Police had DNA years before tying it to killing

By DAVID HENCH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Michael K. Hutchinson of Bridgton had several brushes with the law during the past 12 years, and it was an arrest in 2002 that led to his indictment this week for the 1994 murder of Crystal Perry.

Hutchinson, now 31, was charged with kidnapping and criminal threatening with a gun after a dispute with another group of young men in Bridgton. He pleaded guilty to the threatening charge and served six months in prison.

Just before his release, the prison collected a DNA sample, as it is required to do for all felons. That microscopic sample was caught up in a backlog for almost two years, as the state waited for federal money to have it processed and the state police crime lab worked to free staff to complete the analysis.

When the pieces came together, forensic analyst Jennifer Sabean found a match with DNA collected from the body of Crystal Perry, whose killing had shocked the small town and stumped detectives.

Perry had been sexually assaulted and stabbed to death, according to a police affidavit. The DNA attributed to her murderer was found in semen and in blood left on her body.

The DNA match was made March 20. On Thursday, a grand jury indicted Hutchinson on a murder charge in Perry's death.

Deputy Attorney General William Stokes said Hutchinson was not charged with sexual assault because the six-year statute of limitations had expired.

There is no statute of limitations in murder cases.

Gwen Fontenault said she is troubled by reports her sister was sexually assaulted, although she always wondered.

"That makes it worse. Anything else (that) happened to her could only make it worse," Fontenault said. "The police were pretty careful about the information that they let out even to the family. Our knowledge of what exactly happened was fairly limited."

Fontenault, who was born a year and a half after Perry, said Hutchinson's arrest is important for her sister's memory. Fontenault has never heard of him before, which she said was a relief.

"I have never seen that person . . . never heard of that person," she said.

Perry was killed on a Thursday night, May 12, 1994. Her daughter, 12 at the time, told police she heard her mother protesting, and someone opening a kitchen drawer that contained knives. When she found her mother on the kitchen floor, she ran a half-mile in bare feet in the rain to get help.

Fontenault said her sister would have had to wake early for work the following morning, so it is unlikely she would have gone out for the evening and met Hutchinson, especially with her daughter at home.

"She always put her daughter first," Fontenault said. "She made sure she provided for her daughter and went above and beyond what a lot of parents would do."

Police say they know of no connection between Hutchinson and Perry, which would make the killing unlike most homicides in the state. Murder almost always occurs between people who know each other, police say.

With no ties to Perry and no history of serious criminal conduct, Hutchinson would not have surfaced as a suspect at the outset of the investigation.

"You look for a motive, but you also go through those relationships looking for connections," said State Police Maj. Tim Doyle.

Hutchinson lived within a couple miles of Perry's home on Route 93, but it is unclear what could have brought them together.

Most recently, he worked as a part-time mason and landscaper and did odd jobs in the winter, according to court papers. The papers also show that his ex-wife obtained a protection-from-abuse order after a judge agreed that Hutchinson's drinking posed a danger to her and their children.

Hutchinson's criminal threatening conviction in 2003 led to six months in prison and four years' probation. His probation was revoked on a number of occasions, for testing positive for cocaine, for drinking, for taking prescription drugs that were not his and for failing to pay child support, according to court papers.

Hutchinson was described in court papers as having significant substance abuse and mental health issues.

He was in Cumberland County Jail on charges of violating probation when the state matched his DNA with the Perry case.

The state crime lab currently has a backlog of about 2,700 samples taken from prisoners over the past year and a half, said Doyle, who oversees the lab.

The state is awaiting the federal funds for 2005 and 2006 to have an out-of-state lab process the samples. Once that is done, state analysts can process the profiles and submit them to the state's database. It takes three to four months from the time the samples are sent out to their inclusion in the database, Doyle said.

The state database is connected to the federal system, part of the Combined DNA Index System, so that a DNA sample taken in California, for example, could link a person to a crime in Maine. But the backlog means that link does not happen soon. In fact, in Maine it usually takes 1 1/2 to two years to have a sample processed and included in the database, Doyle said.

The state obtains about 1,800 samples a year from people who are convicted after being charged with a felony. It relies on eventual funding from the federal government to pay for the processing. It currently has 7,400 samples in its database.

The backlog is worse in larger states with more crime. Connecticut has a backlog of about 30,000 samples, Doyle said.

In 2005, the Maine database yielded 32 hits, or matches with DNA from a crime scene, for a variety of crimes such as rape and burglary. Sometimes the match is between samples taken at different crime scenes, enabling investigators to link crimes.

"Those hits have become more frequent," Doyle said. "The more samples in the system, the more chance we'll have a hit at some point."

In the first two months of this year, the state database had nine hits, Doyle said.