EVERETT — Patti Berry died after being stabbed as many as 18 times in the throat and face. She was attacked while on the driver’s side of her car.
Perhaps she was seated behind the wheel. Or maybe she was standing outside. Only her killer knows for sure.
Blood soaked the seats. It pooled on the floorboards. It was splattered all over the vehicle, inside and out, from the front bumper to the back window. Some drops even wound up on top of the car’s roof.
A Snohomish County jury late this week absorbed those and other details about the violence that befell the young mother after she left work July 31, 1995.
There were photos and testimony about evidence found during the 14 hours investigators spent poring over the bloody car. Similar details were offered from her autopsy.
The testimony came as prosecutors continued to present evidence in the first-degree murder trial of Danny Ross Giles. They contend that genetic tests and a skein of poorly told lies link the frequent felon to Berry’s killing more than 19 years ago.
Giles, 46, insists he had nothing to do with the death. His attorneys maintain he’s the victim of flawed police work and investigators’ tunnel vision.
Starting Thursday and for much of Friday, jurors heard from Dr. Daniel Selove, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy.
Berry, 26, likely slipped into unconsciousness within a couple of minutes after one of the major arteries in her throat was severed, he testified. He identified eight stab wounds within a 3-inch area on her throat. The blade also pierced the back of her left hand, with the point pushing through to her palm.
Jurors on Thursday listened to Sgt. Shawn Stich*, who heads the major crimes unit for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. In 1995 he was a detective assigned to the unit and one of his jobs was to carefully gather evidence from Berry’s car, he said.
The car was found not long after Berry failed to return from working a shift as a dancer at Honey’s. The nude nightclub used to be on Highway 99 south of Everett.
The vehicle had been parked between a couple of moving vans in a lot behind a car wash off 128th Street SW. The driver’s window was down. Large amounts of blood were visible.
The car was taken to a secure county garage where it could be searched for evidence. Stich described what investigators did during the hours he and others spent on the task. Stich documented the search with photographs. Jurors saw nearly five dozen of them.
Deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson had the detective describe for jurors what each of the images showed.
Most documented the blood found all over Berry’s car, including what appeared to be a print left by a bloody hand on the back of the passenger’s seat. Others showed the vehicle’s contents, including the stroller Berry had in the trunk for her daughter, then just 2.
The photos also documented the removal of the vehicle’s steering wheel by police. Stich testified about the steps he took to keep it from being contaminated before he booked it into evidence.
In opening statements, jurors were told that modern DNA tests in 2008 linked Giles to genetic evidence found on the steering wheel. Prosecutors say scientists will testify that chances of a random match between Giles’ genetic profile and the DNA on the steering wheel is 1 in 580 million.
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snorthnews.
Correction, Oct. 23, 2014: Shawn Stich is a Snohomish County detective who investigates homicides. An earlier version of this story misspelled his first name.
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