DNA test matched blood to suspect

Looking for clues at the scene of Crystal Perry's murder, something caught the eye of state police evidence technician Craig Handley.

Amid pools of blood from about 50 stab wounds to the victim, Handley saw a few drops on her body that didn't seem to fit.

"The texture of the blood was different, and it was a different color," the former state police detective testified on Tuesday. "It was blood that had gravitated from some height to the floor."

Handley collected the drops, along with similar ones found on Perry's kitchen floor and countertop. Their source remained a mystery for 12 years, until a DNA test last year matched them to Michael Hutchinson.

Handley testified during the second day of Hutchinson's murder trial in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland. His testimony is the first link in what Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese told jurors will be a chain of scientific evidence that proves Hutchinson's guilt.

Twelve years of investigation turned up no other intersections between Perry and Hutchinson, besides that they both lived in Bridgton in 1994. But police collected sperm from her body and blood drops that could only have come from Hutchinson, according to the test.

In his opening statement, Hutchinson's lawyer, Robert Andrews, said his client was at the house that night and had sex with Perry. He said that a stranger burst into the home and slashed Hutchinson's hand with a knife.

Hutchinson said he saw the man stab Perry but ran away, not telling anyone about what he had seen.

So, to convince the jury of Hutchinson's guilt, prosecutors will have to prove that the person who left the sperm and blood at Perry's house is the one who committed the crime.

Handley's testimony described the scene that police officers saw on May 13, 1994, the morning after Perry was stabbed to death.

Handley showed jurors a video that he made at the tidy white ranch house on Route 93, and photographs of Perry's body lying in a dining area of her home.

Handley said he collected blood samples from around Perry's body and the different-looking spots on her leg and others he found leading into the kitchen area behind her.

After her body was removed, he sprayed a chemical that enhances invisible bloodstains to uncover a trail of boot prints between the body and the counter where he found the drops.

The boot prints promise to be an important part of the case against Hutchinson. According to Marchese's opening statement, only one set of bloody footprints was found in the house.

Although no boots or murder weapon has ever been found, Hutchinson's DNA puts him at the crime scene.

Sarah Perry, the victim's daughter, testified on Monday that her mother was a fastidious housekeeper and always insisted that visitors take off their shoes before coming in, making it unlikely that the person who left the bloody footprints was an invited guest.

Andrews challenged Handley about his decision to spray the chemical enhancer, which made uncollected bloodstains unusable for other analysis.

Handley said that he collected what he considered to be representative samples of the blood of both the victim and an unknown person, and that enhancing other stains could have value for the investigation.

"I was hoping to identify the person who caused her death," Handley said. "In my opinion, (the other bloodstains) were more of the same."

The cleanliness of the house created problems, he said.

Handley could not find any fingerprints, even from the people who lived there, indicating it had been thoroughly cleaned before the crime.

"It's very frustrating for a fingerprint person to come into such a clean crime scene and not find any prints," he said. "The house was in impeccable order, except for the blood and the body."

After Tuesday's lunch break, Justice Thomas Warren announced that one juror had been excused but did not say why. At the end of the day, the judge gave an extra instruction to the remaining jurors to avoid any broadcast or print media accounts of the trial, and to tell him if they are exposed to any accidentally. The trial will continue with 12 jurors and one alternate.

The trial is scheduled to resume today with testimony from the medical examiner and a DNA analyst.