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Beavercreek vs. Carroll
DNA test matches neither murder suspect
Finding undermines story of death row inmate who confessed to killing Melinda Stevens.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Forensic scientists have successfully created a DNA profile from semen samples taken from the body and clothing of Springfield murder victim Melinda Stevens. But the DNA doesn't match either Timothy Coleman, the man condemned to die for her murder, or William Sapp, another death row inmate from Springfield who once confessed to killing Stevens.
"It's a good profile — it just didn't come back to Coleman or Sapp," Coleman's attorney, Kelly Culshaw of the Ohio public defender's office, said Thursday. She has asked a federal judge to include the findings in Coleman's official case record, and the Ohio attorney general's office said it won't object.
Extras
She said she doesn't know if she'll seek to have the DNA run through national databases in an attempt to find a match. There's no evidence that whoever had sex with Stevens was the killer.
But the defense had hoped the DNA would be traced to Sapp, who signed an affidavit four years after Coleman's conviction claiming he, not Coleman, killed Stevens after having sex with her. Sapp is awaiting execution for the notorious 1992 rape-murders of two pre-teen Springfield girls — Phree Morrow and Martha Leach — and the murder of another woman, Belinda Anderson.
The DNA profiling "undermines Coleman's theory of what really happened because it showed Sapp was not the source of the DNA," said Leo Jennings III, spokesman for the Ohio attorney general's office.
U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. last fall ordered the state to turn over the evidence to Forensic Science Associates near San Francisco for DNA testing. Earlier testing by another lab was inconclusive.
Stevens, a 33-year-old mother of five, was killed by two gunshot wounds to the back of the head in a Springfield alley on Jan. 2, 1996. A crack addict, she had worn a hidden recording device and made three undercover drug purchases from Coleman in 1995. Prosecutors said Coleman killed her to silence a witness in his upcoming trial.
No one saw the killing, but witnesses saw Coleman with Stevens shortly before the murder and said he bragged about it later. Coleman maintains he's innocent. His attorneys have said prosecutors ignored other suspects and some witnesses had reason to lie.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2264 or tbeyerlein@DaytonDailyNews.com.
