EVERETT — There was a mystery within a mystery during the long hunt for Patti Berry’s killer.
Who was Individual A?
For nine years after Berry’s body was found dumped near the Everett Mall, detectives chased leads without finding evidence conclusively pointing toward a suspect.
Then, in 2004, a forensic scientist working for the Washington State Patrol swabbed the steering wheel from the slain woman’s car. Detectives had wrapped it up and tucked it away as evidence in 1995, within days of Berry’s stabbing death.
Jean Johnston was looking for DNA. At the urging of Snohomish County cold-case detectives, she was using techniques that hadn’t been available when Berry was killed.
Ten and two. Four and eight. Johnston swabbed the steering wheel in the places she thought most likely to give up skin cells and other miniscule amounts of genetic evidence left behind by whoever had been driving.
She was rewarded with a mixture of material that further analysis convinced her came from a woman and a man.
Berry was that woman, the scientist told a Snohomish County jury on Tuesday.
She didn’t have enough information to determine who the man was, however. She loaded his genetic profile into the state’s DNA database and waited for a match.
“I just used a generic term, Individual A,” Johnston testified.
That’s where the case stayed until 2008, when an alert came from the software that compares evidence from unsolved cases with the genetic profiles of the roughly quarter million people in the state’s DNA database.
William Stubbs, another state forensic scientist who works with DNA, told sheriff’s detectives about the potential match.
He said Individual A appeared to share the genetic profile in the state database for Danny Ross Giles. To make certain, though, he needed confirming samples of Giles’ DNA. It needed to be gathered with the rigor and evidence control appropriate for a criminal investigation, he told jurors.
The detectives got him the samples he needed. Stubbs conducted further analysis.
Giles is the man whose DNA turned up mixed in with Berry’s on the steering wheel of her blood-spattered car, jurors were told. Stubbs said the statistical probability of a random match was calculated at 1 in 580 million.
Tuesday’s testimony came as prosecutors continued to build their case that Giles, 46, is the person who ended Berry’s life as she headed for home more than 19 years ago after finishing a shift dancing at a nude nightclub. They’ve charged Giles with first-degree murder in the death of the 26-year-old Arlington woman, who left behind a daughter, then just 2.
Jurors already had heard from other DNA experts who described how genetic testing performed on Berry’s blood stained pants and other evidence from the crime scenes had yielded quantities so small that the results only served to not rule Giles out as a suspect.
On Tuesday they also heard from John Padilla, the former lead detective in the case, who acknowledged that he was fired because some genetic evidence gathered during the murder investigation was mishandled.
Deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson questioned Padilla about hairs he gathered during Berry’s autopsy, and the efforts he made in 1999 to have them tested for genetic evidence.
He had the hairs packed up and shipped off for testing at a North Carolina lab. In 2004, they resurfaced at the home he formerly shared with his wife. They were in the middle of a acrimonious divorce.
Padilla told Matheson he had no idea how the hairs had wound up in his home. Tests determined the mishandled hairs all belonged to Berry, and nobody else, jurors were told.
Padilla said among the reasons he was fired included failing to return videotapes of crime scenes and not finishing work on his major report in the Berry case before taking a different assignment after being promoted to sergeant.
“It cost you your career?” Matheson asked.
“Yes,” the former detective said.
Giles’ has denied any involvement in Berry’s killing. His attorneys insist he is the victim of a flawed investigation.
Neal Friedman, the county’s longest-serving public defender, encouraged Padilla to talk about the crushing workload he carried as a homicide detective, and how that detracted from his ability to chase leads.
Padilla worked the case for four years. He said Tuesday that when he left the homicide unit there were still dozens of people whom he believed needed to be questioned.
Friedman handed Padilla a two-page document from the former detective’s report. It listed the names of people he considered potential suspects — 39 in all.
Giles wasn’t on that list.
“In the initial investigation in 1995, in the early days of this, Danny Giles’ name never came up?” Friedman asked.
“No,” Padilla said.
Tips came in after the Herald ran a series about the killing in 1999.
“I never saw his name,” Padilla said.
Padilla never heard from anyone who identified Giles from a composite sketch. The drawing was done in 1999 after a young man reported seeing somebody hosing off blood at the car wash near where Berry’s car was found.
“Over the four years you had this case Danny Giles’ name never came up…?” Friedman asked.
“No,” Padilla said.
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snorthnews.
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