EVERETT — More than 19 years after Patti Berry ran into a killer after work, the man Snohomish County prosecutors say is responsible went on trial Monday for first-degree murder.
Berry, 26, died before sunrise on July 31, 1995. A single mother with a daughter, then just 2, she was last seen headed home after working a shift dancing at Honey’s, a nude nightclub that used to be located along Highway 99 south of Everett.
The investigation stalled for years, but was finally closed using science that didn’t exist when Berry was repeatedly stabbed and her body dumped in a wooded area just south of the Everett Mall, deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson told jurors.
The blood that spattered and pooled in Berry’s car told detectives that’s where she was attacked, and that her killer likely drove her to the site where her body was dumped.
In 2004, more sensitive tests found a man’s DNA on the steering wheel. Four years later, the genetic profile was linked to Danny Ross Giles, a frequent felon who had lived in the area.
The statistical probability of a random DNA match was calculated at 1 in 580 million, jurors were told.
The evidence will show that Giles was the “unidentified, unnamed and unpunished” killer, and it is time to hold him responsible, Matheson said.
Neal Friedman, the county’s longest-serving public defender, told jurors that Giles didn’t know Berry and has become the victim of an investigation suffering from tunnel vision.
There are no eyewitnesses. There is no murder weapon. There is no confession.
“In fact, what you are going to hear from Danny Giles is ‘I didn’t do it,’” he said.
The lawyer said the investigation was flawed by missteps from the outset, such as failing to obtain surveillance video that could have identified Berry’s killer. At least three people from the sheriff’s office who played key roles in the case in 1995 later were fired for various reasons.
And “the forensic evidence raises more questions than answers,” Friedman said.
Example: DNA found under Berry’s fingernails doesn’t match Giles. DNA from other, unidentified men, turned up in Berry’s car.
He urged jurors to take notes and listen carefully to what witnesses say and what they don’t.
Among the information jurors won’t hear are allegations that DNA also links Giles to the disappearance and presumed death of Tracey Brazzel, who dropped from sight a few months before the Berry killing. Giles also is charged with first-degree murder in that case, which will be argued in a separate trial.
The witnesses in the Berry case Monday included the slain woman’s family.
Her mother, Nancy Stensrud, took the stand and in a clear voice told the jury about how she first learned that her daughter was missing.
She was eight hours late in showing up to retrieve her 2-year-old from a neighbor who had agreed to watch her while Patti was at work.
“I thought it was unlike Patti,” Stensrud said.
She and her husband found themselves making dozens of calls: hospitals, friends, police and the medical examiner’s office.
Nothing.
Stensrud’s composure crumbled as she told jurors that by 11 p.m. on the night her daughter disappeared, she was convinced she wasn’t coming home.
“I knew she was dead,” Stensrud said. “It’s a mother’s instinct. I knew. I knew Patti. I knew she loved her daughter enough. She would have been there.”
Berry’s older sister added more detail about the family’s search. They found her car tucked between two U-Haul trucks parked off of 128th Street SW.
Lisa Berry used a phone inside a nearby pizza restaurant to call police.
A deputy walked up to the car and bounced it on its shocks.
“She’s not in there,” Lisa Berry recalled him saying.
Then detectives asked if she knew her sister’s blood type. There was blood in the car.
She asked to see it. Under the beam of a police officer’s flashlight, she saw the blood. So much blood.
“I knew she was dead,” Lisa Berry said.
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snorthnews
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