Reinforcing previous testimony in the Marvin Ray Markle Jr. murder trial, an investigator with the Solano County District Attorney’s Office showed and explained drone video footage of the Vacaville neighborhood where the 1982 killing occurred.
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Standing in the witness box in Department 2 of Solano County Superior Court, Matthew Lydon, the investigator, explained to jurors what they were seeing as Chief Deputy District Attorney Paul Sequeira played the video via a laptop on the prosecutor’s table.
From time to time, Sequeira would pause the video and Lydon, a former Vacaville police captain, would tell jurors, for example, that the house on the video screen was on Royal Oaks Drive, the so-called party house and one of the last places De Anna Lynn Johnson, 14, was seen alive on the night of Nov. 15, 1982.
And Sequeira stopped the fast-moving video images at another point to show another Royal Oaks Drive house, the home where Johnson, a Will C. Wood Junior High student, lived at the time.
The images were ostensibly to support previous testimony and give jurors an idea of where the crime occurred and to reinforce that the party house and Johnson’s residence were no more than a block or two apart.
Lydon also showed images of Elmira Road, explaining that its four lane width used to be only two, and he pointed to the area where the railroad tracks used to be along the way, where Johnson’s body was found on Nov. 16.
The drone video also showed the nearby irrigation canal, where Markle, on the night of Nov. 15, allegedly climbed over the canal’s chain link fencing, injuring himself on barbed wire atop of it, then entered the backyard of the party house, rejoining the crowd, his hands bloody, according to previous sworn testimony, after leaving the party with Johnson.
On cross-examination, Chief Alternate Defender Thomas A. Barrett showed Lydon a Google map of Beelard Drive in Vacaville and its relationship to Beelard Park and its distance from Royal Oaks Drive.
After seven court days, the prosecution rested its case.
Barrett then began to call defense witnesses, including Larry Martin, 80, a former Vacaville resident who lives in Gridley in Butte County.
Martin told Barrett he left Vacaville in 2000 but did not recall hearing about the Johnson case and did not remember an interview with Vacaville police officers at the time about the girl’s death.
Barrett called retired Vacaville police officer Donald Waller to the witness stand, the second time he testified in the trial.
Waller was among the investigators early on after Johnson’s death. He told Barrett he interviewed Markle on Nov. 17 and Nov. 21.
Barrett also called Jeffrey Eisen, a psychologist and professor at California State University, Los Angeles, to the stand, an expert in eyewitness testimony, memory and suggestibility.
His testimony appeared to support what Barrett may claim in closing arguments that prosecution witness testimony may be unreliable because the crime occurred 42 years ago.
Eisen said, “All memory is reconstructive,” and “Sometimes our memories change and we fill in the gaps.”
An original memory fades over time and memories can undergo revision, added Eisen.
Last week, three witnesses in the trial, including Markle’s sister, Melissa Markle, testified that they heard him confess to or refer to a 1982 killing in Vacaville.
Also last week, Sequeira and Deputy District Attorney Barry Shapiro read the testimony about the autopsy report written by Dr. Harold Brazil, a forensic pathologist, a transcript written after the doctor’s testimony in the case. Sequeira read the prosecutor’s part and Shapiro read Brazil’s statements. During his reading, Sequeira also referred to graphic and grisly autopsy photos of Johnson’s body and head, the latter covered in blood spatter, on the day the autopsy was performed, Nov. 17, 1982.
Highly detailed, with vivid and technical descriptions of Brazil’s findings, the doctor concluded that Johnson died of strangulation and severe brain injuries.
Over the past several years, as the case wound its way through the county court, trial 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 attended a party at a home on Royal Oaks Drive, up the street from her family’s residence. She was later reported missing after her brother, another party attendee, returned home and discovered she was not there and was out past her 8 p.m. 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 in prison, with the possibility of more time for being a previously convicted felon.
The trial resumes at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday and closing arguments are expected in Judge Daniel Healy’s courtroom in the Justice Building in Vallejo.