators could not amass enough evidence to charge Markle with the crime and the case went cold.
Carpenter, a forensic scientist who analyzes physical evidence to solve crimes, told Sequeira that in February 2017, she received a DNA swab from inside Markle’s cheek, then compared it to DNA samples from Johnson’s fingernail clippings. Markle’s DNA, she said, “cannot be excluded as a contributor” from the first of two samples tested. Additionally, there was no indication “of a third contributor,” that is, the DNA from anyone else in that particular finding, Carpenter said.
In his cross-examination, Barrett began by asking about the difference between fingernal “scraping” and clippings, and did not dispute the science.
On redirect, Sequeira reiterated that Markle’s DNA was a match in the second sample.
Responding to a question from Barrett, Carpenter said only a small amount of evidence, such as fingerprints, blood, hair and fibers, are needed to detect DNA with a test.
Two DNA analysts from the Serological Research Institute in Richmond followed Carpenter to the witness stand.
Gary C. Harmor, the institute’s director and chief forensic DNA analyst there, told Sequeira he received a lab report, with evidence submitted by the Vacaville Police Department, in 1984. Among the objects were shoes, rocks, blood scrapings, some of Johnson’s and Markle’s clothing, and also blood samples from several men who attended the Nov. 15 party.
Harmor, noting his firm is accredited to perform DNA analysis, said DNA testing has evolved in the last couple of decades, upgrades that required re-examination of hundreds of cases, including the death of Johnson.
During the early part of the afternoon session, Angela Butler, a senior forensic DNA analyst at the SRI, testified that she was assigned to cold cases and in 2003 became involved with the Markle case.
She described DNA as a human being’s “genetic blueprint,” each unique to each person, excepting identical twins, and then described the analysis process. It includes extraction, purification, and DNA “typing,” she said.
Butler told Sequeira that DNA can “degrade” with affected by chemicals (bleach, for example), heat, mold and rust and time.
To a series of questions about DNA from dozens of pieces of evidence — shoes, rocks, pieces of clothing — she said some indicated a match to Johnson, but much of it excluded Markle and James Zimmerman, the latter man a renter who lived at the Royal Oaks Drive party house.
Over the past several years, as the case wound its way through the county court, trials dates more than once were assigned, then vacated.
As previously reported, in February 2017, Markle pleaded not guilty to one count of murder in connection to Johnson’s death when he was arrested a month earlier at Kern Valley State Prison on suspicion of murder and use of a deadly weapon. At the time of his arrest, he was serving an 80-year sentence for the 2001 murder of a Biggs woman, a fact not likely to be introduced during the ongoing trial.
It was the death of Shirley Ann Pratt, 41, in Butte County, that led to Markle’s arrest in the Vacaville case. On the morning of Oct. 12, 2001, Pratt was found naked in the Oroville Wildlife area, dead from an apparent gunshot wound to the face. In July 2013, the Butte County Sheriff’s Department officers arrested Markle, who was later tried and convicted. He has remained in either state prison or jail custody ever since.
In the Vacaville case, according to court records, on the night of Nov. 15, 1982, Johnson was first reported missing after her brother, another party attendee, returned home and discovered she was not there and was out past her curfew.
The next day, her body was found by a Southern Pacific Railroad employee near the tracks along Elmira Road.
The Solano County District Attorney’s Office filed its complaint against Markle on July 31, 2017, and a preliminary hearing was held on Jan. 16 and 17, 2018.
If found guilty at trial, Markle, who remains in Solano County Jail without bail on a state prison hold, faces 25 years to life, with the possibility of more time for being a previously convicted felon.
The trial resumes at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in Judge Daniel Healy’s courtroom.