Duct tape, DNA linked to suspect

FORT WORTH - An Oklahoma City crime scene investigator testified Wednesday that Edward Busby Jr.'s DNA was found on two cigarette butts in the trunk of a car belonging to a retired Texas Christian University professor killed in 2004.

Busby, 33, and Kathleen Latimer, 41, are accused in the death of Laura Lee Crane, whose body was discovered wrapped in a white sheet in February 2004 and left just off Interstate 35 near Davis, Okla.

Everett Baxter Jr., the investigator, told jurors that authorities found two rolls of duct tape in Crane's car as well as a pair of shoes, several buttons, an earring and the cigarette butts.

There were also several gray hairs on a stereo speaker bracket in the trunk.

Busby and Latimer are accused of kidnapping the 77-year-old from a grocery store near her home in Fort Worth on Jan. 30, 2004.

Prosecutors allege the two put Crane in the trunk of her car and placed 14 layers of duct tape on her head so that she suffocated.

"The evidence is going to show that when they put Mrs. Crane in the trunk of her own car, the trunk became her coffin and the car itself became her funeral hearse," Tarrant County prosecutor Greg Miller said during opening statements.

Busby has pleaded not guilty and said in media interviews that he did not mean to cause Crane's death, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in its online edition Wednesday.

Latimer is to be tried separately on a capital murder charge.

Defense attorney Jack Strickland declined to make an opening statement Wednesday.

In other testimony, witnesses testified that within three hours after Crane left home to buy groceries, someone had withdrawn $600 in cash advances from her credit cards and also cashed a $175 check drawn on her bank account.

Bank teller Aaron Runyon said a man sent Crane's identification and the check to him at the drive-through window for cashing.

Runyon said there was a woman seated beside the man.

"We waited until the car in the lane beside them moved and asked if Mrs. Crane was in the car," Runyon said. "She waved and we returned the envelope with the cash and identification."

He said he thought the woman was Crane.

Busby and Latimer were found driving Crane's car in Oklahoma City on Feb. 1. Crane's body was found two days later.

Crane was director of TCU's Starpoint School for more than 20 years.