How hobby yielded key clue (Jeanine Harms' Hobby Leads to Forensic Evidence Against her Killer)

San Jose Mercury News ^ | Sat, Dec. 18, 2004 | Connie Skipitares

[nickcarraway]

Ultimately, Jeanine Harms' hobby led investigators to charge Maurice Nasmeh with her murder.

The forensic investigation was the stuff of TV's ``CSI,'' unfolding in real time, over 17 long months. Tiny yarn fragments from her hooked rug project, painstakingly collected from a carpet that investigators believed was used in disposing her body, were found to match yarn in Harms' home and fibers in the cargo area of Nasmeh's SUV.

Mark Moriyama, a criminalist with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Crime Laboratory, extracted thousands of fibers from the carpet by pressing 4-inch-square pieces of tape across its entire surface, and then examined them all under specialized microscopes. The analysis took 90 percent of his time for more than a year.

[nickcarraway]

ping

[BykrBayb]

Undated photos of Jeanine Sanchez Harms of Los
Gatos and Maurice Xavier Nasmeh of San Jose.
Nasmeh was arrested Dec. 16, 2004, in connection
with the 2001 disappearance of Harms.

Also Friday, Hinkle said the timing of Nasmeh's arrest was suspicious, coming so closely after the conviction of Scott Peterson, another highly circumstantial case. He suggested that after more than three years of investigation, an arrest now looks like authorities might have been trying to link the two cases in the public's minds.

Somebody learned a new phrase in the last campaign.

His arrest, Hinkle said, has devastated Nasmeh: ``Our client is very distraught.''

I bet he is!

[nickcarraway]

They already want to change venues. But I can tell you, I don't think most people in Santa Clara County have been following this.

The interesting thing is Jeanine went missing long before Laci Peterson did. The interesting thing is that Jeanine's case may have gotten more attention because she went missing shortly after- Chandra Levy. (No arrests in that case)

[REDWOOD99]

When are defense attorneys going to realize that the term "circumstantial evidence" is not the same as weak evidence?

[nickcarraway]

Circumstantial evidence is often better than eyewitness evidence. Witnesses usually aren't all they are cracked up to be.

[REDWOOD99]

Precisely my point. Why do TV shows like CSI, Law and Order, etc. exist? Because people watch them in droves. Circumstantial evidence is the BEST kind of evidence.

[Bonaparte]

Almost all premeditated murder convictions turn on circumstantial, which is any evidence that is not a signed confession, an eye witness, surveillance footage or photographs of the crime in progress.

Circumstantial includes things like the murder weapon, the defendant's prints on the weapon, the victim's blood on defendant's shoes, DNA, matched bite marks and other forensic autopsy findings, lack of alibi, witnesses to threats, etc.

I've long thought the name should be changed to "inferential evidence," so the public won't confuse the common meaning of "circumstantial" with its meaning in criminal law.

[Desdemona]

Fascinating.